Comment

Bob Brown
A guide to minority government

A lot of nonsense is peddled about balance of power. Top of the list is the idea that members of the cross bench can sail comfortably through the next period of minority government without a formal agreement with Labor or the Coalition.

This misapprehension is based on the supine ideas that not making a deal is better than making a deal and that a good option is to wait to improve government legislation as it is tabled. It’s not. Every MP worth their salt is there to improve legislation as best they can anyway.

Voters want the people they award with a seat in parliament to maximise the use of that power. That means leveraging all the influence available when deciding who should form government. It also means a formal power-sharing agreement, possibly with cabinet representation.

If neither old party wins a majority, the weeks after an election are the crossbenchers’ most powerful time in the whole period of government in terms of gaining policy outcomes. Never underestimate the eagerness of Labor and the Coalition to negotiate their way back to the Treasury benches.

To ensure stability, guaranteeing Labor or the Coalition confidence and the passage of annual budgets is required. A double assurance is needed: to pass budgets and to vote against motions of no-confidence.

It is reasonable for the crossbenchers to add a caveat on the second assurance, however: they can move no-confidence themselves if the government engages in malfeasance or criminal conduct.

An advantage of a formal agreement is that it maximises the chances of the parliament going full term. This will be respected and supported by the public. The alternatives are a recipe for instability.

If there is a Labor minority government, and the cross bench is not working towards a full term, there is a risk any day that the Murdoch media and the Dutton opposition could whip up a crisis with the aim of public dissatisfaction, government breakdown and the installing of a Dutton government after an early election.

The most stable arrangement in power sharing is a coalition. In Australia, the Liberal–National Coalition has brought the conservative parties substantial stability for decades. It is based on a written agreement and proportionately shared ministries according to how many seats each party has.

In New Zealand and many European countries, formal coalitions with like-minded parties are also the norm.

Germany is a good example. In the weeks following an election, as was the case last year, party representatives sit around tables and nut out how to share power. The larger party may appoint the prime minister and the smaller party the minister for foreign affairs.

In the past, German equivalents of our Labor and Greens parties have entered such agreements a number of times, with the Greens leader taking up the foreign affairs portfolio.

It is logical for coalition governments to be agreed by the parties with least policy separation. However, multiparty governments are not unusual in Germany; on occasions, parties that are further apart on the political spectrum have joined to form government.

A grand coalition is when the two biggest parties combine and, logically, this would be the outcome if neither can get a majority here in Australia. After all, Labor and the Coalition share ideologies not held by many on the cross bench. These include the building of more coalmines and more gas fracking, the continuation of native forest logging and polluting salmon fish pens, as well as AUKUS, the offshore incarceration of refugees and the taking of donations from very large corporations that pay no taxes.

Of course, such a grand coalition won’t happen in Australia. The major parties won’t govern together and they are loath to properly engage the minors and independents. The blinkered hostility of both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton to sharing ministries in the interests of political stability leaves two options to form a minority government.

Both Labor and the Coalition will look first for enough crossbenchers to form government in return for nothing. This happened last year in Tasmania, when three newly elected members of the Jacqui Lambie Network gave the Liberals their guaranteed support in return for no outcome for their own voters. It is likely all three will lose their seats at the next state election.

The second option is for crossbenchers to assure stable government in return for their own policy gains.

I led the Greens in formulating a Labor–Green Accord after the Tasmanian elections in 1989. Labor had 13 seats, the Liberals 17 and the Greens five. Our accord gave Labor the numbers – 18 versus 17 – to form government. The accord was signed in public so everyone could see its detail.

Dealing with a recession, Labor restructured the Tasmanian economy and the Greens backed its controversial budgets as promised. We also made sweeping gains, doubling the size of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, establishing new national parks, prohibiting a pulp mill threatening to pollute farmlands at Wesley Vale, passing a Freedom of Information Act and ending publicly subsidised liquor cabinets for ministers.

That successful government came to an end when then premier Michael Field, under corporate pressure, broke the accord by abolishing the agreed limit on native forest logging and woodchip exports.

In 2010, at the federal level, I worked with Christine Milne and the eight other Greens in the national parliament to strike an agreement that enabled Julia Gillard to form a minority Labor government and, once again, this time with some negotiating, we insisted the deal be signed in public.

While the Greens assured Labor a majority in the powerful Senate, the key here was the Greens’ newcomer in the House of Representatives, Adam Bandt. Gillard needed the backing of four crossbenchers in the Reps and achieved that with Bandt and the three independents, Andrew Wilkie, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott.

Gillard’s government saw the greatest passage of new measures through the parliament since the Whitlam government in the 1970s, including the partial introduction of free dental care and a world-leading carbon trading scheme to tackle climate change – both Greens initiatives. Other reforms from the period include the establishment of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Climate Change Authority and Parliamentary Budget Office, and guaranteed crossbench access to Question Time.

People ask why we didn’t insist on ministries, but in 2010 as in 1989, the former under a hail of vitriol from the Murdoch media, Labor would not entertain Green ministries.

This is a future option and will work well, as shown in the last ACT administration. There, Greens leader Shane Rattenbury was made attorney-general and held weekly talks with Labor Chief Minister Andrew Barr. The Greens held two other ACT portfolios. Minority governments are the poorer when they do not bring all of the onside talent into the cabinet.

As Australia heads to this federal election, Adam Bandt has said he will be surprised if Albanese does not consult with him should Labor fail to get the 76 seats required to form majority government. Albanese asserts he will not deal with the Greens. Among popular proposals Bandt would bring to the negotiating table are universal dental care, free childcare and an end to native forest logging.

These policies will be sidelined and nothing much will be won if Labor is guaranteed government by independents with no formal agreement around power.

Here will be a historic test for the teals and other non-Greens crossbenchers. Say Labor and the Coalition get 70 seats each and there are 11 crossbenchers. Whichever old party cajoles six of them onside will form government giving the cross bench little or nothing. This looms likely with a large, ununified cross bench.

Some incentives might be offered by Dutton and Albanese, but they will be bottom-of-the-barrel stuff: a better-funded local bridge or stadium, an inquiry or two, or, watch for this, the speakership in the House.

Modern Australian politics has the electorate divided in three roughly equal ways: one third of votes for the Coalition, one third for Labor and one third for others. In the above scenario, the others, Greens excepted, become little more than vassals of the old parties.

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The teals would be in a much stronger position if they were to caucus and collectively negotiate rather than be picked off one by one in an auction of parochial advantage from which the nation as a whole will gain little or nothing.

There are three or four conservative crossbenchers who can give Dutton the numbers if the Coalition wins 72 or 73 seats, but, again, they won’t extract much out of it for Australia as a whole and will be lost political souls for the next three years.

In politics, unity is strength. The polyglot cross bench may well be put to the test after this election. The cross bench will leave millions of voters disillusioned if it does not negotiate a brace of breakthrough national policies such as making housing affordable, ensuring real climate action and ending native forest logging.

On the final day of the last parliament, Greens environment spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young made global headlines by holding up a dead salmon in the Senate. Albanese, abetted by Dutton, rammed through legislation guaranteeing Atlantic salmon pens in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour at the expense of the ancient Maugean skate, which is headed for extinction. Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson was filmed yelling at them: “You’re a pack of mongrels.”

That pack of mongrels has lost so much appeal that “others” could win more votes on May 3 than either of the old parties. The big question then will be whether the mongrels are faced by a flock of compliant lambs or something stronger. The cross bench has a chance to act with the power and authority that their slab of the electorate deserves and expects – all they need is to be cohesive and hard-nosed.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on April 19, 2025 as "A guide to minority government".

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