Australian PM declares victory in tight election
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared victory for the ruling conservatives after the Labor party conceded defeat despite early counting results swinging in their favour.
But Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry boss James Pearson says all parts of the 10-year tax plan that would take the company rate to 25 per cent must stay in place.
Either way, Turnbull faces a rough road ahead with a divided party, a splintered Senate and a politically tired public that has endured five changes of prime minister in as many years.
The post-mortems will continue for a while, and the ways in which the Coalition reacts to its poor showing at the polls may well be a major factor in its performance as a government.
He added that Shorten was seeking to reach common ground, and Turnbull welcomed the initiative.
Expressing her views on Turnbull’s narrow win, Environmental Scientist, Jules Wright, said, “it’s not exactly unexpected but I think he’s actually been given a bit of a shock that, you know, it wasn’t a landslide and this is not us saying “you can do what you want”.
The Liberal-National coalition still remains short of the 76 seats it needs to claim a majority in the lower house, the House of Representatives.
Shorten publicly conceded defeat at a press conference where he acknowledged the Coalition government had a “mandate” to pursue its political agenda. It could take weeks to determine the final tally.
He will have to replace at least two junior frontbenchers, Wyatt Roy and Peter Hendy, who lost their lower house seats, and possibly Tourism Minister Richard Colbeck who could lose his Tasmanian senate seat. If that happens, Turnbull’s coalition will forge an alliance with independent and minor party lawmakers to form a minority government.
Independent MP Bob Katter has already indicated that he will withdraw his support from the government if it engages in what he sees as “union bashing”. The government went into the election with a comfortable majority of 90 seats and few had predicted it would suffer such steep losses. Critics have questioned whether he can hang onto his job, or whether he will face a leadership challenge from colleagues unhappy with the party’s weak result.
The central Queensland seats were retained by National Party MPs Ken O’Dowd and Michelle Landry.
However, a patchwork Senate with minor party and independent members holding the balance of power is likely to frustrate his efforts to get laws passed without deals.
Moody’s said such a scenario would be “credit negative”, echoing S&P’s decision last week to cut Australia’s credit rating outlook to negative from stable, threatening a downgrade of its coveted triple A status.
The election was one of the closest in 50 years.
“I hope for the nation’s sake that the Coalition does a good job.”
So basically Australia has a slight delay in officially appointing our Prime Minister, because our system of constitutional monarchy means the Queen’s representative has to swear them in, but the Queen’s rep is too busy celebrating the brutal deposition of the French monarchy back in the 1700’s. Four different leaders have served since 2013 as parties removed sitting prime ministers.
“I don’t envy Mr. Turnbull”, Shorten said Sunday in a concession speech.