Australians vote in tight general election contest

Early counting in Australia’s national election on Saturday showed a swing to the opposition Labor Party, adding to fears a close vote will deny current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull the outright majority he needs to enact major economic reforms.

In the 150-seat House of Representatives, Labor now holds 55 seats, the coalition 90 and five seats are held by minor parties or independents.

Australian political parties can change their leaders under certain conditions and have done so in recent years with unprecedented frequency – a sign of the country’s recent political instability.

Millions of Australians headed to the polls after voting opened at 8 a.m. across eastern Australia, as the traditional election sausage sizzle featured prominently on social media under the hashtag #democracysausage.

Bill Shorten said the government didn’t have a mandate in his election night speech.

“Mr Turnbull’s economic program, such as it was, has been rejected by the people of Australia”.

The fate of the Turnbull government rested with the pre-poll and postal vote count over the next week.

Exit polls showed the conservative-led coalition neck and neck with the opposition Labor party.

Mr Turnbull defended the decision to call a double dissolution election, saying it was not a political tactic but necessary to secure the government’s Australian Building and Construction Commission to confront thuggish and lawless conduct by building trade unions.

“We are the only parties that have the ability or the possibility of doing that”, Mr Turnbull said.

Turnbull accused Labor of running “some of the most systematic, well-funded lies ever peddled in Australia” in a campaign in which Labor claimed the coalition was planning to privatise the government-funded Medicare system.

Frank Mosca, a Liberal supporter at the party’s election function in Sydney, said he was a “little disappointed” at the results so far.

“There is one thing for sure – the Labor Party is back”, he said.

The coalition would press ahead with its economic plan because the alternative was for Australia to fall out of the line-up of world leading nations.

Former banker Turnbull, 61, was looking to bolster his power after ousting former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott in a Liberal party coup in September previous year. Normally half the Senate is elected at a time, with a seat quota around 15 per cent of the state vote: in a DD that quota is halved, and opens up the Senate to a profusion of Greens, minor parties and independents that deprive governments of a majority and make the whole Parliament unworkable.

Morag McCrone, who voted for Labor at a polling station in Sydney, acknowledged her choice could lead to yet another new prime minister, but couldn’t bring herself to vote for Turnbull’s party.

Xenophon has vowed to block the Coalition’s cornerstone A$50 billion ($37 billion) corporate tax cuts if his party holds the balance of power in the senate.

“I don’t think he’s done a fantastic job up to date, but I think that’s because there are a lot of restrictions in the Senate in terms of what he can and can’t do”, said Silvia, a 51 year-old Liberal voter in Turnbull’s district who works in education and declined to give her last name.

Shorten said the close result was a vindication of his Labor Party’s policies. “Whatever happens next week Mr. Turnbull will never be able to claim that the people of Australia have adopted his ideological agenda”. Labor has won Eden-Monaro (NSW), Macarthur (NSW), and the notional Liberal seat of Burt in Western Australia.