Rob Oakeshott now says that he would like a Liberal as speaker. This is surely a disingenuous position. It’s payback for the Liberals being more aggressive in not wanting him as speaker than Labor.

If the Liberals supplied the speaker that would put them one further vote away from government, unless they were to accept a pairing arrangement, which presumably they won’t now.

I don’t know that his fellow independents will be happy with this move.

While everyone said after the last election that they wanted “stable government”, what they really wanted was unstable government.  That enhances the independents own position.

I found it interesting that the three country independents split two to the ALP and one to the Coalition. It may have reflected the politics in their own electorates, but I suspect it more reflected their need to make the government as unstable as possible.

Splitting two to one in favour of the electorally weaker of the two major parties put them in a position to deal ambidextrously with either side.

Putting a Liberal in as speaker negates the contribution that Bob Katter made to the instability of government by deciding to back the Coalition.  He in particular wouldn’t be happy with Oakeshott.