It's different than that - calling an election has always been the Queen/Governor General's only real power in this situation, that bit is not new. What's a big

It's different than that - calling an election has always been the Queen/Governor General's only real power in this situation, that bit is not new. What's a big deal now is that Kerr and the Queen were going to do it because it COULD happen, not because it WAS happening. Minority governments, with confidence and supply agreements from minor parties (or not) are not uncommon in the world, but they're obviously not as stable ... but in an English (and commonwealth) parliamentary democracy it takes a loss of confidence (a majority vote of no-confidence in the parliament), or loss of supply (the inability to fund government) for the head of state to force an election