Professor Mirko Bagaric at Deakin University in Australia, writes that the trio who hold the balance of power in Australia represent strongly conservative areas.
Votes are in, the script is written for the Australian election outcome - Liberals in power; Labor into electoral oblivion.
Now that all the seats are settled (73 Coalition - 72 Labor) the Australian federal election can end only two ways. The three block independents (Oakeshott, Windsor and Katter) will
weld on to the Coalition to form a government. And Federal Labor will be consigned to electoral oblivion for the foreseeable future.
The block independents are shrewdly and responsibly keeping their options open to drive home the best bargain for the people of their electorates.
In the process they are gleefully taking the opportunity to settle some old scores by publicly ridiculing members of the National Party - the human condition is not built to let slip the opportunity of exacting revenge with impunity.
But don't for a moment be fooled by this public spat. In the end, the independents are all experienced, career politicians and are driven solely by power and self-interest, both of which command they join the Coalition.
Their electorates are strongly conservative rural areas. Putting Labor into power would jar the political wiring of their voters and if the rural or Australian economy dived in the next three years, they would be political roadkill at the next election.
And political roadkill is precisely the status of Federal Labor. A first-term government which goes to the polls with a gangbuster economy and a leader in a honeymoon period and gets rolled has serious deficits.
The problems with Labor are more acute than a few personality issues between present and former leaders and the occasional leak.
The Labor brand and ideology has been severely damaged by its inaction on the social and moral issues which it loudly and effectively trumpeted during the 2007 election. The Liberal Howard government was removed because of its supposed "toxicity".
Unpacked, this equated to its non-progressive and harsh stance on the environment, human rights and refugees.
Short steps on the Kyoto protocol, leaving accused terrorist David Hicks out to dry in Guantanamo Bay and images of refugees with sewn lips crushed the moral authority of the Howard government.
Labor, the self-proclaimed "kind party", had three years to fix these problems. It did nothing - in fact it made things worse on all fronts.
Labor didn't reduce greenhouses gases by a single inch during its three years in government. Instead of negating greenhouse emissions, Labor delivered what transpired to be highly flammable insulation. It locked in mandatory detention for refugees and swelled their numbers by removing temporary protection visas.
The Rudd government stood mute as Australian Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu was convicted in China in a trial process that made the military commission in Guantanamo Bay look like a defence lawyer's paradise.
It rejected a recommendation by its own committee to implement a human rights charter. In the process it rejected gay marriages, even when its new leader benefited from the modern attitudes displayed by Australians to other progressive (de facto) relationships.
The "kind party" morphed into the party ejected. But worse. It had become tainted with hypocrisy. It lost its ideology and credibility.
Labor failed to heed the undeniable truth that people judge governments on one criterion - outcomes.
The Rudd "I am working hard" mantra and the Gillard "I am an optimist" line were intellectually and politically barren.
Governments have unchecked power. They can do whatever they want. People rightly don't care about their intentions, sentiments or work ethic - there are no marks beyond primary school for effort.
The only thing that matters is the outcomes that governments deliver.
Labor's focus groups and faceless men failed to understand that the parents of most voters didn't raise them to be stupid. As a community, we see that Peoples' Assemblies and 1000 Minds Summits are merely code for political inaction and feebleness.
Now that the Liberals have denounced Workchoices there is no doctrinal room for Labor. The Liberals have the established economic track record. The Greens occupy the social and moral high ground.
Of course, there is a chance that the three block independents might be so spiteful to consign Australia to political, social and economic infirmity for three more years by anointing Labor. That would mean their political irrelevance, as well as the further unravelling of Labor.
It would also defy the laws of human nature, so don't bet on it.
Self-interest rarely comes second - and almost never in politics.
