Jon Stanhope’s never been a skilled negotiator. His latest effort as reported by the ABC is to demand the Greens respect his 37.4% of the vote as a right to rule.
Meanwhile in the Canberra Times Zed appears to be challenging Shane Rattenbury to be a man. More generally though he’s sounding keen to do a deal. Far keener than the shrill commands coming from the Labor camp.
The Greens are just thrilled to have realised their potential and haven’t given up (with some good reason) on the fourth seat coming home to them.
But when does the new Assembly actually meet and formalise the victor by voting for a Chief Minister?
The helpful Assembly secretariat informs us that the Assembly will sit within 7 days of the declaration of the poll. The Elections ACT’s site says that they’ll be able to declare the poll “around 2 to 3 weeks after polling day”. If the electronic scanning of ballots works as planned it might go quicker. (Having a lot of experience with OCR I’m not so confident but would be happy to be corrected)
With things in flux it could drag on for a month I’m afraid.
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What’s Your opinion?
So what happens next?
Ah yes, that linky thing…
I should add that the libs are clutching at straws like a drowning man. There is absolutely no way the Greens will get into bed with the Libs.
Unless the Libs offer Shane the deputy CM, or even the CM.
We are going to have an interesting four year.
Who’s that JB?
OCR can be efficient and accurate – DFAT use it on passport applications (although, there were some horrendous teething problems…)
Perhaps most amazingly… the country’s biggest election nerd is yet to say anything on his blog.
I didn’t say that…I’m just saying that’s a spin that The Greens could put on the result.
amarooresident said :
More candidates, less independents on account of all the extra parties.
You honestly feel that a party who polled 15% of the primary vote should be in power?
Labor claims they deserve to rule, the Libs claim the same. I reckon The Greens have about as much claim as either of them. The massive Green vote could be said to be an indication that the voters didn’t want either of the majors at the helm & that perhaps they should get the top job.
Chief Minister still has 4-5 portfolios as the government is limited to only 5 ministers.
I reckon they’ll declare it by the end of the week, next Tuesday by the latest. Their just saying 2-3 weeks to give themselves breathing space and there are fewer candidates this time than last time so in theory it should be easier.
“Maybe if all the parties agreed to give the chief minister job to an independent (assume one was elected?). That way they can all bad mouth the chief minister whenever they want to, and really, that position doesn’t actually DO anything does it?”
They have something like that in Brisbane City Council, with a popularly elected Mayor, except that the mayor’s office actually controls/sets the budget!
So when there was a labor council but the Libs’ Campbell Newman elected as mayor, it was a total shambles.
But if (as you suggested) the CM was more like a Mayor in an ordinary local government, and just one vote in all the day to day business, it could feasibly be workable.
Of course if the whole shebang were computerised, we’d avoid the OCR issue (which will be fought over mark my words – wait for the recounts), and we’d all have known of the entire result before we downed our second beer at the pub Saturday night.
Maybe if all the parties agreed to give the chief minister job to an independent (assume one was elected?). That way they can all bad mouth the chief minister whenever they want to, and really, that position doesn’t actually DO anything does it?
Even if the Green hammer out an accord with one of the majors, it may not last, particularly if Mr Stanhope continues with his ‘Divine Right to Rule’ approach to negotiation. The Chief Minister’s Office may require a revolving door.