The Australian parliament which meets this week will not only be unusual — boasting the nation’s first Aboriginal MP and the youngest ever lawmaker — it could also be short-lived, experts say.
Welsh-born Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard became the country’s first woman leader in June and is set to control the 150-seat lower House of Representatives with the narrowest of majorities.
On her side will be the house’s first Muslim, Ed Husic, as well as former intelligence officer turned Iraq war whistleblower Andrew Wilkie, Greens MP Adam Bandt and two ‘kingmaking’ independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott.
Also lurking in Labor’s ranks will be former prime minister Kevin Rudd, the man Gillard suddenly and spectacularly deposed as leader in a backroom coup, only to appoint him foreign minister after her knife-edge re-election.
In opposition leader Tony Abbott’s corner when the 43rd parliament opens tomorrow will be 20-year-old Wyatt Roy, the youngest person ever elected to office, and Ken Wyatt, the first indigenous person to sit in the lower house.
Wildcard independent Bob Katter, a cowboy hat-wearing north Queenslander who deliberated for 17 days before deciding who to support, will also back Abbott.
“It’s an amazing assortment of characters. It’s like the cast of a sitcom,” Zareh Ghazarian, a politics lecturer at Melbourne’s Deakin University, and co-author of Australian Politics for Dummies said of the parliament.
Neither the ruling Labor party or former trainee priest Tony Abbott’s conservative Liberal/National opposition managed to secure enough seats to govern after the Aug. 21 poll returned a hung parliament.
However, former industrial lawyer Gillard managed to broker the support of enough independents to stretch her lead to 76 seats — the barest majority needed to form a government.
Ghazarian said hung parliaments were generally brittle, and it was unlikely this one would last its full three-year term.
“It is going to be very fragile,” he said. “It is going to be very, very testing for the government. I would be really surprised if we had this parliament sitting for three years.”
Gillard’s tightrope act to take power was one thing, but the challenges for the minority government will only mount, said Monash University’s Nick Economou.
“The real game starts when the government tries to legislate,” he said. “There are important policy issues that need to be dealt with. It’s quite clear that on at least one issue, on climate change, at least one set of crossbench support expects action,” he said in reference to Bandt, an MP from the eco-minded Greens.
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