Voters rule. OK?

Senior complainers from both parties have already had the arrogance to accuse voters of some kind of collective idiocy for bringing about this current situation. As if millions of us somehow conspired to achieve a hung parliament. According to them, we know not what we’ve done in exercising our democratic right to give both of them the finger, and we will pay the price.

This, dare I say, is precisely the kind of attitude that has caused the major parties to be in the position in which they currently find themselves. They’ve got it back to front. The parties exist for the voters, not the other way around. We’ve just reminded them of that democratic reality and they can’t take it. Well, suck it up, chaps, because you’ve been told.

The factional power brokers could take a lesson from some electorates, for example, Page. Labor’s Janelle Saffin was returned with a swing in her favour. Why? Because she kept herself as far away as possible from Canberra, and ran a very successful local campaign. Not because of focus groups, not because of the negative campaign, but because she works for her electorate, delivers on her undertakings, and the electorate appreciates that and wants her back. In Aaron’s terminology, Saffin connects with the lives of real people, and the same can be said of very many politicians whose achievements were silenced or under-rated by the decision to run the campaign mainly for focus groups in western Sydney.

A hung parliament is an opportunity for Australia to break free of the domination of the two major parties, and for the power to be spread around a little. Given the background of the three Independents currently in negotiations with Gillard and Abbott, there is now an opportunity for our politics to shift its city-centred focus, and to apply itself to regional Australia as well. This can only be good for everyone.

The major parties had absolutely no moral authority left. At least the Independents are, so far, sounding as if they still retain a good deal of theirs.

We voters have claimed our authority in this election. We’ve declined to furnish either major party with a mandate to govern, and it serves them right for forgetting a fundamental principle, which is whose voice and interests matter in a democracy: it isn’t theirs, it’s ours. We’ve let them know that no matter how clever their machinations and manipulations, no matter how many focus groups, slogans, and jingles they devise, we have the intelligence and determination to remain un-swayed by this drivel, and to demand substance and action from these people.

Yes, there will be a period of uncertainty. But we are used to that - we’ve lived the last three years in uncertainty, particularly the last few months. There’s the usual alarmist reaction from business, thus far not borne out by the markets. Business makes a point of doing its best to terrify everybody with its prophecies of monetary disasters and fiscal collapses, yet somehow doesn’t manage to foresee and forestall any of them until they’re upon us, but that’s a whole other story.

Whoever eventually gains government, this election has demonstrated that democracy is alive and well in this country, and wow, do voters rule. OK?