The leaders of Australia’s two major political parties began negotiating power deals with independent lawmakers yesterday after the nation’s closest election in decades failed to deliver a clear mandate to govern.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who remains caretaker leader, said it was clear that no party had won a majority of parliamentary seats in Saturday’s poll that delivered an extraordinary voter backlash against her center-left Labor Party after a single three-year term.
Market analysts predicted the uncertainty would push the Australian dollar and stock market lower when trading resumes today.
Labor hemorrhaged votes to the environment-focused Greens party as the government was punished for shelving plans to charge major polluting industries for every tonne of carbon they emit.
Gillard and Tony Abbott, leader of the conservative Liberal Party, said they had initiated talks with three independents in the House of Representatives, as well as the Greens, in a bid to secure their votes in the House of Representatives. Neither revealed what they were prepared to offer in the confidential negotiations.
Both Labor and the Liberal-led coalition have conceded that neither is likely to hold the 76 seats needed to form a government in the 150-seat lower chamber.
“It’s my intention to negotiate in good faith an effective agreement to form government,” Gillard told reporters.
She suggested that Labor would be better able to get its legislative agenda through the Senate, where major parties rarely hold majorities. The Greens’ record support in the polls increased the party’s Senate seats from five to nine, giving them the leverage to become kingmaker in deciding which major party controls that chamber.
“So the question before all of us is this: Which party is better able to form a stable and effective government in the national interest?” Gillard asked.
Abbott, who doubts the science behind climate change and rules out ever taxing polluters for their greenhouse gas emissions, said Labor had proved unstable even with a clear majority.
Bitter recriminations within Labor over the election result have begun, with at least one lawmaker who lost her seat blaming her colleagues’ dumping of former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd for Gillard.
Some lawmakers have blamed the result on a series of damaging media leaks against Gillard during the election campaign which are suspected to be the work of disgruntled Rudd loyalists.
“It’s certain that any Labor government emerging from yesterday will be chronically divided and dysfunctional,” Abbott said.
Independent Tony Windsor said he planned to talk with fellow independents Bob Katter and Rob Oakeshott yesterday to decide whether to negotiate a power deal as a group or individually.
They were the only independents in the last parliament and are former members of the Nationals party, which is a coalition partner of the Liberals, but all have said they are open to supporting a Labor minority government.
“Whichever side it is, we need to have some stability and maintenance of stability so that the government can actually work,” Windsor said.
“We might end up back at the polls,” he added, referring to the possibility of another election if a pact cannot be negotiated.
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