It's funny how current events can remind you of past ones. When Israel's election delivered an unclear result yesterday my mind immediately time-travelled back to September 7, 2010 and our own political landscape here in Australia.

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On that day, we were glued to the TV to see whether one person would side with Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott. His decision would determine if Australia was to have a Liberal or Labor government because neither party had secured enough votes to govern in its own right.

For 17 excruciating minutes the member for Lyne explained the reasoning for his decision before revealing what it was. Coincidentally, the independent had himself endured 17 days of being relentlessly courted by Gillard and Abbott and pressured by various interest groups before making up his mind.

It seemed to take an eternity for Oakeshott to make up his mind and another eternity for him to tell Australia which way he'd go. And for the rest of his political career he was known as 17-minute Rob.

If we sweated at the time, imagine what Israel faces over the next few weeks, possibly months with neither Likud or the main opposition bloc gaining enough seats in the Knesset to govern in its own right. If protracted horse trading doesn't deliver a functioning coalition government, Israeli voters might find themselves enduring yet another election.

Watching this play out yesterday, I felt a renewed fondness for the two-party system that's evolved in Australia and which, generally speaking, delivers clean election results. In our 125 years as a nation, minority governments have been rare. We saw them briefly in the decade immediately after Federation, again in the early 1940s and, of course, under Julia Gillard from 2010 to 2013.

Israel's multi-party system relies on coalitions, often comprising extremists. Benjamin Netanyahu and his main rival Gadi Eisenkot are now in the awkward position of having to negotiate with the Arab Israeli parties, which have secured enough seats to act as kingmakers. It's awkward because Netanyahu and Eisenkot have both said they want nothing to do with them.

There's a lesson in all this for Australia. The emergence of One Nation has put our two-party system on notice. If Labor and the Liberal-National coalition keep bleeding support, it's conceivable we end up in a situation similar to Israel - with no clear winner, an agonising wait for an........

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