John Howard is now a politically crippled Prime Minister. His claims of an embrace, an avalanche and a mandate are absurd and grandiloquent. The reality, as distinct from the view from Kirribilli, is that he will have only a very narrow majority in the House of Representatives. That majority might be so narrow that it cannot be relied up to pass the legislation for the GST. Several National Party MPs are determined against it, or are at least determined against a GST on essentials. And even if he gets it through his own party room and the House of Representatives, it faces an impossible hurdle in the Senate.
The Democrats have done very well in the Senate. They appear to have picked up a certain two and more likely three seats to take their tally to 10 senators. It is a balance of power in its own right. After the new senators take their place on July 1 next year, the Democrats can side with either major party to form a majority to pass or block legislation.
The gain is significant enough for Democrats leader Meg Lees to claim a mandate to insist that the GST exempt food. The pertinence of her claim will be her power to give effect to it. If the Democrats insist on the food exemption, Mr Howard will have to yield to it, or surrender his beloved GST altogether. After Saturday night’s effort, he could not possibly contemplate and early double dissolution. Far too many Liberal MPs hold their seats by very small margins indeed to permit that. Moreover, the performance of Opposition Leader Kim Beazley in the campaign is a formidable obstacle.
In the past 30 months, Mr Howard got most of his legislation through the Senate, one way or the other. But that was went he balance of power was shared with the Greens and independent Senator Brian Harradine as well as the Democrats. After July 1, the holders of the balance will have a single voice.
Maybe Mr Howard thinks he can use the nine-month window of the existing Senate until July 1 to get his GST through. It would require support from Senator Harradine and an absent independent Mal Colston. It is unlikely.
Mr Howard should sit down and seriously discuss a compromise with the Democrats. It is a task he is going to have to get used to if he wants significant legislation through the Senate in the next three years.
Mr Howard is in no real position to claim that Saturday’s vote gives him a mandate to have his GST enacted. For a start, Labor got more votes than him on a two-party preferred basis, even though the Coalition got more seats. It is likely that the GST figured very highly in the reasons for the swing to Labor and the loss of some 18 seats.
If, however, Mr Howard persists, in his claim for a mandate based on seats, rather than votes, he will be met by exactly the same claim from the Democrats: seats mean mandate, not votes.
The Democrats have done what Mr Howard has done: got more seats than the vote base warrants. The Democrats did not get a full quota in any state.
Mr Howard faces another serious difficulty. With some 18 Coalition MPs now out of a job, those that remain will be increasingly nervous about their own prospects. Mr Howard took the Coalition from a huge 44 majority to one of eight (at best) in 30 months. What might another three years do, they might well ask. Might they, like Labor MPs after the 1990 election, look to a new leader?
Mr Howard should re-assess. Labor lost the 1996 election; he did not win it. And the 1998 election saw a disendorsement of his 30 months of government in which the people like what they saw in Kim Beazley, but could not quite bring themselves to allow Labor back into government so soon.
Mr Howard should listen more carefully to the people who saved him this time: mainly women candidates who won marginal seats against expectation in 1996 and held them against the odds in 1998. He might find that not many of them are enthusiastic embracers of a GST on essentials and most are republicans who want reconciliation.