Europe offers lessons for Australian parties uneasy at the prospect of having to talk to each other

In the same week as Malcolm Turnbull called the 2016 Australian election, another conservative leader on the other side of the world did what his Australian counterpart has been saying he will never do. Thomas Strobl, chairman of the Christian Democrats in the dynamic high-tech southern state of Baden-Württemberg, agreed to join with the Greens in a coalition government.

It wasn’t too much of a shock. Coalitions between the Greens and the Christian Democrats – Germany’s version of Australia’s Liberal Party – are not new in German states and cities. Indeed, there’s a successful one across the border in the state of Hesse, which includes Germany’s financial capital, Frankfurt. What made Baden-Württemberg different was that the Christian Democrats were joining as the junior partner in a government led by the Greens.

Surely it will be an unstable coalition – a caravan of chaos, as Scott Morrison warns us?

Probably not, for governments in Germany are almost always formed by coalitions between political rivals. It’s like that in much of Europe. It’s like that in New Zealand. And there are lessons that all parties in Australia should learn from them…

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