This is the first election where I have not been actively involved in the whole election campaign process, in part due to writing an honours thesis, and also I have become disillusioned with what the two major parties, Labor (less conservative) and Liberal (conservative), have put up by way election policy. I couldn’t in good conscience be involved in election campaigning this time around.

This is the first federal election in my memory where it looks like that Australia will have a hung parliament – according to Australian electoral pundit, Antony Green (check out his stuff here – swooning over Antony Green is a national past-time). This means that in the Australian House of Representatives, the lower house, no party will be able to form Government and sit on the treasury benches as neither major party has 76 or more members in their own right (out of a possible 150). And my blood is running cold with the thought of Australia being pulled once again to the Right, and returning to the 1950s and so called “traditional values.”

So here am I, my tv turned on to the election coverage of the ABC (the national public broadcaster), watching with unbelievable interest in an election that will definitely shape public policy in Australia for the next 20 years.

The lead up to this election was mixed – the former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was deposed by the “faceless” head office machinations, and the first Australian female prime minister, Julia Gillard replaced him. The opposition, the Liberals, have had 3 different leaders in three years with even more rancour between changing leaders and party machinations. There was a major campaign being run by the mining industry lobby group against Labor, specifically to do with changes to tax policy. The Labor party did not pursue an emissions trading scheme despite the former prime minister saying it was the most important issue in our time, and not working with one of the minor parties in the Senate (the federal upper house). The Liberals were obstinate in the upper house, refusing to work with Labor to introduce policies that were part of Labor’s election platform in 2007. Add into the mix, general discontent with state Labor governments, in 4 states, across the country – and well it was going to be an unpredictable election.

With a hung parliament looking increasingly likely, independent and non-major party members are looked to by the major parties for the potential to form a coalition government.

The three sitting conservative independents, 2 in New South Wales and 1 in Queensland, have been returned convincingly to the lower house; though they may be considered conservative they would more than likely have more in common with Labor. It looks like two new non-major party left wing candidates have also been elected to the House of Representatives in Victoria and Tasmania – the Greens in Victoria and an independent in Tasmania.

At this stage the results of Western Australia, and in some of the closer seats the pre-poll and absentee votes, will determine the outcome of the election, and in particular whether the Labor Party loses more lower house seats than expected.

It’s still not sure whether Labor will reach the magic number of 76 seats. The pundits are predicting at this stage of 73 seats to the Liberals, 72 to Labor, and 5 to independents/Greens. In some ways, the Labor party forming coalition with independents and minor party members will be a good thing.

I will be watching the outcome of this election closely over the next 2 weeks, especially as the current leaders of the Liberals and Labor, depending on how many lower house seats are actually won, try to cobble together a coalition to form government.

Via Proggie @ Flickr.

This guest-post comes from Australian harpy Mackey. It was written in the spirit of the cross-border conversations that happen at the Pursuit of Harpyness, and the sharing of experiences.

In Australia, there is no federal case like Roe v Wade that establishes legalised abortion. Around the same time as Roe v Wade, there was major case law establishing when abortion is considered legal and would not be prosecuted under the respective criminal codes/statutes of the states and territories that make up the federation that is Australia. But there was no legislation, in the 1960s and 1970s that legalised abortion.

The case law itself put maternal health, in part, at the centre of the determining whether a legal abortion could be performed (this is not to trivialise cases where women with disabilities, Indigenous women, and minority women were deleteriously affected by doctors’ decisions). Maternal health broadly considered the life, mental health, and economic and social conditions that could adversely affect the woman concerned.

Instead feminists and pro-choice activists are still campaigning for the majority states and the Northern Territory to take abortion out of their respective criminal codes/statutes. The Australian Capital Territory and Victoria have already done so (and massive feminist shout outs to the women and pro-choice campaigners who worked to achieve that momentous legislative decision). With that said, the legislative and social environment (federally and in the states and territories) seems markedly different to that of the United States.

Today about 2/3 of Australians support the right of women to access surgical/medical abortions. Local, state and federal elections are not fought solely on the issue of a candidate’s stance on abortion. This is possibly due to the following –abortion and its accessibility is determined in different jurisdictions, Australia’s federalism means that different types of decisions on similar issues reside with the different state/territory and the federal jurisdictions, with broad community support it no longer is a divisive issue, and the Australian system of compulsory voting in elections.

The most recent community discussion, in 2006, about the issue of abortion was the availability of the abortion drug RU486. The previous federal government, the conservative Liberal Party, used its majority in both houses of federal parliament to vote to allow the Federal Health Minister to make a determination about whether “restricted drugs”, like abortifacients, could be assessed by the Therapeutic Drugs Administration for community use. This decision politicised the issue of abortion, allowing the personal views of the federal health minister to determine if a “restricted drug” could be examined by the Therapeutic Drugs Administration.

The general idea of the function of the Therapeutic Drugs Administration is that it does not take a moral stance on what the function of a particular drug is; instead the medical and scientific experts of this body assess the drug on its efficacy to determine if it will be available for community use. The then Federal Health Minister, Tony Abbot (now Federal Opposition Leader) was explicitly against RU486 and continues to be against any form of abortion, thus was not going to allow RU486 to be assessed by the Therapeutic Drugs Administration.

The determination of the Federal Health Minister to allow “restricted drugs” to be assessed by the Therapeutic Drugs Administration has since been overturned. This is in no small part to pro-choice groups, and the cross party workings a group of pro-choice women senators and lower house representatives. A group of 4 cross party senators, representing the formal political parties of the day, the conservative Liberal Party, the Labor Party, the Democrats, and the National Party, sponsored a private members bill to change the legislation.

Whilst the Australian context may seem pro-choice, there have been particular instances that illustrate how precarious the situation can be where there isn’t established case law/decriminalisation of abortion giving legal force for the full range of family planning options.

- In 2006 in New South Wales, a doctor was convicted of two counts of performing an illegal abortion as she failed to establish as to whether a lawful reason for performing the abortion existed.

- In 2007, there was a debate in the Federal Senate about the truth in advertising for organisations providing crisis pregnancy counselling services. Crisis pregnancy centres were not required to indicate whether they were all-options counselling services. When women called anti-choice services that were not advertised as such, when abortion was mentioned as a possible option by anxious women, false and misleading information was sometimes provided.

- There has been as recent as 2008 a proposal to remove Medicare (Australia’s public health care system) funding for second trimester abortions. It wouldn’t matter if the foetus has died, a diagnosis of gross foetal abnormality is made, and/or the woman has a life threatening illness, there would be no provision under Medicare for the surgical abortion to be performed.

For these reasons and more, feminists and pro-choice campaigners in Australia remain vigilant.