Chief analyst Antony Green said a coalition majority government remained a possibility and that Labor would win fewer seats. The opposition Labor Party had 66 seats. Turnbull was traveling to Australia’s remote northeast for talks Thursday, July 7 with maverick independent lawmaker Bob Katter to discuss what demands Katter might make in return for supporting a minority government if the count ended with only Australia’s third hung parliament in more than a century.
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He told ABC Radio that Malcolm Turnbull “will continue as Prime Minister” and it was now “simply a matter of whether they have got a majority or not”.
When he appeared on Nine’s Today Show, Mr Pyne said the Coalition had won, after being told the government had not won a “resounding” victory, if indeed it took power.
Three independents had pledged to support the coalition to form a government by a two-seat majority in 150-member parliament, it said.
Labor leader Bill Shorten said on Friday the coalition is likely to “scrape over the line”.
The Australia dollar fell half a U.S. cent after S&P’s announcement, which cited concerns the coalition government would be hampered in its plans to return to budget surplus as it struggles to form a majority government. “We want the parliament to work”.
Government by negotiation in the face of warnings that Australia’s AAA credit rating may be downgraded may actually assist Mr Turnbull to develop a consensus form of government with the cross bench.
It is now clear the Coalition has retained the Brisbane seat of Forde after incumbent Bert van Manen’s lead grew from 783 votes to 915 with just 2500 left to count.
Even so senior Liberal Arthur Sinodinos said the coalition has more primary votes than Labor and is confident of ending up ahead on the two-party preferred basis.
He said the more he was out in his electorate door-knocking, “the more of a disconnect I sensed between the voters and what we were campaigning on”.
The Labor leader said the opposition would “respect the judgment of the people and be true to our policies and propositions upon which we sought the support which we received”. Mail-in and absentee votes that were being counted days after the weekend poll are favouring the conservatives.
Either way, the election has raised questions about Turnbull’s leadership, and left him without a strong mandate for much-needed economic and fiscal reforms.
Turnbull’s disastrous polling has led to attacks from inside and outside his party after he called elections in both houses of parliament in an attempt to settle a querulous upper house Senate that had repeatedly blocked industrial relations bills.
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Despite protestations to the contrary from Turnbull, Economou maintains that Labor was “justified” in its attack as it harks back to a series of decisions in the 2014 budget of former Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abbott, which fostered anxiety about the coalition’s historic hostility towards state healthcare.
