New Australian parliament historic but fragile, say experts

The Australian parliament which meets this week will not only be unusual -- boasting the nation\'s first Aboriginal MP and the youngest ever lawmaker -- it could also be short-lived, experts say.

Welsh-born Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard became the country\'s first woman leader in June and is set to control the 150-seat lower House of Representatives with the narrowest of majorities.

On her side will be the house\'s first Muslim, Ed Husic, as well as former intelligence officer turned Iraq war whistleblower Andrew Wilkie, Greens MP Adam Bandt, and two \'kingmaking\' independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott.

Also lurking in Labor\'s ranks will be former prime minister Kevin Rudd, the man Gillard suddenly and spectacularly deposed as leader in a party room coup, only to appoint him her foreign minister after her knife-edge re-election.

In opposition leader Tony Abbott\'s corner when the 43rd parliament opens on Tuesday will be 20-year-old Wyatt Roy, the youngest person ever elected to office, and Ken Wyatt, the first indigenous person to sit in the lower house.

Wildcard independent Bob Katter, a cowboy hat-wearing north Queenslander who deliberated for 17 days before deciding who to support, will also back Abbott.

"It\'s an amazing assortment of characters. It\'s like the cast of a sitcom," Zareh Ghazarian, a politics lecturer at Melbourne\'s Deakin University, and co-author of \'Australian Politics for Dummies\' said of the parliament.

Neither the ruling Labor party or former trainee priest Tony Abbott\'s conservative Liberal/National opposition managed to secure enough seats to govern after August 21 polls returned a hung parliament.

But the flame-haired former industrial lawyer Gillard managed to broker the support of enough independents to stretch her lead to 76 seats -- the barest majority needed to form government.

With Labor set to install one of its number as Speaker, a role which only has a casting vote when there is a tie, her effective voting buffer will be reduced to just one.

Ghazarian said hung parliaments were generally brittle, and it was unlikely this one would last its full three-year term.

"It is going to be very fragile," he told AFP. "It is going to be very, very testing for the government. I would be really surprised if we had this parliament sitting for three years."

Gillard\'s tightrope act to take power was one thing, but the challenges for the minority government will only mount, said Monash University\'s Nick Economou.

"The real game starts when the government tries to legislate," he said. "There are important policy issues that need to be dealt with.

"It\'s quite clear that on at least one issue, on climate change, at least one set of crossbench support expects action," he said in reference to Bandt, an MP from the eco-minded Greens.

"So they are going to have to act. Doing nothing is not an option."

Economou declined to put a timeline on the life of the parliament, saying it could last as long as Gillard\'s alliance with the independents and Greens endured.

But one issue he felt was likely to rankle with the crucial kingmakers was Australia\'s on-going involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

Commentator Peter Van Onselen said Abbott\'s best hope was to try to break the parliament sooner rather than later and prevent Gillard from consolidating her power.

"The Liberals know that if Abbott can\'t penetrate the government, thereby forcing an early election, or a switch of support by the rural independents in the first six months, the odds are that he will be ground down and the government will pull away," he wrote in The Weekend Australian.