Climate change also widens the political split between the large mineral states and the others and creates a split within voters in each state. The nation is already a huge producer of coal, both for its own electricity and for the making of electricity, steel and other products in South and East Asia. But coal, though very cheap, increases pollution. Australia has the world's largest reserves of high-grade uranium but Labor's policy restricts its mining for export and officially bans the generation of electricity from nuclear reactors on its own soil. Oddly, global warming is declared by Labor and the Greens to be the supreme "moral challenge", but they ban a major solution to that challenge — generating electricity from nuclear power.  

For the sake of democracy, it would have been wise to make climate change one of the election issues, but Gillard announced that her policy was close to Abbott's. Therefore it ceased to be an election issue. Some weeks after the election, Gillard announced that her policy would be stricter than Abbott's, because of Labor's forced alliance with the Greens. So the hung parliament in Canberra has given her a lot of rope with which to hang herself.

To heighten the political complexity, Australia has an unusual proportion of thinkers — and eccentrics, too — who accept that the world's temperatures are increasing but who dispute the likely degree of future warming causes and consequences. Australia's climate history does not always match the knowledge blindly borrowed from the other side of the equator. Tony Abbott and most members of the Liberal-National coalition do not share Labor's diagnoses of climate change, let alone the Greens' doomsday view. 

In all the excitement about a divided parliament, one principle is overlooked. Gillard's last-minute deals with the Greens and the Independents are vital for her survival, but they might well undermine democracy. Where are the voices speaking on behalf of Australia's long-standing democracy? 

The carbon and mining taxes divided Australia into two hostile territories. Towards these opposing groups, Gillard made clear-cut promises from which she has since crept away. Therefore the key principle of democracy is at stake. Are the voters really supreme on the one day that is important for them — the day of the election? Or are they to be extinguished by the post-election bartering, in which the PM is the main dealer? The same dilemma may reappear in Britain if it adopts a new electoral system, especially one, such as the Alternative Vote, that empowers third parties.

It is true that Gillard is new to office. Her difficulties are acute. But within two months of the election, she trampled on two of her major promises. She may try to redeem her failure by initiating a national referendum to approve any legislative changes on the mining and carbon taxes. Australia has a stronger tradition than Britain of invoking a referendum to solve controversial matters, but such a solution has its dangers. All these events constitute a minefield, which Britain should examine in its own interests. After all, it has to wait five years, not three, before its voters can rectify, if they so wish, a previous injustice.