Gillard close to government
Julia Gillard is two seats away from forming a minority government.
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Julia Gillard won a vital advantage yesterday and is tantalisingly close to power, but any outcome is still possible as the reels keeping spinning on the poker machine of Australian democracy.
The rival parties started the day with 73 votes apiece on the floor of the House of Representatives, but Labor ended the day with 74 seats, more economic credibility and momentum.
Gillard is now two votes short of a majority in the 150-member House, with only the three rural independents yet to announce their intentions.
Labor's 74th vote was delivered by the Tasmanian independent, Andrew Wilkie, who first won public attention as a federal intelligence analyst who turned whistleblower on the invasion of Iraq.
If the three rural independents are true to their mantra that stability in government is their most important aim, they will now take Wilkie's advice and move to support Labor en bloc.
That would give Labor 77 seats, whereas the best possible outcome now for the Coalition is 76. A majority of 77 is one vote more stable than a majority of 76.
One of the three rural independents, Tony Windsor, was celebrating his 60th birthday last night in the parliamentary office of one of the others, Bob Katter, carving up a cake with the third, Robert Oakeshott.
But they might not be able to move as a bloc. Consider the decision-making criteria listed by Wilkie from the Hobart-based seat of Denison. Wilkie, like the Greens' Adam Bandt, has undertaken to support Labor in the two types of votes that decide the fate of governments - confidence motions, and votes to pass the national budget.
On everything else, he said he would vote issue by issue.
Why did Wilkie favour a Labor government over a Coalition one? Implausibly, he said Labor was more stable. This is hard to sustain. Ask Kevin Rudd.
But Wilkie cited two top policy priorities where Labor better suited his needs, and two major reservations about the Coalition.
His first priority was funding for the Royal Hobart Hospital. He rejected the $1 billion offer from Tony Abbott as fiscally reckless, and unfair to other parts of Australia. He preferred Gillard's $340 million because it was done according to "due process" and because it was part of a national $1.8 billion fund.
Wilkie's second priority was action to curb poker machine problem gambling.
His reservations? One was Treasury's finding that Coalition policy costings were out by between $7 billion and $10.6 billion. He called this "unacceptable" and a ''black hole''.
But Wilkie conceded that the North Star guiding his decision was the underlying reality that his seat is fundamentally a Labor one. ''It is clear to me that the majority of voters in Denison would prefer a Labor federal government."
If the three rural independents do the same and follow the basic DNA of their seats, they will all support an Abbott government.
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