Election deadlock - Thursday update

Today Andrew Wilkie - who I wrote about here - committed himself to political partnership with the Australian Labor Party (and he was a Young Liberal once...), which gives Gillard 74 seats. To form a minority government she needs two of the three remaining independents to commit. In order for the Coalition to do the same they need all three to commit to them (which can of course still happen, unfortunately...).

Treasury has gone over Coalition costings and found "a black hole" of at least $7 billion and maybe as much as $11 billion. Since the Coalition refused to submit the costings to Treasury review prior to the election (and for a while afterwards)... this has caused suspicion. It's a matter of speculation that if the conservatives had been transparent (read... "honest") up front... then this would have been revealed prior to the election and maybe the ALP would have got a narrow win instead of a hung parliament.

I read the Treasury analysis... dry but interesting. And clear - the coalition have dodgy assumptions. As ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) reports:

"Before the election the Coalition said its promises would add about $11.5 billion to the budget bottom line over the next four years. But Treasury analysis given to Tony Windsor and his fellow independents Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter shows the Coalition's promises would only add between $860 million and $4.5 billion to the bottom line.
The Treasury document shows the Coalition has costings problems with its plans for health, education, infrastructure and its paid parental leave scheme.
The difference in figures also comes down to the Coalition making significant spending promises without saying which projects would be slashed to pay for those promises."

Rob Oakeshott, one of the remaining independents, came out of 14 hours worth of meetings with the Coalition... and expressed disquiet. If he goes to the ALP then the Coalition cannot form a minority government. Either it's 75 each way, in which case it's a matter of constitutional interpretation or one or both of the other two come on board and Gillard has the numbers to form government.