After 17 days of intense negotiations, the Labor Party under Julia Gillard has been installed in power. Gillard is Australia's first female PM. After a remarkable series of events (noted previously) the formation of a new government was only achieved by the barest of margins, 76 to 74. This occurred because Labor was able to convince one Green and 3 independents to join it in a coalition government. It is also interesting to note that aside from the obvious differences in system of governments between the US and Australia, the election was also remarkable because neither of the two likely PM candidates would have been eligible if US rules had applied as neither were born in Australia.
There is more analysis and a disclaimer or two before the fold
This section is my opinion regarding what happened and as such a disclaimer is in order. I am a dual citizen, spend a substantial amount of time in Australia/AsiaPac (economic refugee),but was born in the US.
I will keep the analysis more at the level of similarities and differences between the US and Australia situations. It is my view that even with the Labor election,this is a significant loss for Labor.
- In both Australia and the US a left of center government was elected in 2007 and 2008 respectively, with overwhelming support and with a basketfull of promises. Both governments responded similarly to the GFC. Australia was quite successful, the US less so. In addition both governments achieved quite a bit in the first year. In both governments there was a lack of a coherent communication strategy, i.e. neither seemed to effectively take advantage of the media cycles and by default the opposition took advantage.
- The opposition in Australia decided to be a negative party whose only goal was to block Labor policy. Much like the US rethugs. This was a very effective strategy in both countries. In Australia it ultimately led to the perception that the Labor PM, Rudd, was ineffectual and incompetent. That is, Labor could not deliver what it promised. The electorate seemed to ignore the root cause. Very much like in the US. Coupled with the ineffective communications strategy this became damaging. IMHO what voters saw was that Labor could not deliver, not that the opposition prevented Labor from winning.
- The progressive vote in the Australian election actually did not decrease, but increased. More of it went to the Greens. However given the unique preferential voting system, which IMO is more representative than the US (but not really proportional), the Greens ended up with only one seat in the House. This is similar to progressive disaffection from the Obama admin, but not identical as in the US there is no viable option to voting democrat.
- Both Rudd and Obama are not traditional party men and are vulnerable if they lose personal support which makes items 1 and 2 above even more important. Difference between that two is that Obama does have a core of dedicated personal supporters. It became clear that Rudd did not and this weakened him to the point where he was removed.
There is a lot more, but my instant analysis is that there was a determined, belligerent opposition party which was determined not to allow Labor to be successful. The lack of a good communication strategy made this worse as the opposition's message was what one saw more and more. This is made worse by the fact that 50% of the major Australia newspapers, 25% of TV channels, 50% of cable news channels and the largest cable network are all owned by Murdoch. Oh and 25% of the free to air channels is owned by a mining company. Which makes an effective comm strategy more difficult but also more important.
One last thought is that anyone who believes that we can rely on fair play from the opposition or the media is nuts and should prepare for a long, long time in minority.