Australian political malaise to continue.

Much of the anti carbon tax and other protests against the government have been designed to force the Labor Party to do the decent thing, fall on its sword and call an election. Gillard’s government was procreated on a lie, conceived with multiple partners, born in immorality, and raised in ineptitude. The people have had enough.

A new election where we can toss them out and start again sounds like a good idea, unfortunately it’s not that easy. While an early election can be called at any time, this can only be for the House of Representatives at this stage. Under the Australian Constitution the terms for the senate are fixed, that is why the senators elected in 2010 did not take their seats until July this year.

Antony Green is probably as good a source of information as any out there. His take on the situation is that barring a double dissolution there can be no senate election until August 2013. The standard procedure here is for a half-senate election to be held every three years with the normal House of Representatives election.

Were the government to collapse a House election could be called, but there could be none for the senate at the same time. This would necessitate a separate half Senate election being called by May 2014, although an early House election could be called at the same time in order to avoid separate election dates. While there are a couple of ploys Gillard could use to stave off collapse, these would only result in more electoral anger.

The problem for the Liberals is that even with an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives, they will face a hostile Senate because of a Labor/Green majority there. This will not change until July 2014 when Senators from a new election can take their seats. Owing to the nature of Senate elections however, even in a landslide a change of power there is barely doable.

In the last election both major parties preferenced the Greens, the result of which was that they had six Senators elected, who will remain there until July 2017. This means that out of the 38 seats that were up for election last time 21 were and will remain hostile.

Other than running a lame duck government until mid 2017, about the only option available to the Liberals is to take power and set the trigger for a double dissolution. This can be done by passing a bill that would be unacceptable to Labor/Greens, which would cause them to block it or unacceptably amend it on two occasions within three months. This should not be too difficult to achieve, as the leadership of both of those parties are ideologues.

That is about the only way out of this impasse. Get ready to do a lot of voting.