What if the accustomed rotating absolute authority of two-party politics, the blank cheque of comfortable majority, became a thing of the past? Jonathan Green writes.

It's just not fair.

Here is a Government, duly elected with the popular mandate that our vote of last September implies, and yet its political centrepiece, its statement of political and philosophic intent, its budget, is being quibbled and nibbled and denied by the combined voices of minority interest in the Upper House.

Just not fair.

Never mind that this may not be the budget we might have expected had we paid close attention to the promises and blandishments of the actual campaign. That after all was just the quick pledges of politics; this is economic management, formed by the demands of incumbency ... and opportunity. They're different things.

And yet if the nation's collective will is accurately represented by the parliament it selects, than this senatorial road block might be the result we had in mind ... a continuation of a theme: that we want to hedge our bets and trade a little hesitation and uncertainty against the suddenly unsettling prospect of absolute political authority.

It might be that we just don't trust either major party. Not any more.

The rhetoric ranged against the Gillard minority government would suggest that we found that experience of constant negotiation, invigorated committee work and unusually elevated parliamentary deliberation unsettling. The truth might be otherwise, that a sharing of the decision making spoils and slow erosion of the ritual exchange of power between the two great clubs of Australian politics was about the only positive to emerge from our politics post 2007.

And what if the accustomed rotating absolute authority of two-party politics, the blank cheque of comfortable majority, became a thing of the past?

If recent polling is any indication, we might be entering a new political era of constant contest and examination, one in which governments may not be trusted as of right to simply brandish their majority and impose their undiluted will.

Look at this week's Newspoll: 17 per cent of Australian voters would have cast their ballots for independents, minor parties and anonymous "others", a figure 4.5 per cent higher than the actual total recorded at the 2013 election.

The big parties will comfort themselves that 17 per cent is an outlier number that will be vulnerable to both reason and the long-habit of two-party preference by the time of the next federal vote. But will it?

What if that figure indicated just the tip of an iceberg of dissatisfaction with politics as usual?

There may well be a substantial body of Australians who, while not begrudging the Government the right to frame and present its agenda, nonetheless welcome the greater scrutiny the Senate is bringing to, for example, this fiscal plan so unheralded in the electoral process that delivered the Government bent on imposing it.

If we got used to that kind of thing and the possible good effect it brought to the process of our politics, we might even live out those Newspoll figures and cast our votes accordingly.

There is great potential for change in this moment. The case study of Indi is much talked about, a potential example of what might happen when an electorate well within the margin of what might normally be considered safe, is first taken for granted then presented come poll time with a coherent community-based campaign. Remember: Indi was a Liberal seat before the election of independent Cathy McGowan, held by Sophie Mirabella on a margin of 9 per cent.

Nothing this dramatic is likely, but imagine if at the next federal election, seats now held by the major parties on margins of 9 per cent or less were vulnerable to intense, focussed, technically savvy, connected local campaigns.

That, on the pre 2013 margins, would put 38 ALP seats and 41 Coalition seats in play.

And that is a recipe for reframing the entire process and power balance of our politics.

You might wonder whether that is the still ghostly writing on the wall that both parties see as we muddle through this time of disconnection, disengagement and mistrust.

A parliament of feisty independent voices would group and coalesce, would deliver a majority to some player or other and would provide a base for government. But it would be a government suddenly accountable to each individual stakeholder, a government of the people rather than of the party, potentially more democratic and representative than any we have ever seen.

Much that is at fault with modern politics can be sheeted back to the operation of professionalised major parties scrutinised by an embedded and often partisan political media.

It's an edifice that arguably does us little good, and insofar as it has a tendency to support its own narrow interest over the national good, could well be doing us a degree of harm.

Is this what runs through the mind of Joe Hockey as for close to two months he has tried to convince a recalcitrant Senate and a bemused public that his budget is for the greater good? That this really should be otherwise. That it should just be passed. It's not fair.

But there's every chance that the budget that emerges from even that process, a process flawed by the major party political opportunism of Labor and the mysterious gyrations of Clive Palmer, might still be a better and fairer one than was originally delivered.

Imagine that process escalated and stripped of the old routines of two-party power play. Imagine deliberation and challenge at every stage of the policy and legislative process.

It might just be the way of our future.

Jonathan Green hosts Sunday Extra on Radio National and is the former editor of The Drum. View his full profile here.