The ACT is a unique polity. We are still working out the rules. Even now one should not assume that Labor’s Jon Stanhope will be Chief Minister next Wednesday.
In the ACT, we have fixed terms. It means the election is held on the third Saturday in October every three years. We do not have a Governor, Administrator or Governor-General who takes the advice of the Chief Minister/Premier/Prime Minister to call an early election or to call upon someone else to form a government. So, much as she would like to, Chief Minister Kate Carnell, cannot call and early election. And without an election she is doomed.
The ACT system is more democratic, self-executing and certain. The ACT works on the principal that the people’s representatives who have been elected to the Legislative Assembly elect one of their number to be Chief Minister and that that Chief Minister selects four others to be Ministers. If there is a successful no-confidence motion in the Chief Minister, the Assembly must elect one of its members as Chief Minister in a secret ballot.
At present, the Liberal parliamentary party has vowed that after the successful no-confidence motion in Carnell, they will renominate Carnell for the position. Presumably, she would lose because those who voted no-confidence in her would not vote for her as Chief Minister again. (Though who knows what goes though the mind of Independent MLA Dave Rugendyke, the MLA who holds the balance.)
Stanhope would accept that as a good second-best. His preferred option would be that the Liberals did not stand Carnell after a no-confidence motion, but stood Deputy Chief Minister and deputy Liberal leader Gary Humphries or Brendan Smyth. Labor would then watch a Carnell-less Liberal Party bumble about for a year and Labor would offer itself as the only credible, cohesive alternative.
The so-far unthought-of possibility is that Humphries stands in for the year and Stanhope still faces Carnell as Liberal leader at the next election. Could that happen? Between now and next Wednesday, we have a stand-off. Rugendyke (the ninth MLA) has stated he will vote for a no-confidence motion. It was a courageous stand. To survive in his seat he has to rely on a Green-Democrat discord and a flow of Liberal preferences. Neither of those will happen next election, particularly the latter after his no-confidence stand. It will be good-bye Dave. And Dave likes being an MLA. People pandering to him, making him feel more important than his intellect would otherwise command in the real world.
In Liberal ranks, they appear determined to stand behind Carnell. But it is difficult to believe that now Labor and Rugendyke have called the bluff that the Liberals will surrender Government. True, Deputy Leader Gary Humphries and the other MLAs would follow Carnell to political oblivion if she asked. The question now is, will she ask?
More likely, surely, is that Carnell, seeing she will lose the chief Minsitership anyway, will resign before next Wednesday’s vote. There would be a vacancy in the chief minsitership and the Assembly would have to vote, in a secret ballot, for a new Chief Minister. It would not be automatic like Paul Keating’s takeover from Bob Hawke. Six Liberals, Michael Moore (who would want to keep the Health Ministry), and Rugendyke would vote for Humphries. They would only need either Paul Osborne or former Liberal Trevor Kaine to make up the nine MLAs for a majority. So that is the likely outcome.
A couple of factors point to a Carnell resignation:
Businesspeople around the town suggest that she cannot bear the thought of Labor inheriting her five years of hard fiscal work and bribing the electorate with the spoils of the surplus in the year leading up to next October’s election.
They suggest that she cannot bear the thought of various projects she has put in train being lost. Most of us acknowledge that Carnell has cut too many corners, but no-one can deny she gets things done.
So it is possible she will resign for what she says will be for the sake of the city.
Also there are obligations to staffers and party members.
The Liberals may accept Carnell leading into the next election, even if Humphries is Chief Minister in the meantime. Carnell, personally, has obtained astounding electoral results in the past two elections. She has dragged other Liberals over the line, and they know it. And so does the Labor Party. Both parties know that government in the ACT depends upon which party gets a third seat in Molonglo (given that two seats in each of the three seats is virtually guaranteed for both major parties). Whichever major party gets that third seat get the moral claim to government which minor parties and independents have hitherto respected. Both parties know that Carnell is a major plus in getting the Liberals the third seat.
So they may opt for an odd year of having the deputy parliamentary leader taking the Chief Ministership and the parliamentary leader sitting on the backbench. It may mean bringing egregious Greg back from the Speakership into a harmless ministry and promoting Harold Hird to the Speakership under strict orders to behave himself before Question Time begins just after lunch, or even giving the Speakership to Labor’s well-meaning but harmless, Bill Wood.
Whether this happens or not Rugendyke has doubly shot himself in the foot. He would have alienated himself with Liberals so much that his re-election on their preferences would be ruled out, but also his pet legislative hates: the injecting room and the abortion Bill might be brought back on as Private Members Bills. This time, though, back-bencher and party leader Kate Carnell would not be compelled to swallow her usual small-l liberal credentials to vote in a way to appease Rugendyke. And hers was the critical vote when these two small l-liberal items were voted down last time. Moreover, getting these two items up would help the Liberals in the central seat which is notoriously free-thinking.
So Dave would lose the two legislative items dear to his, and his constituents’, hearts.
Dave Rugendyke would be the Albert Field of ACT politics.
And in all this, what happened to the Paul Osborne Independents, who stood as a group last election: Paul Osborne down south, Dave in the north and Chris Uhlmann (now ABC radio morning host) in the centre? Osborne is busily sitting on the fence. Surely, if he wants the benefits of party status, such as a separate column on the ballot paper, the public is entitled to a little party discipline. The plod should surely stick together. Why hasn’t Osborne called Dave into line and either both made the same stand anti-Carnell stand at last week’s press conference or both stuck with her. Instead of staying mute Osborne should have done it jointly with Rugendyke or if he disagreed, he should have called Rugendyke out saying if we split on the Carnell vote, I will find another running-mate for the Ginninderra seat. Once again, good-bye Dave.
But the Osborne Independents always was a label of convenience.