Illustration: Andrew Dyson Last time around, after the 2010 election, it took 17 days before Julia Gillard was able to tell the governor-general that she had a majority in the House and could form a government. There is no time limit on how long negotiations might continue – what if it took 27 days, or 97 days, or 197 days? Or even 589 days? Because that's how long it took Belgium to form a government after its 2010 election. Can you imagine the chaos – no government for a year and a half! The mayhem must have been dreadful to behold. Wasn't it? "On a day-to-day basis," reported the BBC's Stephen Mulvey after a year without government, "Belgium is ticking along nicely. Its economy is growing, exports are up, inward foreign investment has continued, the country's presidency of the European Union in 2010 was deemed a success, and it has contributed to the NATO bombing of Libya."

Will Australia have as long a wait as Belgium did for a new prime minister? Credit:Andrew Meares A Belgian filmmaker, Dan Alexe, told the Independent: "The trains and buses still run. The police are still operating. The post is late, but then it always was late. Maybe having 'no government' is preferable to having governments which collapse all the time." Belgium is not Australia. Its population is 11 million, less than half Australia's. But there are strong similarities. It's a stable, high-income, democratic federation. Like Australia, it's a constitutional monarchy. It's a US ally. Illustration: Andrew Dyson Its main political divide is not partisan but cultural, with the prosperous Dutch-speaking north, home to 60 per cent of the population, resentful at the less prosperous French-speaking south. There was a moment when the divide was so bitter that commentators predicted the country would break into two. It didn't.

When no party won a majority after its 2010 election, its parties refused to compromise and stalemate settled in while the incumbent government continued as caretaker, operating under a strictly limited mandate. There was a protest rally against the political standoff, but attempts to hold more demonstrations failed through lack of interest. "By and large, everything still works, a professor at Ghent University, Marc De Vos, explaining the lack of public outrage. "We get paid, buses run, schools are open." By some measures, the country appeared to do better than neighbours with elected governments. "The caretaker government last month headed off market jitters over its debt levels by quickly agreeing on a tighter budget," Time magazine reported in February 2011, eight months into the political limbo. "The country is recovering well from the downturn, with growth last year at 2.1 per cent (compared with the EU average of 1.5 per cent), foreign investment doubling and unemployment at 8.5 per cent, well below the EU average of 9.4 per cent." One of the major lessons, concluded a pair of Belgian academics, Geert Bouckaert and Marleen Brans, was that "in mature democracies, a power vacuum is taken care of in a constructive, creative, and responsible way."

And indeed, look around in Australia on the first business day after the country was supposedly rendered "ungovernable" by Saturday's election. On Monday the share market was up and so was the Australian dollar. Election campaign periods, when a caretaker government is running the country, have amply illustrated one of the reasons a mature democracy can operate smoothly without an active government. Two examples. The Reserve Bank raised interest rates during the 2007 campaign, infuriating John Howard. The Federal Police raided the homes of staff of powerful Labor politicians during the 2016 campaign, only telling the government and opposition when the raids were about to begin. The country's work is mostly done by independent institutions such as the Reserve Bank or the courts, or autonomous institutions like the Federal Police, that continue to function without political direction. The states and local councils, of course, operate as usual. In fact, Belgium under a caretaker ran so smoothly that a former deputy prime minister of the country, Karel De Gucht, told me after nine months of political limbo that "I worry that it's going too well".

He feared that the people would be quite content to live without a government, as long-term problems accumulated without any solution. He proved to be right. Belgium's debt continued to accumulate under the caretaker and finally, the politicians agreed to form a six-party coalition when the country's sovereign credit rating was downgraded, sending a jolt through the system. So there is no need to panic about an interregnum under a caretaker government in Australia . It's not as if the elected governments did a great job of managing Australia's deficits, in any case. Debt continued to mount under Labor and Liberal administrations for eight years continuously. The credit rating agencies on Monday warned that Australia eventually needed to bring the debt problem under control. Without an active, elected government, long-term problems will accumulate. But then, many have accumulated under Australia's elected governments too. The problem is not the uncertainty of a caretaker period. The problem is the long-run conduct of the parties themselves. The political parties need to jolt themselves out of their self-involved partisan games or, eventually, a crisis will do it for them. Peter Hartcher is political editor.