on an agreement
The 2010 election delivered up a ‘plague on both your houses’ outcome that is still kicking out the occasional aftershock. To a visitor from Europe there would be nothing particularly remarkable about the idea of a multi-hued Parliament in which political parties and independents are forced to sit down and negotiate on the passage of laws. That, after all, is what Parliaments were designed to do. But there’s something in the Australian political culture, from the press gallery to the opposition benches, that refuses to understand or assimilate the reality of a minority government.
1 April 2012