Real danger of the bush trio is a flouting of their voters' wishes
- Andrew Bolt From: Herald Sun August 26, 2010
Bob Katter wants to split Queensland into two states. Source: Herald Sun
THE Three Amigos - the rural independent MPs who'll pick our new prime minister - get more dangerous by the day.
Now they've blackmailed Labor and the Liberals into promising not to call an election for another three years.
Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Tony Windsor have by a fluke been left holding the three votes in a Parliament of 150 that will tip the scales to Labor or the Coalition.
They have told Labor's Julia Gillard and the Coalition's Tony Abbott that the price of their support includes a promise not to call another election until 2013. Both Abbott and Gillard promptly caved in.
But how on earth will this play out?
How can Gillard promise to stay a full term, when she couldn't guarantee three years even to Kevin Rudd, who was at least elected, not selected?
But, more fundamentally, how dare these people trade away our right to an early election? How dare they bind us to three years of a government likely to be the most impotent and divided since World War II?
If Abbott becomes prime minister, it's almost certain now to be with a majority of just two.
To get anything through the House of Representatives against Labor's will, he'd need the vote of every Liberal and National MP, plus that of the lone West Australian National and three of the four independents.
What are the odds? Katter is a gun-toting climate sceptic and agrarian socialist whose latest wild plan is to split Queensland into two states, as well as create an expanded state of North-Western Australia.
Oakeshott, however, is a global warmist who wants softer boat people laws. Andrew Wilkie is a former Greens member. Tony Windsor is in the middle, although no one's sure where.
Good luck getting consensus there on tougher boat people laws, free trade or just about anything else.
And even if he did get some deal, Abbott would still need to get it through a Senate dominated by Labor and the intransigent Greens. Imagine three years of that kind of paralysis.
And if Labor wins? To get its agenda through the House of Representatives against a Coalition Opposition, Labor would be likely to need the votes of the lone Greens MP, Adam Bandt, and two of the four independents.
Then it would need the backing in the Senate of the Greens, who oppose its plans for an emissions trading system and want a bigger mining tax.
Labor might get a bit more through Parliament, with the help of the Greens, but it's likely to cost a lot more than it counted on when it promised to balance the Budget in three years.
Three years you'll get of this, with no hope of an early election if it all becomes a farce - unless an independent or government MP rats.
HAPPY? Really want a guaranteed three years of government, no matter how bad?
And now the Three Amigos are consulting with a Labor envoy they dub a "wise elder" to find ways to "change politics".
That envoy, Windsor's cousin, Bruce Hawker, is a paid Labor consultant who on Monday outlined his pet proposal - "bringing people from outside the government into the cabinet or into the ministry".
This means your government would include ministers no one voted for, accountable to no one but the Labor - or Liberal - machine.
If you're stunned that a normal election that's merely produced a tighter result should degenerate into this carnival in which three men from the bush issue imperious demands, float wild proposals, and mull over ways to make politicians less accountable, be not surprised.
So full of themselves are the Three Amigos that they seem itching to choose the very prime minister their own voters don't want.
The Senate vote in the seats of all three shows their own electorates strongly prefer the Coalition.
Indeed, a Galaxy Poll this week found 52 per cent of their own voters want them to choose Abbott, and just 36 per cent Gillard.
But what would mere voters know? Watch the giddy deal makers now go their own way, finding new ways to stop you making them go yours.
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