Hung Parliaments – who cares? It is strange that they are making such a fuss in Tasmania at the prospect of no party having a majority in the lower house of Parliament after Saturday’s election. For as long as I can remember the Labor Party has effectively been in a minority whenever it has been in government. The Legislative Council upper chamber sees to that. Whereas the House of Assembly has multi-member electorates the Council is comprised of members from single electorates elected at different times to the Assembly and Labor has often barely been represented. Most of the Councillors describe themselves as independents but the conservative label would suit most of them.

Getting bills passed into law has thus always been a matter of compromise in Tasmania yet the State has managed. So what would be the difference if there has to be some give and take to get things through the House of Assembly as well? Those conservative Legislative Councillors will still be there to provide the checks and balance to anything too outrageous that the Greens demand to support a minority or coalition government.

The latest opinion poll from Tasmania puts the prospect of a hung Parliament quite high but the Liberals and Labor are both trying to pretend that the end of the world is coming should the Greens, as the poll this morning suggests, end up with six or even more members. This scare tactic has worked in the past to persuade many of the large proportion of  voters telling the pollster with a week to go that they are undecided to switch to a major party when they finally fill in their ballot paper.

Perhaps this time they will realise that they can safely vote for which ever lot they like without anything in the system of government really changing.

Maybe now Rann is the underdog he’ll scramble home. South Australia, the pollsters tell us, is also facing the possibility of a hung Parliament with the Liberals currently a couple of points ahead on the two party preferred  vote but needing a couple of points more to win outright. The fact that Premier Mike Rann is now being given an almighty scare might just be enough to dissuade some previously Labor voters from deserting what has been a successful enough government.

The Crikey election indicators.  The prediction markets are certainly telling a different story to the polls. While in both South Australia and Tasmania Labor are said by the pollsters to be behind, the Crikey election indicator has both sitting governments favourites to be returned.

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Nasty little reminders. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is being given some nasty little reminders by some of his cowardly Caucus colleagues that they resent the way they have been relegated to non-entities by his very presidential style of government. We should not take too seriously the recent stories of discontent reaching the point where a leadership coup is being talked about because Julia Gillard has more sense than to be involved in anything as silly as that. But the anonymous leaking to journalists of these stories is a reminder that Kevin Rudd can only survive as a virtual dictator while he is clearly electorally dominant. The moment backbenchers (or even ministers for that matter) fear they will lose their own seat they will start looking for an alternative in earnest.