Embattled Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull defended his performance after widespread calls for his resignation and said on Tuesday he was confident of retaining office after vote counting resumed in a cliffhanger election.
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A hung parliament would force the Liberals and Labor to try to strike alliances with independent and minor party politicians in a bid to form a minority government.
Financial markets recovered an initial post-election wobble on Monday, but three global credit rating agencies have put whoever forms government on notice.
But critics have said Turnbull ran a lazy campaign and Labor leader Bill Shorten called on the prime minister to resign, saying Turnbull used the U.K.’s vote on leaving the European Union as a scare-tactic to encourage Australia not to change government.
Turnbull’s disastrous polling at Saturday’s election has led to attacks from inside and outside his party, as the political stability he had sought with an early election evaporated with a wave of independents winning office.
“Whichever party forms the government, the lack of a strong majority (or maybe governing from minority) is likely to make a reform agenda more hard”, Paul Bloxham, HSBC’s chief economist for Australia and New Zealand, summed up. “Quite frankly, I think he should quit”, Shorten told reporters in Sydney.
“With our agenda we look forward to working with people, because we know that Australians are interested in what Labor was talking about in this election”, he says.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the right wing of the Liberal Party was fully behind the Prime Minister.
“Before even the votes are counted, we’re being fed the line that a snap poll could be a result of this”.
That volatility is the new norm in modern politics, with many voters unwilling to commit to either major party, said Rodney Smith, professor of Australian politics at the University of Sydney.
Unstable government has been the norm in Australia ever since Julia Gillard deposed her Labor colleague, Kevin Rudd, during his first term as prime minister in 2010. Turnbull said on Sunday that he believes he will obtain the 76 seats needed to govern in the 150-seat house and said he has contacted independents in the event of needing to form a coalition.
Small parties are also likely to do well in the Senate, with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation on track to win between two and four seats, marking the return of the right-wing anti-immigration activist to parliament after an nearly 20-year absence.
Xenophon had been his party’s lone senator for South Australia state.
Shorten did not speculate on a Labor victory, but celebrated the strong swing to his party just three years after it was convincingly dumped from power in the last election. Hanson’s party has had no representative in Parliament since she was voted out in 1998. Independence parties, including the Greens, are expected to win a significant number of seats, particularly in the Senate where they can potentially hold a balance of power. Despite a host of coalition MPs being dumped, Turnbull insisted he remained “quietly confident” while admitting to a flurry of phone calls in a scramble to broker deals with lawmakers he may need onside to retain office. But with officials warning that the victor may not be known for days, if not weeks, many were left wondering: What, exactly, is taking so long? His own party knows he is not up to the job, the Australian people know he is out of touch…
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But, whether as a outcome of Mr Shorten’s relentless attacks or because of an actual internal threat, it is Mr Turnbull who appears wounded and in the gravest danger.
