Unruly PUP shows it cannot be trained
ANALYSIS
Illustration: Cathy Wilcox
The impact of the arrival on the national stage of Clive
Palmer and his eponymous band of first-time legislators is only now
becoming clear, fully ten months on from the election.
And as the picture clarifies, we are getting the first real
sense of a truly chaotic picture. ''What have we done?'' voters may well
ask.
Surely the single biggest aim of the election was to sweep
away the uncertainty of the Gillard/Rudd years. To expunge forever from
the collective mind the horror of the hung Parliament where
grandstanding independents armed with a fraction of the vote held all to
ransom?
Nobody thought much about the Senate though.
Of the 12 senators starting terms on July 1, four of them are in Mr Palmer's now pivotal voting bloc.
And because it is a bloc, it is central to anything the Coalition wants to do that is opposed by Labor and the Greens.
That spells trouble for a government that has so far proved
itself mystifyingly inept at the art of persuasion, whether that be
persuading voters or, more pointedly, persuading crossbench senators.
But then, persuading people with whom you have no long-term
relationship and behind whom there is no established body of policy or
parliamentary voting record can be a tricky assignment. Especially if
the ground keeps moving.
When he addressed the National Press Club on Monday, Palmer's ''flexibility'' was face-slappingly apparent.
Without the slightest hint of the reversal it actually was,
he announced his party would now back the government's Direct Action
alternative as long as it agreed to keep Labor's emissions trading
scheme on the books. Both are measures to which Palmer has been
implacably opposed in the past.
Just last week, Direct Action was a pointless ''waste of
money''. Now it has his party's support, subject to the retention of a
policy (in name only) to which he was also opposed.
Similarly, the mining tax repeal will be supported, but not
the generous handouts to families foolishly funded by the revenue stream
that never materialised.
Voters may be bemused, but the government remains more
circumspect, caught between its private assessment of such untethered
fluidity, and the absolute reliance on the PUP bloc to pass
legislation.
It is an accepted fact in politics that disorder,
unpredictability and unruliness always play badly for governments. If
so, day one of the new Senate was a bad start.
Commitments to support votes were welshed on immediately. Huge holes were blown in an already stymied budget.
And the Treasurer Joe Hockey was branded a liar for claiming a budget emergency.
It is beginning to feel just a bit like a hung Parliament. Again.
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