When the hat doesn't fit

“THE bigger the hat the smaller the property.” Perhaps that piece of Aussie wisdom is what voters had in mind when they went to the polls on August 21st. Posture and pontificate as they might, Julia Gillard, the prime minister and Labor leader, and Tony Abbott, the right-wing coalition leader, were both rejected for being several hat-sizes too big. Their empty, cynical campaigns leave Australia in a mess, facing its first hung parliament since 1940, politics that is poisonous even by Australian standards, and a dangerous policy vacuum.

With one lower-house seat still in doubt, the vote is as close as a Queensland afternoon. As The Economist went to press the right and left both had 72 seats—four short of a governing majority. But, counting second-preferences, the left had a tiny advantage in the popular vote. The balance of power in the lower house will rest with a Green, and four independents, who are understandably playing one side off against the other (see article).

The result is a disaster for Ms Gillard. Not since the Depression have Australians rejected a first-term government. She chose to go to the country when Labor was ahead in the polls, just two months after fronting a coup against Kevin Rudd, seen as an autocrat and a loser after having abandoned his signature climate-change bill. Voters don't much like assassins, but a half-baked idea for a people's assembly on climate change and a tack to the right on immigration made Ms Gillard look shallow as well as disloyal. Presiding over a party at war with itself, she would struggle to assert power as prime minister.

Ms Gillard's failure is necessarily Mr Abbott's success. Once dismissed as unelectable—and that was by his own party—he has now undone two Labor prime ministers in nine months. Three of the independents came from the right and may back him rather than offend their anti-Labor constituents. But most of the swing from Labor went to the Greens, who from mid-2011 will probably hold the balance of power in the upper house and be able to block his programme. And his campaign hardly inspired confidence. Relentlessly negative and populist, particularly on immigration, he is weak on economics and short of ideas. You get a sense of the many things Mr Abbott doesn't like; it is harder to know what he favours.

Downbeat down under

Australia now faces an unstable, raucous and barren politics—“like two dogs barking”, as one of the independents put it. Sometimes countries get along just fine without a strong central government. But the states in federal Australia have increasingly seen the centre sap their power on issues such as health care. Moreover, Australia needs sooner or later to address several vital areas of policy.

One is climate change, where the majority's wish for a bill is being blocked by the minority (including Mr Abbott). Another is immigration, where a debate about the economy's need for skills and its capacity for a “big Australia” is obscured by scaremongering about refugees on boats. And a third is economics, where Australia needs to work out how to tax its abundant resources and deploy the revenues to build infrastructure and human capital in the rest of the economy.

Sadly, the politicians are not tackling these questions, and voters are duly unimpressed. Australia can muddle through for a bit. But unless its politicians take off their hats and get to work within the next 12 months, another poll beckons.