A minority government has been formed by a Melbourne and Sydney-based Labor Party in agreements with two bush independents in NSW, a Hobart-based independent and a Greens MP in Melbourne.

Staring across the dispatch box will be an opposition that relies on the mining states of Queensland and Western Australia for its sense of purpose.

The mining states and voters aged 50-plus will feel most alienated by yesterday’s resolution to the hung parliament.

They voted in stronger numbers for the Coalition than the rest of the nation did for Labor.

This is not to diminish Labor’s authority because a minority Coalition government would have faced the same contradiction at the other end of the nation’s fractured demography because the southern states and young people voted overwhelmingly for Labor or the Greens.

The numbers on the floor for Julia Gillard have no precedent in the deregulation era because they come at the expense of Queensland.

The last federal election where Queensland was on the wrong side of the national result by delivering more seats to the opposition than the government was in 1984.

In every election between 1987 and 2007, the sunshine state picked the winner.

There are almost as many quirks in the parliament as there are members.

Gillard’s is the first government in history that didn’t carry a majority north of the Murray River.