In the past couple of weeks, the conservative parties have retained government in two jurisdictions across Australia, the (party political) Brisbane City Council and Tasmania. Before anyone scoffs at the Brisbane City Council, it is an amalgamation of around 20 shires and town councils that occurred in the 1920s Apart from managing the roads, rubbish and so on for most of the Brisbane urban area, it also operates a considerable component of South East Queensland bus network, has a significant part in the planning of South East Queensland with a budget and population larger than Tasmania’s.

In Brisbane, residents have two votes, one for a Councillor and one for the Lord Mayor. At the time of writing, the LNP’s Adrian Schrinner had received 48.58% of the vote, the ALP’s Tracey Price 26.40% of the vote and the Greens Johnathon Sriranganathan 19.40% of the vote. There are a couple of Independents as well as the Legalise Cannabis Party who account for the other 5% or thereabouts of the vote. So far, slightly over 703,000 votes have been counted. The Electoral Commission Queensland results page is here – should you want to see the current figures. Tellingly, there is no One Nation or Clive Palmer candidate to split the conservative vote.

On those figures, the ALP has a problem. While they can claim to be taking a ‘principled stand’ and not joining in a coalition of reasonably like minded people, the reality is that elections are a numbers game. The situation is even worse if you consider the individual votes in the ‘Wards’ that elect the Councillors that serve on the Brisbane City Council. The ABC’s Election Results show that rather than the traditional contest between the ALP and LNP, a lot of the contests are now LNP versus Greens. While the Greens may not have reached the tipping point on this occasion, it is likely that some of them will in four years time.

The Tasmanian State Election night finished with no one holding a majority of the seats required to form a government in their own right. While in February Premier Jeremy Rockliff was preaching the perils of minority government. He is likely to form one following the election. Especially telling was the ALP Leader, Rebecca White, saying on Election Night that she would attempt to form a minority government if Rockliff couldn’t, only to be walking the statement back on Sunday and resigning from the leadership by the middle of the following week. At the time of writing, the ALP could have formed a minority government based on the publicly available results.

In both the Brisbane City and Tasmania Elections, if the ALP had been prepared to work with others, they could have stitched together a deal to effectively be in control of the two jurisdictions. While it is probably harder work to manage the differing views of the various members of a coalition in power, the views of the different members of a minority government make better decisions for all. The ALP minority Government with Julia Gillard as Prime Minister managed to be more productive in terms of legislation passed than any government since. Some of the achievements of the Gillard Government, such as the NDIS and an effective carbon pollution reduction program was leading edge at the time – only to be neutered by subsequent governments.

As an outsider, it seems that the ALP has similar problems to the Coalition. It is highly unlikely that the alternative political parties to the left and right of the ALP and LNP will be going away any time soon. The ALP is losing votes to the Greens and they aren’t necessarily returning just as the LNP is losing votes to One Nation and others to their right. While the ALP knows and understands how to attempt to entice voters from the LNP and seems to be actively pursuing the strategy, they are ignoring those that do want stronger emissions reduction targets, humanity to refugees, action on the cost of housing and rentals, a better funding system for public schools and so on. Instead the ALP is trying to ‘out-flank’ the LNP on cruelty to refugees and refusing to change the rules around religious and racial discrimination without the Coalition joining them on a ‘unity ticket’. The ‘unity ticket’ is just as likely as verified sightings of the Easter Bunny delivering presents on Easter Sunday.

While minority government may not necessarily be easy, or enable legislation to be passed without full consideration and consent of the respective parliament, arguably it is a better result for the community at large as more than one ideological group has to be convinced of the worth of the measure. Minority governments work in many countries around the world. In reality every Liberal Party Prime Minister and most Liberal Party Premiers in Australia since World War 2 have been the leaders of minority governments as the Liberal Party usually doesn’t have the numbers to ‘govern’ in their own right. A progressive minority government would be a far better result than a conservative Liberal/National Party ‘Coalition’ lead by Peter Dutton this time next year. Maybe that’s something the ALP and Greens party operatives should think about seriously.