Australian Politics 2018: let's leave the premises as fast as possible and don't show our LNP faces in parliament until after the federal election

It's official - The Morrison Coalition Government is a lame duck federal government incapable of functioning.

Why?

The Australian Parliament goes into end of year recess on 6 December and does not come back until February 2019.

After the opening Parliament on the later than usual date of 12 February 2019, the House of Representatives will probably sit for no more than seven days in total. There appears to be no plan to conduct parliamentary business after that except perhaps to table the 2019-20 Budget Papers between 2- 4 April.

The Senate is scheduled to sit for two days (11th or 12th and 14th) with four estimates hearings beginning on the 18th. The senate does not sit in March and only sits for one day in early April. 

Parliament needs to be dissolved sometime in early April to comfortably meet the requirements of a 2019 national election timetable for the joint election of the House of Representatives and half the Senate.

As it appears from the article below that interim Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison is ready to go to a general election in May, the parliamentary timetable looks suspiciously as if Coalition Government MPs and senators intend to hide from national scrutiny as much as possible before polling day.

Given that the Morrison Government is now two MPs shy of a majority (having only 74 MPs in the 150-strong House of Representatives), closing down parliament in this way also means that the Labor Opposition and cross benches will not have an opportunity to pass legislation in their own right in a parliament the Lib-Nats government of the day no longer controls.

The West Australian, 27 November 2018:

Scott Morrison has effectively revealed the date of the next election just as one of his backbenchers announced she was leaving the Liberal Party to sit on the parliamentary crossbench.

In a dramatic 20 minutes in Canberra, the PM confirmed the Federal Budget would be brought forward and handed down on April 2 next year.

Saying “you can do the maths”, the date means the Federal election will be held on either May 11 or 18. May 18 was the last available date for a full House and half Senate election.

Mr Morrison said the Budget would show a surplus.

In this year’s Budget, the Government was already expecting a small $2.2 billion surplus for the 2019-20 financial year.

However, a surge in tax revenue and a tight rein on spending is expected to show a bigger than expected surplus. That should be confirmed in the mid-year Budget update that will be released on December 17.