Squeaking to victory
Australia's Labor Party managed to cobble together enough independent lawmakers to earn the right to form a government. But after pulling in a disparate group of election winners, some doubted whether Prime Minister Julia Gillard could keep the minority government in office for a full term. Read results of Australia's election.
It will be interesting to see how long the government lasts. The next regularly scheduled election is three years, but my bet is they don't last that long. As BQ has mentioned, Australia has its own real estate bubble going on, and when it breaks, my guess is so will the government.
While the collapse of the government would cause some uncertainty, I would imagine that the Coalition would decisively win and be able to rule on their own. That should restore governmental stability and leave them with enough votes to get bills passed. Will the bills be any good? Who knows, but I think one thing Australia won't have to worry about is political indecisiveness.
This actually reminds me that we are about to suffer from a political predicament where the result of the midterm elections is likely to be an utterly paralyzed government in the United States.
ReplyDeleteAs for Australia, I could see how that scenario occurs, but Japan teaches us that if you fall into a persistent funk your government will teeter and collapse routinely. There are other reasons for that including legendary Japanese political corruption and it is worth noting that most of Japan's political instability was within the same party for nearly 18 years. However, I think it does stand to reason that a protracted funk could lead to wild swings from one party to the other. The only Australian investments that interest me, specifically their mining companies, are actually fairly immune from most events in Australian politics except mining taxes which they seem very adept at killing.