With Monday’s COAG health meeting apparently headed for an impasse, one of Canberra’s favourite games, election speculation, has resumed in earnest.

Back in September last year, Malcolm MacKerras explained to Crikey readers why he thought there’d be a double dissolution election in August. Antony Green recently updated his own thoughts on the matter, suggesting a double dissolution in August or September.

The health debate rather complicates things because the Prime Minister’s threat of a referendum imposes additional legislative requirements.

That’s problematic because it’s not widely understood just how little Parliament is scheduled to sit between now and likely election dates. We’re in the middle of a seven-week Parliamentary break; then there’ll be Budget week, then a week off, then the first full fortnight of Parliamentary sittings since mid-March. Except, the Senate isn’t sitting for that fortnight because it’s conducting Estimates hearings for the full fortnight (which is good, because only a fortnight allows proper scrutiny of Departments).  Then there’s a week’s break and then another fortnight’s sitting, although a day is lost because of the Queen’s Birthday public holiday.

And then that’s it for the Winter Sittings. Parliament isn’t scheduled to sit again until late August.

If MacKerras and Green are correct, Parliament will only sit for five more weeks before the election, and the Senate will only sit for three weeks. One of those is Budget week. By way of aside, that means that any controversial bills that have yet to be introduced this year, like the one implementing Stephen Conroy’s internet censorship, are unlikely to be passed, and definitely not if they are referred to a Senate inquiry.

It also means there are few in the way of political set-pieces for the Opposition to use between now and the election. When Parliament sits, the Opposition gets more coverage, including more political coverage on the evening news bulletins, usually featuring a Question Time exchange. When Parliament’s not sitting, the Government has much more control of the political agenda.  With few sittings weeks left, there’ll consequently be fewer opportunities for the Opposition to get strong coverage.

The referendum timetable needs to considered in the Parliamentary sittings context. If the Coalition refuses to support a health referendum, the relevant bill has to be rejected twice by the Senate three months apart before it can go to voters. There has been speculation Rudd would respond to a failure on Monday by immediately recalling Parliament and introducing a bill for a health referendum. If the bill failed to pass the Senate next week or the following week, it would give the Government three months to try again.

But the necessary three months would put the return of the referendum bill right in the middle of the winter recess, requiring a second unscheduled recall of Parliament, in July.  Leaving it until the next sitting period, at the end of August, would take it beyond the deadline for calling a double dissolution election, 10 August.

But that’s probably all academic, because the Coalition would be mad to so obviously try to forestall giving Australians a say on health reform. All the media discussion about whether Rudd really needs a referendum to undertake his health reforms won’t matter a jot to most voters, and if the Opposition and the minor parties refuse to approve the referendum bill they’ll hand a potent weapon to the Government, which will point out how undemocratic — indeed, how unAustralian — it is not to let Australians have their say on this crucial issue.

That just leaves the date of the election itself, whether or not it is a double dissolution. Working out the date is a process of elimination. It will be before the Victorian election in late November, which means it will be before late October. It won’t be on during the footy finals, which rules out 25 September (AFL). That probably rules out 18 September as well.  Everyone’s on school holidays on 2 October (the NRL final is on 3 October, a Sunday) and half the country is on holidays the following weekend too, including NSW.

That leaves 17 October, which is too far from the double dissolution cut-off date, or earlier in September — the 4th, or the 11th, both of which would fit a double dissolution election called in early August. Those dates are still late enough not to look like Rudd is calling an early election.

There’s commentary around that a double dissolution won’t be appealing to the Government because neither of the triggers — the CPRS bills, or the private health insurance rebate changes — are popular. There’s no evidence that double dissolution election campaigns are ever fought over the minutiae of the bills that prompted them. Like all elections, they’ll be fought on the basics — whom voters trust to manage the economy, whom voters feel best reflects their own values.

There’s even some speculation Rudd could ignore the half-senate election problem caused by going to the polls before July and go to an election virtually straight away if Monday is a debacle, catching everyone on the hop. After all, the Prime Minister spent all of last week and most of this week campaigning up and down the coast selling his reform plan in regional electorates. That will necessitate a later Budget, but that’s happened before without too much damage to the fabric of the Australian economy. More likely, the Government will want to put the Budget in place to further strengthen its economic credentials with voters.

Labor won’t want to just scrape over the line, or hang onto its majority, this year. It will want to substantially strengthen its majority sufficient that 2013 becomes virtually impossible to lose, which is likely to place huge strains on the Liberals not to lapse into civil war. Election timing will depend on whether the Government thinks Tony Abbott will remain an asset for his party, or start exerting a Latham-like downward pull on the Liberal vote. If that’s the case, don’t rule out Labor waiting as long as possible.