No new paradigm

''New paradigm'':  strange that a phrase coined by Bob Katter could get so much currency.

But despite the unusual result of this election, everything is returning to a familiar pattern.

Katter's idea of a new paradigm is actually recourse to an earlier paradigm -- a protectionist economy where trade policy is dictated by rural electorates.

Not being stupid, Katter must have known neither party leader would embrace a wholesale re-regulation of the agriculture sector.

He managed to get Tony Abbott to agree to some of his 20 demands, but only the ones Abbott was already sympathetic to -- for example, those relating to property rights, the Wild Rivers legislation and local hospital boards.

The intended audience for Katter's demands were in Kennedy, not Canberra.

Rob Oakeshott's new paradigm -- a bipartisan government built around consensus -- sustained a major setback when not even he wanted to join it.

Then there's the new paradigm of minority government.

Certainly, we could be entering an era of multiparty democracy, where both sides have to form permanent or semi-permanent coalitions across the political spectrum to ever rule again.

Or the prominence of the independents could be an aberration;  a quirky parliament following the closest election since the war.

The latter is far more likely.  The former will only occur if the increase in Greens support is permanent, and substantial enough to hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives after elections which aren't this close.

Let's talk again when Greens representation in the lower house is non-trivial.  One seat does not make a revolution.  And one excruciatingly tight election does not make a new paradigm.

So watch everybody revert to form.

Since the independents made their choice, the relentless focus on their every word and gesture has somewhat subsided.  The Coalition, quite rightly, is beginning to recognise Rob Oakeshott isn't the main game.  Labor is.

Gillard's ministry reshuffle is bold and has plenty of gristle for Abbott to chew.  It's hard to figure out what the Prime Minister was thinking when she split the education portfolio so chaotically.  The elevation of Peter Garrett -- sacrificed by Kevin Rudd when the government's insulation policy went pear-shaped -- seems to be asking for trouble.  And Penny Wong in finance?

But forget the details for a moment:  boldness is good.  It's necessary.  Gillard has to demonstrate that her government is not her predecessor's government.  A government that loses its Prime Minister and nearly office in its first term is, almost by definition, a failure.  It would not do to have the same faces in the same roles.

Still, there's not a single Green or independent around the Cabinet table.  No new paradigm there.

The election's abnormal result was a function of Labor's first term.  Yet there seems to be an increasing view inside Labor that the problem with this election was the press -- that the new paradigm isn't needed in politics, but in journalism.

It must be comforting to think so.

Speaking to Barrie Cassidy on Insiders on Sunday, the Prime Minister turned to the media, saying that she didn't believe in ''editorialising on the front page''.

But remember:  over the last 12 months, Labor has been pounded from both sides of the political spectrum.  If anything, the most sustained condemnations of the Labor government's performance came on the issue of climate change.  Claims that school halls were overpriced were nothing compared to the rapid depletion of Rudd's leadership credentials after he dropped the emissions trading scheme.

Much ALP support was lost to their left, not to the Liberal Party.  And it's hard to blame the front page of The Australian for the Greens' record vote.

Similarly, the complaint that the media encouraged a policy-free election is a peculiar one.  The last three years have seen some of the most sustained policy debate in Australian history.  The ins and outs of the emissions trading scheme and the mining tax, and the efficacy of Keynesian stimulus spending have been rehearsed over and over in the national press.

Gillard can't blame the press for the ALP's internal soap-opera during the campaign.

On Insiders, the Prime Minister said ''It took three independents to find the $11 billion black hole -- that should have been a job done by journalists''.

This is disingenuous.  The independents didn't find the hole.  Treasury did.  It's all part of Charter of Budget Honesty shenanigans, but Gillard doesn't want to dwell on that old chestnut.

Labor needs to seriously figure out what went wrong last term, not simply attribute the tight election to a hostile national broadsheet, or an uncooperative press gallery.

The spotlight returns to the leaders of the two major parties.

With her parliamentary support precariously near collapse, the Prime Minister wants to paint Abbott as the disaster we narrowly avoided.  Gillard has to hope Abbott becomes Mark Latham and implodes in a fiery ball of crazy.

And, with Peter Garrett's promotion, expect to hear a lot more about pink batts from the Coalition.

That was a short-lived new paradigm indeed.

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