ANALYSIS: Australia's rural independents give Labor another go

By Sid Astbury Sep 7, 2010, 9:43 GMT

Sydney - Two independents have decided that Australia's first female prime minister should stay in the job beyond a couple of months and that her government should not be the first since 1931 denied a second term.

Labor was hammered at the August 21 parliamentary election and only scraped home after doing deals with two rural-based independents to secure a 76-seat majority in the 150-member assembly.

Around half the 14 million voters wanted rid of Gillard, accepting Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott's pitch that a 'rainbow coalition of fractured Laborites, Greens and country conservatives' was not a recipe for good government.

But in the horse-trading that followed the voting, Gillard proved the smarter operator. The two men that mattered, independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, endorsed a government that also featured the first formal alliance between the far-left Greens and middle-of-the-road Labor.

'This is not a mandate,' Oakeshott insisted after anointing Gillard. 'It's not an endorsement of any philosophy.'

Which is just as well because all political stripes are represented on the government benches. In the rainbow coalition are agrarian socialists like Oakeshott, former union apparatchiks like Gillard and fervent environmentalists like Greens leader Bob Brown.

What helped get Gillard over the line was a belief that Labor warranted a second term to fix its mistakes and that Abbott's conservatives could do with another spell in opposition to modernise their message.

The narrow victory also reflects abiding credit given to Labor, then led by ex-premier Kevin Rudd, for keeping the economy out of recession as the rest of the rich world racked up record job losses and huge debt burdens.

Labor boasted it was presiding over an economy that was the envy of most others: high growth, low debt, full employment and rising incomes.

Gillard's was a skimpy margin after a parochial campaign: no foreign policy issues, nothing much on climate change and, from Gillard, a sheepdog-like focus on herding voters through gates marked Jobs, Education and Health.

That Australia is the Lucky Country of bounteous natural resources set apart from a worrisome wider world was the leitmotif of the campaign.

It was a world away from 2007 when Rudd wrested power from the conservatives with big plans for social, political and economic change. Gillard deposed Rudd in June, fearing that he could not lead the party to victory in the election.

'When it comes to good ideas for Australia's future, Gillard and Abbott have given the voters a blank piece of paper,' former Labor leader Mark Latham scoffed.

Unlike Rudd, Gillard is not going to be a star turn on the international stage.

Rudd's initiatives on nuclear disarmament, on creating an Asian version of the European Union, on saving the world from global warming, on reform of the global financial services industry will be quietly buried.

Gillard will return Canberra to being a diplomatic backwater.

The Greens hold the balance of power in the upper house of parliament and will use it to block any carbon trading scheme that they do not think is severe enough on the big polluters.

Gillard, who has dumped carbon trading in the too-hard basket, faces the prospect of the Greens only supporting legislation they like.

The Greens, a de facto Labor coalition partner before the voting, were elevated to a formal one in the horse-trading. They have said they are prepared to hold to ransom the government they helped get elected.

Latham warned that a slim victory would sap Gillard's authority and spark ruction within her government. The lightning rod for dissent is likely to be Rudd himself, promised a senior cabinet post by the woman who ensured he did not complete his first term.

'I think they've handled it badly and the truth will come out,' union leader Dean Mighell said. 'You'll see a lot of bloodletting after the election ... for the way Kevin Rudd was savaged.'

For Abbott, losing by such a small margin could cement his position atop the Liberal Party. He ran a competent campaign and avoided the gaffes that his colleagues expected. Like Gillard, he emerged as his side's best performer. 'He's got extremely good political smarts,' said fellow Liberal Julie Bishop.