A session is judged by what clears in its closing fortnight, and this one enters its final stretch with the table crowded. Committee reports are due, the money-bill machinery for the coming fiscal choices is queued, and the file that will define the session's legacy sits above them all.
The delimitation committee is the weightiest of them. Having established that the census machinery is ready, the debate has narrowed to the terms on which a population-faithful redraw is fair — a political bargain, not a statistical one, and the harder for it.
The government's floor management has shown a talent for splitting reluctant allies from outright opponents, and the closing weeks are where that skill is tested against a thin majority spent on structural law rather than banked.
The opposition, for its part, must decide whether its internal divide on how hard to fight resolves into a coherent position or a scattered one. The gavel's timing is strategy on both sides. We sit through all of it, on our politics desk.
