Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Tuesday dismissed calls for him to resign after the weekend’s election that failed to produce a clear victor and raised the prospect of a hung parliament.
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A source said this did not automatically mean the Coalition, if it formed government, would reverse the cuts it has made to Medicare, but Labor leader Bill Shorten said if Mr Turnbull were serious he would reverse the $2.4 billion freeze on the Medicare rebate paid to Global Positioning System and not proceed with $884 million in cuts to bulk-billing incentives for pathology and radiology.
Conservative finger-pointing is now happening inside and outside the Liberal Party, with firebrand senator Cory Bernardi questioning Mr Turnbull’s performance and commentator Andrew Bolt also calling for him to quit.
Turnbull is the country’s fourth leader since 2013 after he ousted fellow Liberal Tony Abbott as prime minister in a party coup last September.
Turnbull’s disastrous polling has led to attacks from inside and outside his party after he gambled and called elections in both houses of parliament in an attempt to settle a querulous upper house Senate. He said he had taken “absolutely full responsibility for the campaign”, but in the next breath criticised Labor for its claims that a Liberal government would privatise Medicare. He has delivered instability …
The major parties need 76 seats to form a majority government in the House of Representatives.
But while Mr Shorten quickly denied it was the source of success for his party, he said the move, by Queensland Labor, wasn’t part of a national campaign. He has made a bad situation worse. Senator Nick Xenophon is positioning himself as the new parliamentary kingmaker, signalling he is prepared to enter some form of minority government agreement with either Turnbull or Shorten.
“There is no doubt that Labour cynically abused the trust of Australians by lying to them about this”, Mr Turnbull said, referring to Labour’s suggestion that the government planned to privatise Medicare.
“Mr Turnbull clearly doesn’t know what he is doing”, said Mr Shorten yesterday.
It suffered a swing of about 3.7 per cent and will struggle to win a majority in the 150-member Lower House, with counting to resume today.
Attorney-General George Brandis said the Coalition remained “quietly confident” it could secure a “working majority” in the Lower House. The electoral commission said it may take up to a month.
Launching a stinging rebuke, Mr Shorten likened Mr Turnbull’s position to that of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who called a referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union – which he effectively lost – and subsequently announced his resignation.
“You don’t get that sort of election result that we’ve just had, I think, and then face a leadership challenge”, he told ABC radio on Tuesday.
“The Australian people have voted, and we respect the result”, he said.
“In terms of stability in politics I think there is a very strong desire from the public to have that, and they don’t want three prime ministers in three years, or six prime ministers in six years”, he said. “But we won’t compromise our principles”.
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Speaking to reporters outside his Sydney home, he said ‘the count is continuing, we remain confident we will secure enough seats to have a majority in the parliament’. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
