By Roy Weavers, Editor

The intention this morning on Newsport was to bring you the election result and how that result might affect us here in the far north.  Well, in the immortal words of Robbie Burns, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley" and that bears relevance to both our plans and to Julia Gillards.

Firstly we are not going to be able to bring you the result of the election because there isn't one yet.   And this despite an excellent turnout in Port Douglas!

Obviously neither of the main parties inspired us enough to support them. So currently, as you probably know by now, since it's been on every television screen with interminable regularity all weekend, the current situation has left a 'hung' parliament with neither main party having a workable majority.

And secondly, presumeably Julia Gillard's post KRudd plan was to win the countries endorsement of her leadership substitution at the ballot box and lead the country over the next 3 years, rather than have to resort to trying to cling onto power with the blessing of a handful of independents and a Greenie.

Of course it's not even certain that she will succeed in this manoevre.  It could be that the same handful of independents and the greenie will be wooed by Tony Abbott and his Coalition party. 

If it helps, it appears that Labor polled a slightly higher overall vote, called the Popular vote, than the Coalition (50.2% to 49.8%) but the seats won, depending on what information source you use, stand at something like 73-72 or 72-73.  To govern you need a majority of 76, which is why the wheeling and dealing has been frantically going on over the weekend and is likely to go on for a few days yet.

However Some things we do know are facts, Coalition candidate, Warren Entsch, returning from a brief retirement, has won back his seat in Leichhardt and ousted Labors Jim Turnour after just two and half years in the job.  

Bob Katter, the long serving independent member for Kennedy, QLD, has comfortably retained his seat and after so many years in parliament (since 1993), he is now in a unique position being one of the handful of independents who will hold the balance of power over whoever forms the next government.  Maybe Bob, will renew his quest for a new northern Australian State with the break away from Southern Queensland.   He'll probably never get another chance to have it taken seriously, afterall he is known as "The force in the north"! 

The Greens got their first ever representative in the House of representatives in Adam Bandt who won his seat and remarkably it was in Melbourne not a rural one, as you might expect! You can almost hear Bob Dylan singing "The Times they are a changing".  And it is almost certain that part of Mr Bandt's deal as part of his allegiance in this balance of power quorum will be that the emissions trading scheme comes back on the table. 

The one thing you can be sure of is that whoever does conjure up enough seats to form a government, Bob Katter and his fellow independents and Adam, the Greenie will keep them dancing to their tune until the inevitable clash of wills is too much for the Prime Minister to take and we all troop back to the polling station to have another go.

Whilst a hung parliament in Australia is as rare as 'hens teeth', it's almost become a normal in the rest of the world.  And now it's arrived here, there are only two ways to go.  Stay with the two party system and see hung parliaments a lot in the future, as uninspiring parliamentary candidates fail to claim a majority interest or commit to a wider party system which would probably mean a strong Greens party to try to spread the vote options much wider. 

It might be a bit confusing to start with but it does at least generate workable results.

In the meantime we wait with baited breath to find out who holds onto or who gains power.  This kind of politics always seems to have a slightly embarrassing and desperate edge to it, as each party tries to sell it's soul to whoever will listen in their efforts to grab power at any cost. 

It's a shame we'll miss all ther fun when both Tony and Julia meet Bob Katter, wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall at those meetings?

We'll bring you the Election result as soon as we get the information.