Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday rejected a quick return to the polls and promised a “new political landscape” after inconclusive elections prompted the biggest upheaval in decades.
Gillard pledged a number of parliamentary reforms if returned to office after voters produced the first hung parliament since 1940, leaving the main parties vying for the support of independents to form a majority.
“Some say this situation is all too difficult and we should just return to the polls. I disagree,” Gillard told the National Press Club in Canberra, in her first major speech since the Aug. 21 election weekend.
“The Australian people have voted for this parliament and our job is to make it work,” she said.
As final vote-counting continues, neither Gillard’s left-leaning Labor party nor the conservative Liberal/National coalition are able to reach the 76 seats needed for a majority, with both relying on the backing of cross-benchers.
The lone Greens MP is expected to side with Labor, while the main bloc of three independents will start formal talks later this week. A fourth independent is set to reveal his decision within days.
The stalemate has already left politics in limbo for 10 days in the worst crisis since the British queen’s representative sacked an elected prime minister in 1975, although financial markets have so far shrugged off the impasse.
Australia could be set for another election if neither side can muster a majority, while experts warn that a government with only a fragile advantage in parliament would be vulnerable and prone to collapse.
The events cap off a rollercoaster few months for Australia after Gillard staged a sudden party revolt against elected prime minister Kevin Rudd in June to become the country’s first woman leader.
The Welsh-born lawyer then banked on a honeymoon period to call quick polls, but a woeful campaign ended with voters swinging largely to the Greens, putting Labor in peril of becoming the only one-term government since World War II.
Gillard said Australia now needs “stability, continuity and certainty,” and echoed the three-man “kingmakers” bloc by calling for an end to the lower house’s traditional two-party dogfights.
“Australia’s new political landscape requires a government that can find new ways to develop policy and establish consensus around the major issues that come before the next parliament,” Gillard said.
“Because if the new government doesn’t find new ways to establish consensus and parliamentary support then we will have gridlock and we will quickly look more like Washington than Westminster,” she said.
She pledged parliamentary reforms, such as time-limits on answers during question time, better debate over matters brought by private members and fair access for all MPs to parliament’s resources.
However, she also used her speech to trumpet Labor’s economic record and leveled scathing criticism at the coalition, led by Tony Abbott, in an immediate return to familiar sniping.
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