The show goes on. The federal election seems long ago as Parliament resumes. Tax cuts, virtually the government's only policy promise, are front and centre. Winner takes all unless the Senate intervenes.
But we should remember that the six week period since the election is not an adequate time to fully reflect on just what caused the surprise result. Strong evidence, as distinct from anecdotes and personal theories, is not yet available. We should be beware of early over-reactions.
Both the winners and the losers are guilty of this. The government is jubilant, claiming a mandate, while Labor is humiliated and in retreat, despite the election being closely contested. Nothing much actually changed in terms of seats. The final count in the 151-seat House of Representatives is government 77 seats, opposition 68 seats and independents and minor parties six seats, which is just two seats removed from minority government status.
Election commentary has concentrated disproportionately on Labor failure and Coalition victory, largely the former. Labor luminaries have taken the same approach. Headlines tell some of the story, such as 'Labor's climate policies hurt its chances in mining seats' and 'Massive swings against Labor in franking credit seats'.
Chris Bowen warned his party it had lost support from religious voters, claiming that 'People of faith no longer feel that progressive politics cares about them.' Anthony Albanese, now Labor leader, called on Labor to reconnect with 'aspirational Australians' who, he claimed, had rejected the party at the election.
Senior Labor leaders opened debate on every major party policy, which is a reasonable thing to do, but only in a measured way. The policies mentioned particularly were franking credits, negative gearing and whether to propose a market mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To that could be added the many recriminations against Bill Shorten's much-maligned leadership.
While the losers have engaged in a massive blame game, the winners have declared a mandate for every policy they took to the election, including only limited action on climate change and long-term tax cuts for high-income earners. That is a seriously unbalanced reaction, especially as many of its decisive votes were second preferences passed on from minor parties like the United Australia Party and One Nation. Winner-take-all in a policy sense is not a sensible approach.
"Thinking this way would not only produce more balanced conclusions about the election result on both sides, but it would mean better policies and better government in the future."
Yet we