MALCOLM TURNBULL, the fifth Australian prime minister in a decade, urged voters to help end the country’s political churn by delivering “strong, stable majority government” when they cast their ballots in the general election on July 2nd. Australians seem resolutely to have ignored him.
With almost three-quarters of the vote counted, the opposition Labor party was slightly ahead of Mr Turnbull’s conservative Liberal-National coalition. Australia faces the likelihood of a hung parliament, with various independents holding the balance of power.
It was hardly the triumphant occasion Mr Turnbull had anticipated. Nonetheless, he told party loyalists in a boisterous speech in the early hours of Sunday morning that they could have “every confidence that we will form a coalition majority government in the next parliament”.
But the results so far paint a more complicated picture. The government entered the campaign with 89 seats, giving it a 14-seat majority in the 150-seat in the lower house, the House of Representatives. When counting was adjourned at the weekend, it had won just 67 lower house seats, nine short of a majority,...Continue reading
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