Middle Road

[ZenGum]

Labor has turned green, Gillard is tickled pink, Abbott is seeing red, all due to Bob Brown.

Anyone want an update?

The Liberal/national Coalition have 73 seats, or maybe 72, because one chap (Tony Crook, ) says he is going to sit as a cross bencher, despite still being a member of the National Party.

Labour have 72 + 1 + 1 = 74, being their core 72, one green (signed a deal a few days ago) and Wilkie, a left-leaning independent, whose career has involved military service, then defence intelligence analyst, from which position he resigned noisily in 2003 to publicly protest the invasion of Iraq when, as he said at the time, there was no good evidence of WMDs - before the invasion!.

There are three independents left:
Katter: right wing, rough and confrontational type, naive economic politics - wants to peg the dollar and slash interest rates, eg - wears very big hat.
Oakeshott: centre right, social progressive, looks like a school teacher or something.
Windsor: centre-to middle right, less public profile, keeping in background a bit for now.

Labor needs any two of these, coalition needs all three. The three are having a good long think over the weekend, we should probably get an answer early next week.

It really has been fun watching the two major parties finally get grilled on the issues that they should have been getting grilled about all along. It is especially amusing watching Abbott struggling with the temptation to be his usual belligerent self, trying to be all softly-softly with these guys, woo them without insulting them ... and at the same time trying to keep his own party members from chasing the three and pressuring them.

The main thing is, we have a process to resolve the situation, it is progressing.