Influencing the Influencers

It is time to bring some cool thinking into the enjoyable frenzy that is the aftermath of the Western Australian election and the consequent hung parliament.

Miners, for example, could be lead up the garden path by some commentators who boldly claim that the WA Liberal Party will be able to scramble together the seats to form some sort of conservative coalition government and give the green light (pun intended) to uranium mining.

Hang on! Don’t start digging just yet.

The newly powerful king maker that is the WA National Party – with four seats in the lower house and a suspected three in the upper house – lead by a charismatic young wheat farmer with a very engaging manner, including a cute lisp that sets him apart from roughie-rural types – is not a safe bet for some sort of ‘natural’ alliance with the Liberals.

The argument goes that it is a natural marriage simply because they are both Labor foes. I am not so sure.

Firstly, on election night the Nationals Leader said they weren’t interested in coalition. Wisely, these Nationals have decided to be different to their federal counterparts and other state bodies and go it alone as credible cross benchers. That is probably why they were so successful. Secondly, the old adage about being mates because you hate the same people doesn’t work in this new electoral environment. The electorate and emerging power blocks, like the WA National Party, are too sophisticated for that sort of lame thinking.

The word from over the west is that talks between Labor and the Nationals are going surprisingly well. WA looks to have wisely picked up some advice from their brothers in South Australia on how to do deals with Nationals (SA Labor has had one in their ministry for sometime now). The WA Labor Leader even called the prospect of working with the Nationals ‘exciting’. (Not that he needs much more excitement. The chatter is that he could be knifed soon in revenge for this disastrous election.)

Another neat surprise is that it looks like the count is trending back to Labor. Not enough for outright government, but enough (so says WA Labor’s most senior identity, Foreign Affairs minister Stephen Smith) for a minority government with support from the Independents. (What fun it will be for political junkies to watch that little arrangement, given that they are ‘independents’ because they received the rough end of the pineapple from Labor only weeks before the election was called).

Let’s assume Labor does a deal with the Nationals. Will it really mean a go ahead for uranium mining -  as some of my clients have asked? Not sure. Labor has marginally more seats than the Liberals, thanks to Green preferences (surprising winners along side the Nationals in this election). This should mean that Labor owes them its promise to keep banning uranium mining.  How Labor might work with the ‘mine-the-lot Nationals’ and the ‘over-your-dead-body Greens’ has me on the edge of my perch.