When Australians cast their votes in May, few would have anticipated the result would lay the groundwork for what may be a future political system restructure.
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Though Labor is governing the next term with a majority, declining support for the major parties has accelerated - Labor at under 33 per cent is the lowest since 1934, and the Coalition at under 36 per cent is the lowest since 1946.
Meanwhile, a record showing from the Greens of four lower house MPs and 12 senators, and the loss of six Liberal heartland seats to independents suggests a multi-party system could soon be on the country's horizon.
What is a multi-party system?
As the name indicates, a multi-party system is a political system where more than two parties have the capacity to gain government.
It normally comes about when no party is able to win majority support and parties are required to govern as coalitions - sometimes with those across the political divide.
How do they work in other countries?
A country often recognised for its collaborative politics is Germany.
Monash University politics lecturer Ben Wellings said the European nation has had multiple coalition governments consisting of opposition parties.
"For much of the post-war period, there have been coalitions between the two main parties," he said.
"The equivalent [in Australia] would be a Labor and Liberal governing coalition."
Dr Wellings said multi-party systems were "totally normal" in the German Bundestag parliament with political parties often linked with colours, and coalitions named according to colour combinations.
The government formed after Germany's 2021 election, composing of the centre-left Social Democratic Party, centre-right Free Democratic Party and left-wing Greens, is nicknamed the 'traffic light coalition'.
For political systems comparable to Australia, Dr Wellings said the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand have also been led by multi-party governments.
"All of these have experienced some kind of volatility, in terms of their electoral support over the last 10 years, as well as actual decline, for their major parties," he said.
He said support for minor parties often came at the expense of the political centre.
The UK has seen large dips in centre-right Conservative and centre-left Labour party support over the past decade.
From 2010 to 2015, the Conservatives shared government with centrists Liberal Democrats because they did not have a clear majority.
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Canada has had 14 minority governments in its parliamentary history. The latest has seen Justin Trudeau's centre-left Liberal Party make a confidence-and-supply agreement with the left-wing New Democratic Party.
For New Zealand, coalitions are the norm. Jacinda Ardern's centre-left Labour Party formed government with left-wing Greens after the country's 2020 election despite winning enough seats to govern alone.
The agreement was made to bring stability to government, Ms Ardern said.
Dr Wellings said people's desire for alternatives or better representation in politics drove the formation of many multi-party systems abroad.
"These can sometimes be alternative parties," he said.
"What's distinctive about the Australian election was not the emergence of political parties... but the emergence of independent candidates.
"That's the Australian manifestation of what we see in other jurisdictions."
How do minority governments stack up against majority ruling?
The jury is still out on this.
Dr Wellings said the performance of minority governments depended on a country's "political culture".
"If the parties decide that there will be chaos, there will be chaos," he said.
But Dr Wellings said many minority governments abroad, including the 2010 UK coalition, performed just as well as single-party majority governments.
"Legislation got passed. Jobs got done," he said.
"I don't think in terms of effectiveness, it's much different.
"Even if we went back to the Australian Parliament of the 2010s, it didn't get much less done than any other government."
The Gillard-Rudd Labor minority government from 2010 to 2013 passed the second-most legislation proportionally to bills introduced to parliament on record.
But Australian National University political scientist Marija Taflaga said Australia's first minority government in almost 70 years was not free of trade offs and unrest.
"It was ferocious because the [Liberal] opposition chose to use the opportunity structure that the parliament gave them to maximum effect," she said.
"The crossbench didn't actually really restrain the opposition at all during that parliament."
She said this allowed the Tony Abbott-led opposition a "free kick to make the place look unmanageable" as debate could not be shut down.
Dr Taflaga said issues then Prime Minister Julia Gillard had with Labor MP Craig Thomson moving to the crossbench, and electing Liberal MP Peter Slipper to the speaker position - who was later embroiled in multiple scandals - were also pitfalls of the minority government.
"That is what's created the sense of utter chaos," she said.
"Not enough on the crossbench would support the government's Malaysia [refugee] solution, and that contributed to the government's inability to seem like they could resolve a salient issue.
"Whilst the government was successful in getting through an enormous amount of its legislative program in that government... just because you pass a lot of stuff doesn't mean that it's all good."
For Dr Taflaga, other problems with multi-party systems included not knowing who was to blame when things went wrong in government.
"When you do have coalition governments, it can be less clear as to who is actually responsible for policy failures," she said.
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Dr Taflaga said the 2010 UK coalition agreement led to the Liberal Democrats being condemned for budget cuts and austerity measures engaged by the Conservatives.
She said coalitions being broken to maximise appeal to voter bases in countries like Italy and Israel were also issues for multi-party governments.
"If people are breaking the government because they want to make a point, and then the government can't do something or caves, who's actually to blame - the senior coalition partner or the defectors?," she said.
Italy has been plunged into two government crises in the past three years after junior coalition groups pulled their support from multi-party governments in 2019 and 2021.
Israel has also teetered on the edge of political turmoil twice this year with members of its coalition of eight parties defecting or threatening to defect from government. The Israeli coalition was formed after four snap elections in two years failed to form a majority.
However, Dr Taflaga said the fragile governments in these countries were more a reflection of the instability in their societies than in the voting system.
"Italy had a situation where it had a powerful communist party, and it had internal terrorism related to that. It's had problems with systemic corruption, and still does," she said.
"Israel's politics are complicated because it's got the situation with Palestine.
"If you have those sources of instability in your society, you're going to have some degree of instability in your politics."
Will Australia soon become a multi-party system?
In the next election, Labor would only have to lose two seats to be forced into a minority government.
A loss of these seats to minor parties or independents, and the Coalition's likely difficult path to form its own majority, means a multi-party system could be around the corner.
Though, it could be argued that Australia is already governed by a multi-party system in the Senate which has not had a majority since 2007.
Given governments must negotiate with minor parties and independents in the upper house to pass law, the country may be more accustomed to multi-party governance than it realises.
Despite Labor's majority, Dr Taflaga said she also suspects there will be greater collaboration with the crossbench in the coming parliament than previous ones.
"Australian society has evolved," she said.
"I wouldn't be surprised if a much larger crossbench had broader views around what they might want to achieve.
"Labor probably will liberalise the rules to be a little less favourable to the government because that's typically what they tend to do - they value parliament and its power and institutions."
