End of certainty: Why Andrew Barr's job just became a whole lot harder

Try as he may to put a brave face on it, the ACT's Chief Minister has had a very public epiphany.

The task of running a government in the territory just got significantly harder, probably for everyone and likely forever.

The Greens' abandonment of any formal agreement underpinning Labor's hold on power plunges the Legislative Assembly into a new era of uncertainty, going well beyond the accepted vagaries of governing in minority.

Now more than ever, no vote, no budget, no ministerial regulation, no significant appointment, no norms or conventions that keep an executive or a parliament ticking along can necessarily be relied on.

The political mood within the 25-member assembly is shifting to match rising community angst about how governments work, or don't.

It's a sign of the times, and Andrew Barr knows it.

Traditional voting blocs are breaking up and, he concedes, the Assembly's "operating a lot more like the Australian Senate" these days.

"I can't foresee any situation, certainly for the rest of my lifetime, given where politics is in Australia, that any one party would have a majority in a parliament elected by proportional representation,"he said.

"In fact, if anything, what we're seeing is a further fragmentation. So we're likely to see more parties and more independents elected to parliaments, rather than one party dominating."

In his 20 years in the Assembly, Barr has only ever known governments supported by either formal power sharing or a matrix of supply and confidence agreements, both guaranteeing the flow of money needed and protecting against spurious claims of malfeasance.

At their best, those arrangements were struck and maintained because elected representatives cooperated with a measure of goodwill and trust.

But the future the Chief Minister now peers into may not be as kind or cooperative, even in the remaining two years of the current assembly, which doesn't bode well for Labor's continued grip on power after a quarter of a century.

Opposition leader Mark Parton is already fuelling the possibility of more turbulent times and tactics, refusing to rule out further motions of no confidence.

"If this government makes a false step, they will tread on a mine ... and it could potentially get explosive," the Liberal leader predicted soon after the Greens-Labor agreement imploded.

Just as Barr believes a majority government is unlikely to ever again be returned in Canberra, it's equally doubtful the appetite for supply and confidence agreements will come back either.

In a hypothetical future assembly, in which, say, One Nation displaced a few Liberal representatives, a tired ALP was returned with fewer members and a kaleidoscope of crossbenchers filled the rest of the chamber, competitive tensions would snuff out such quaint cooperative arrangements.

All of which probably means the now complete estrangement of the Labor-Greens relationship is the 'new normal' for the territory's democracy.

Survival — it's all in the numbers

So, can a stable, functioning government last through the remainder of this term or any future full four-year electoral cycle without any cross-party assurances?

At least on the current maths of the assembly, Andrew Barr seems to think so.

In a parliament where the magic number of votes needed to pass anything is 13, the Chief Minister recognises the difference between Labor maintaining control and an abject series of defeats is usually only three votes.

Exuding confidence after a setback he'd sought to avoid, Barr still thinks he can find the necessary votes to carry through his agenda, as if nothing has changed.

"Amongst the seven crossbenchers, I'll seek to get three votes. I like my chances there," he said.

"We're the government, so we need to find different dancing partners to do that (pass legislation) on different issues."

True, the iron laws of arithmetic are unchanged for the Chief Minister.

But when crunching numbers, the reality now is that division will feature more often than simple addition.

Deft political management and constant communication, which can be exhausting as well as exasperating, will become prerequisites for everything.

Even then, success can't be guaranteed on any measure, especially not the tough ones to stop the rot in the territory's finances.

Greens leader Jo Clay is so far going out of her way to promote her party's record as "constructive players" who are "not looking to form government with anybody else this term," while also "looking forward" to working with Mark Parton and the Liberals.

Cold comfort for Andrew Barr this spring.

His job just became a whole lot harder.