Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s only comment on Wednesday came via Twitter where he wrote: “We need to listen very carefully to the concerns the Australian people have expressed at this election”.
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“We have won the election”, Mr Turnbull told reporters, noting that the Coalition has received around 800,000 more first preference votes than Labor.
However, to secure his hold on the next government, Turnbull has already begun negotiations with other players.
“Australia is our closest neighbour and biggest trading partner, and like Prime Minister Turnbull I believe our countries should work even more closely together”, Key said.
The government needs at least 76 seats to form a majority in the 150-seat chamber.
That means determining whether each person is entitled to a postal vote before taking the ballot papers out of each envelope and then conducting the count in batches of between 1000 and 2000.
While the politicians may be set to call the result the Australian Electoral Commission will have to wait days – possibly until the end of next week – to give an official result.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the government has sewn up 73 seats – three short of forming a majority government – while there are five seats in doubt.
“There’s been a number of years of fiscal slippage and its really time for the government to really step up and deliver on what it’s telling us”, Walker said.
“I remain confident that we will form a government, and we will unite the Parliament as far as we are able to”, said Mr Turnbull.
Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said her party needed to be ready for another election “sooner rather than later”, given the close result and potential for an unstable parliament.
The Townsville-based seat of Herbert is still line-ball with Labor ahead by just 302 votes with almost 7000 votes to be counted.
There were signs that the political instability after Saturday’s cliffhanger election was beginning to take its toll on the Australian economy, with Standard & Poor’s (S&P) cutting Australia’s credit rating outlook to negative from stable, threatening a downgrade of its coveted triple A status. “We hope to find common ground”, Xenophon told Guardian Australia on Friday night.
On Friday, the independents Cathy McGowan and Andrew Wilkie joined Bob Katter in backing Turnbull’s government on matters of supply and confidence.
The new member for the Sydney seat of Macarthur, Labor candidate Mike Freelander, said Turnbull’s rise to power may have impacted the election outcome.
In the 2013 election, the coalition had 90 seats and Labor had 55.
Of the six undetermined seats, five are held by the coalition while the AEC also had the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) with two seats.
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On Monday, Labor leader Bill Shorten urged the prime minister to resign, saying: “Mr Turnbull clearly doesn’t know what he is doing”.
