cam: Lower Houses and Coalitions: The parties of review (Democrats and Greens) haven't had much penetration into the House of Representatives or Legislative Assemblies. I cant recall a Democrat getting in to a lower house at the federal or state level. I always thought that it would be the Democrats that would eventually challenge Liberal and Labor as the two entrenched parties. Like you mentioned, Kernot might have been the start of that, but she jumped ship.

Do you think Labor will enter a coalition with the Greens should the Greens get enough seats in the house of reps. If it is just the Senate that the Green hold the balance of power in, I dont see Labor entering a formal coalition, but rather a deal of convenience to both.

It is sad to see the Democrats this way, IIRC most of my senate voting was for the Democrats. I thought they occupied an essential role in keeping the Senate a house of review.

cam

siento: No: To be honest, I think the Liberals will win. Failing that the ALP will do deals with both the Liberals and the Greens. The majors will avoid making a deal with the minor parties. If they do, it will mean really accepting them. The ALP in the 80s and 90s could have done a deal with the Democrats to form a coalition but they resisted.

Do you really think the Greens are a party of review? They seem to be more of a solidly left wing party that is out to shift things their way.

cam: Senate: The ALP in the 80s and 90s could have done a deal with the Democrats to form a coalition but they resisted.

Good point.

Do you really think the Greens are a party of review?

Since Don Chip and the Democrats, the Senate has become a house of review rather than a rubber stamp for the government of the day. The Greens are a part of that today, and it looks like into the future. Even if they are a left wing party, it means there is one more level of review for legislation after it leaves the Executive Cabinet.

Party discipline has ruined the Senate as the house for the states, so having third parties in the Senate with significant numbers is a good thing, no matter what their agenda. That way, at least legislation will get revisited and maybe even have to be made more palatable to a wider part of the community than just the government in power.

cam

Scrymarch: Democrats and international parties: Weighing in a bit late here I guess.

Poll Bludger mentioned some Morgan polling that suggested the Democrats might not be quite dead yet.

The FDP certainly has similarities to the Democrats but the differences are pretty striking too. The FDP had roots in the Weimar republic and are essentially a small-l liberal with all that implies for economic policy. In coalition with Willy Brandt's SDP, they argued for budget austerity. I'm far from an expert on German politics, but I can't see the FDP campaigning against privatisation.

Philosophically I think they're closer to the British Liberal Democrats, which was a merger of the rump of the old Liberal Party (of Asquith, Gladstone etc) and the Social Democratic party (the anti-communist left). They're more socially liberal than economically, they are middle class small c-conservatives running against the tide of liberal economic reform, with middle class idealism and a tendency towards wishful thinking as to government spending.

The electoral picture is starkly different however. In the UK the Lib Dems are a party of local government, controlling a majority on many councils around the country, holding a useful minority of seats in the House of Commons, and seats in European Parliament. The Commons seemed quite remarkable to me given the first past the post nature of British elections (EU elections are PR though). However Canada has a similar system and it seems to maintain a single major party and a spectrum of opposition.

The people who vote FDP, Lib Dem and Democrat do have a lot of similarities. The FDP's traditional base is Protestant professionals, particularly in the north. These contast with the more socially conservative approach of their often coalition partners the Christian Democrats. Similarly the Lib Dems and the Democrats have a base of the socially concerned middle class, "doctor's wives" as the epithet of the day has it, or what I personally think of as the librarian vote.

I think the instinct of most parties would be only to form a coalition when forced. The FDP and the Lib Dems both have more significant blocks of seats in the primary house of parliament than the Democrats ever had. Kernot could have made them the kingmakers of Aussie politics but instead she shot them in the foot. The Democrats at their height had a combination of the civic conservative vote and the angry bugger mainstream politicians vote. I fear the Greens capture the second more effectively. This was made painfully obvious as the former anarchist Andrew Bartlett berated Bob Brown et al for disrupting GW Bush's speech.

If there was an Australian FDP, I would vote for them or even join them. The rabble rousing and economic illiteracy of the Greens doesn't appeal to me. The Telstra nationalisation stance of the Democrats already annoyed me. Once again Australia is left without anyone for a philosophical liberal to vote for.