Greens reaped rewards of emissions backflip: poll

Updated 2 hours 49 minutes ago

An exit poll commissioned by the Climate Institute shows almost one third of Greens voters in key marginal seats would have voted Labor if the introduction of the emissions trading scheme had not been delayed.

The survey was conducted by Auspoll in 30 key marginal seats across Australia.

Thirty-two per cent of voters said they would have been prepared to vote Labor if it had retained the emissions trading scheme, but when that did not happen, they chose the Greens instead.

Unwritten conventions of government

By Antony Green

Posted Fri Aug 27, 2010 3:26pm AEST

The Constitution was deliberately written to be vague on the process of government formation. (ABC News: Damien Larkins)

Last weekend Australians thought they were voting on who would form government. If Labor or the Coalition had won a clear majority, this would have been a reasonable summary of what the election was about.

But with neither side having gained a majority in their own right, the murky world of government formation under our system of unwritten constitutional conventions has been exposed to the light.

The Australian Constitution provides a framework for government in Australia. However, that framework is bare of flesh on how to deal with the current impasse.

The Constitution was deliberately written to be vague on the process of government formation. The intent was for the written constitution to be a simple framework within which Australia could inherit the unwritten constitutional conventions that applied in the United Kingdom Parliament at Westminster.

The conventions of the 'Westminster' system evolved over several centuries. Where the French and the Americans engaged in revolutions and set down written constitutions, the United Kingdom muddled through with an unwritten constitution built on conventions as the society transformed itself from a feudal to a constitutional monarchy.

At its heart, our constitutional framework see voters elect a representative Parliament from which the 'Crown' in the form of the Governor-General appoints advisers. In the real world these advisers are the Prime Minister and Cabinet, but constitutionally these are advisers appointed by the Crown.

Whether governments are elected or appointed by the Crown hardly matters when either side of politics has a majority. But these conventions pre-date party politics, and in situations such as the current election result, these conventions matter.

So let me run through a few questions about what will happen in coming weeks and how the constitutional conventions apply.