Election 2010 Performance Cards: Who got a distinction, who got a credit & who got a pass conceded?

The Federal Election is at last over & 17 days after the election Julia Gillard finally convinced the 3 independents & the first ever Greens MP to support her to form a minority Government with 76 seats (down from the notional 88 seats prior to the election) in the 150 seat Lower House.

This historic election also attracted the most intense media coverage & scrutiny of any election at any level in Australia's history. Traditional forms of media, ie print, TV & radio were fully joined by the new social media forms eg facebook & twitter resulting in all kinds of commentary which even manifested itself in the rather ridiculous situations where journalists were interviewing other journalists!

Therefore, my post is not about post election analysis! It suffices to say that the campaign was void of any major substantive policies & both leaders resorted to negative campaigns & were hardly convincing, and hence the hung Parliament we were delivered! In simple terms I would score the election as follows:

The Greens: Distinction: They took full advantage of the protest vote & the fact that voters do not hold them accountable (at least up to now) & won the balance of power in the Senate from next July & their first ever lower house seat.

Tony Abbott & the Coalition: Credit: Labour badly underestimated Tony Abbott's political skills. Not only he nearly toppled a first term Government, he will also be sitting comfortably as the Opposition Leader whilst PM Gillard wrestles with her unstable minority alliance.

Julia Gillard & Labour: Fail, then pass conceded on resit: From a notional 88 seat down to 72, Arbib, Bitar, Shorten, Farrell, Feeney & the rest of the so called faceless men who convinced Rudd to drop the ETS, then executed him & installed Gillard nearly lost Labour the election with their strategy. However, they all got rewarded with various cabinet posts despite their near failure.

Tony Windsor & Rob Oakeshott: Exam results bought! Showered with money in return for their support, if the Gillard Government performs poorly or fails to deliver on the promises, both will be severely punished by their majority conservative electorates.

And finally credit to the lone man in detention: Bob Katter: Love him or hate him, think of him as impulsive or cranky, he showed a lot of integrity by not accepting the lofty position that Windsor & Oakeshott decided to accept & stuck to his guns.

The coming months will undoubtedly be politically unstable as well as exciting & whether the Government can last a full term is anyone's guess.

The election however has left many questions unanswered, mostly for the Labour Party. The main question was starkly obvious in pictures on election night: One TV Channel had the experienced, worldly, pondering & pragmatic Graham Richardson whilst another had the cocky arrogant, blameless & self assured Mark Arbib.

The once unrivaled labour political machine that delivered labour's longest reign in the 80s & 90s with many substantial reforms has been reduced to a poll driven structure void of any vision by a bunch of political excursionists whose political CVs consists of utter failure in NSW, incompetence in Federal politics & a near loss election strategy for a once popular first term Labour Government!

Like many others, I believe Julia Gillard does not have the influence or the will to reform the Labour Party structurally simply because she is a product of the new labour herself & owes her primeministership to the powerbrokers.

It is the remaining & substantial influence of these incompetent yet ruthless & cocky powerbrokers that will result in lack of vision, policy vacuum & be the major concern in the next three years, not the minority Government!