At around two o'clock on Tuesday Sacha got wind that something might be happening in Parliament House, in Canberra. At two-thirty she checked into A.B.C. radio online on the sly - sure that there was probably a computer somewhere logging all the websites people in the office visited - and opened up the page for NewsRadio. They were reporting in-depth and at length on Bob Katter's announcement that he would be supporting the Coalition, backing them to form government. It was more than two weeks after the election and there was still no government.

Sacha turned the volume down on her computer in case any of her colleagues should hear the news and get excited. She couldn't bear their crowing. Personally she didn't know what to make of the news: did it mean that the other two country independents who were set to decide who would form government were going to back the Liberal-National Coalition? Or did it indicate that Bob Katter had broken ranks with them? The only thing Sacha found out for sure was that at three o'clock Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott would be holding a press conference.

Tony Windsor was admirably to the point and brief in affirming that he'd be supporting Labor. Sacha didn't think so at the time, she thought he was taking forever, but that was before Rob Oakeshott took his turn.

Optimistically, Sacha had supposed that the whole thing might be talked out and wrapped up by ten past three; quarter past, at the latest. At around three thirty-five Rob Oakeshott finally said the words 'Julia Gillard', and finally the nation knew. By that stage Sacha had stopped working: everything had slowed and then stopped as she leaned closer and closer in to the computer speakers, and every painful minute that crawled past the endless flow of Oakeshott's rambling words pushed her fingers further from the keyboard: she didn't dare make a sound, in case she should miss a word, the vital word. It was impossible to know when it might come. Sacha could start to see why both Labor and the Coalition had so readily agreed to the independents' demands to put a time-limit on answers in Parliamentary Question Time.

But in the end it didn't matter. Sacha's fingers were cramping from being crossed for twenty minutes, her glasses were sliding down her nose and she didn't make a move to push them back up, but in the end it didn't matter: she heard what she wanted to hear. Labor would form government.

She swallowed the jubilant yelp in her throat. Her colleagues would not appreciate it.