There is also a habit of journalists framing questions along the lines of ‘how bad would a hung parliament be’.

Now, the whole ‘chaos and confusion’ thing in 2010-13 was a Tony Abbott creation, that was picked up and run with by mainstream media, which assumes that negotiation on legislation and power sharing in a parliament is automatically a bad thing.

But it is also not born out by the facts. Minority governments are very common in the states/territories. NSW has a minority government right now. But also, governments rarely have control of the upper chamber and so, there is constant negotiation and power sharing with legislation occurring in the chambers of review.

You know, the pesky little thing known as the senate? You need that to pass federal law in Australia. And you never hear the same narrative as you do in the house of reps when it comes to negotiations.

Australia could be entering a new era in its politics. Which means that the major parties can’t count on automatically winning a majority. That is not something to be treated as ‘bad’. It’s something to be respected and studied and understood. Because it seems to me that if the major parties aren’t offering voters what they want, they will go looking somewhere else.