The importance of family values
By Annabel Crabb
Posted 19 minutes ago
The terrain becomes more complicated.
Here's the situation, as Day Five dawns.
Andrew Wilkie seems certain now to join the parliament.
This saps one seat away from the Labor Party, which cannot expect his vote, Mr Wilkie says.
In fact, Mr Wilkie is so determinedly independent that even the independents look partisan to him; a group of three grosses him out nearly as much as the major parties.
"We're not a bloc!" protested Windsor, Oakeshott and Katter yesterday.
Rob Oakeshott elaborated that even though the three were sitting together for the purposes of negotiating a path to stable government, no-one should expect them to vote together and they would very likely be "fighting like cats and dogs again" within months.
Yesterday, it emerged that "Not-A-Bloc" had called in Bruce Hawker for advice.
Hawker, a lobbyist-strategist close to serial NSW governments who is presently on leave from his famous firm Hawker Britton, was called in by Rob Oakeshott on the basis of his past advocacy of structural change to the Australian system of executive government.
That said, Hawker is also Tony Windsor's cousin.
This is a genealogical accident for which federal Labor is silently mouthing thanks to the electoral gods, who had to date bestowed decidedly mixed blessings upon La Gillardine and her brawling retinue.
The Coalition has political family ties to the three former Nats, of course.
But as in many families, they are vexed, and just about anything can spark up a dispute.
Last night's refusal by Tony Abbott to have Treasury examine his policy costings elicited a Lateline blast from Bob Katter.
"The reaction from everyone in Australia would be, what's this guy got to hide here?" barked Mr Katter.
Mr Abbott responded this morning with a bit of equally angst-ridden recent history; he would not give his costings to Treasury, he insisted, until the police had finished dealing with the Treasury leak from the campaign.
The "sheer political bastardry" of the leak was something he could not forget, he declared.
Perhaps Mr Abbott's status as a KGP sleeper (Kinder, Gentler Polity) is already under threat.
Mr Katter's bitterest personal animus is reserved for the National Party, the comments of whose leader Warren Truss on election night he mentions, oh, every few minutes or so (Mr Truss pointed out during the election broadcast how rarely Mr Katter shows up for votes when parliament is sitting).
Having been chipped for years by his former National Party colleagues, Mr Katter is clearly relishing his opportunity to ridicule and degrade them at every public opportunity.
Mr Truss and his colleague Barnaby Joyce have been professionally disappeared for the negotiation period - probably to a nice farm somewhere - but cannot be enjoying the sight of Katter with the whip hand.
But is it possible for Mr Katter to make a fair decision when his mind is so clearly exercised by the slights of the past?
Andrew Wilkie has at least as much ground for personal resentment against the Coalition, but seems much more capable of keeping a lid on it.
Indeed, three separate strands of thought emerged clearly yesterday from the three constituent elements of "Not-A-Bloc", as they staged an outdoor press conference at Parliament House.
(Three-way outdoor press conferences are not an easy affair to cover, it quickly became apparent as a forest of dictaphone-wielding arms swayed back and forth between the three like seaweed in a strong current. Short of energetic recruitment in the octopus world, it is hard to see how the fourth estate is going to manage this beyond the short term.)
Rob Oakeshott, of the three, has the weakest discernible emotional ties to the Coalition. He is firmly of the "Let's shake this thing up" school, and the elements of the seven "demands" tendered yesterday that are most clearly his include the call for a "consensus" model for dealings between the Reps and the Senate, whatever that might be.
Mr Katter is a man of many words, but his primary motivation seems to be his electorate, and he is anxious to remind us that he owes nothing at all to anyone who does not live in it.
Mr Windsor's most urgent concern, he says, is stability, and of the three he is the one who most often brings the subject back around to the prospect of a new election.
In contrast to Mr Abbott, Ms Gillard is more than happy to give Not-A-Bloc access to her costings. And to Treasury secretary Ken Henry. And to pretty much anything else they want, it seems at this stage.
Incumbency is a help, here, and Ms Gillard is taking full advantage, even down to the personalised folders she distributed yesterday to the independents, setting out the effect of Government policy on each of their electorates.
It is within her power to be obliging.
In her interests, too - in the most desperate sense imaginable.
Annabel Crabb is ABC Online's chief political writer.
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