The Coalition now looks likely to hold 76 seats in the 150-seat lower house, as postal votes and recounts of existing votes have favoured Liberal and National candidates over Labor.
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Despite the uncertainty, Green said he expected a final election result to be known before the weekend.
That point was rammed home by Labor leader Bill Shorten, who acknowledged the coalition would most likely win, but “with a diminished authority, diminished mandate and a very divided political party”.
“There is no doubt that Labor cynically abused the trust of Australians by lying to them about this”, Turnbull said, referring to Labor’s suggestion that the government planned to privatise Medicare.
“When you’ve got five doubtful (seats), the coalition could get to 77 but 75 is more likely”. That government, led by Julia Gillard, not only committed Australia to the U.S. military “pivot” to Asia against China, including the basing of U.S. marines in Darwin, but cut public spending by the greatest amount in history in 2012-13.
With 10 of the 15 million votes now counted, the Coalition is edging towards retaining government by a slim majority.
Mr Shorten, who welcomed newly elected Labor MPs into the federal caucus on Friday, said he didn’t expect the new parliament to last long.
“Australians have voted, we respect their decision, there are many lessons in that election for all of us”, Turnbull told reporters in Melbourne, reprimanding his industry minister, Christopher Pyne, who appeared to celebrate prematurely when he described the coalition as an “election-winning machine”.
The major parties need 76 seats to form a majority government.
Bob Katter also told Guardian Australia on Friday night that he had made it absolutely clear to the prime minister that his guarantee of support was conditional on Turnbull proceeding with his wish list, which includes two big irrigation projects in north Queensland, a rail line into the Galilee Basin, a canal and land tenure rights for Indigenous Australians in Cape York.
He comes from the moderate wing of his party and rolled (to use the Australian vernacular) Tony Abbott from the dominant right of the party.
Seven independents were elected, and minor parties took five seats in the parliament.
“While maintaining my complete independence, I am prepared to contribute to the stability of the 45th parliament by continuing with my past practice of supporting the government of the day”, Ms McGowan said.
– smh.com.au (@smh) July 5, 2016 The latest on the election: What’s @AntonyGreenABC saying?
A senior political source within the Nationals party said on Monday that Turnbull’s coalition partner did not blame him for the “disappointing” showing but acknowledged rumblings about the prime minister’s future.
Attorney-General George Brandis has warned his colleagues that sniping at Turnbull threatens to undermine the prime minister’s ability to bargain with those very independents.
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Chief analyst Antony Green said a coalition majority government remained a possibility and that Labor would win fewer seats.
