Australia's Next Government

The Mad Monk or the Doctrinaire Lefty

Australia has a hung Parliament. The first in seventy years. For those foolish or masochistic enough to follow politics, the next few days, even weeks, are likely to be more entertaining than normal. As in the UK, there will be those repetitive “can they, will they, won't they” rumours and reports about whether Labour or the Liberal coalition forming the next government.

We are not in the predicting business, we will make a tentative guess that the Liberal Coalition will be successful. It seems that the independent MP's are pretty regionally and electorally focused: their concerns are what “goodies” they can secure for their parochial responsibilities. They do not at all seem to be consumed with a “grand vision” for Australia. They are more pragmatic than ideological. Their wider concerns seem to be with holding the respective parties to their stated promises, rather than extracting new or different commitments from them. All of which seems pretty reasonable.

The question will then turn around which of the two major parties, Liberal Coalition or Labour will be their preferred party. It is clear that the Labour Party has made a right royal stuff up of things—undermining Parliamentary process and conventions, swaggering about like slaves who have become kings, foolishly confusing reckless spending on a rapidly expanding bureaucracy with “reform”, and yet all the while riven with factional infighting. Julia Gillard, against this backdrop, must appear weak and ineffectual, unlikely to form a government an independent would prefer to tie up with. There already rumours swirling, we understand, that she will be dumped, even if successful in forming a new government. And then there is the fact of an electoral swing away from Labour towards the Coalition. It would be a bold Independent MP which would blithely ignore that electoral reality and return Labour to government in the face of a soured electorate.

Still, stranger things have happened.

Some soft-despotic commentators are seeing darker days ahead for Australia, regardless of which of the two larger parties forms a government. Governing as a minority government will mean that the government itself is likely to be weak. It will not be able to make “big bold moves”, which allegedly are required in these times of economic turpitude. Our view is that weak governments are often the very best. As long as they focus upon the basics like law and order, justice and crime, and defence—which are the core biblical responsibilities of the civil magistrates as God's servant—then the law of unintended, bad consequences will come into play less often. Therefore, as Christians we are far more inclined to celebrate a weak government.

It is when government gets out of the way and by means of (deliberate or unintended) neglect force people to take more responsibility for their own lives, families, extended families and friends that economic revitalization is far more likely to occur at the micro-level. For our part, we would suggest that a weak minority government in Australia may be a very good thing.