Turnbull accepts responsibility for election campaign

Australia’s opposition leader has urged Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to resign after a cliff-hanger election failed to deliver a clear victor.

Counting of 1.5 million postal and absentee votes critical in Australia’s cliffhanger election began on Tuesday as loyalists of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull defended their embattled leader against calls for his resignation.

The results of Saturday’s Australian election are still too close to call, with the count failing to deliver either major party enough seats to form a majority government.

However, Andrew Wilkie, one of the four independents, said the vote showed Turnbull has no mandate to impose his election agenda, which included cuts to healthcare and a A$50-billion corporate tax break over 10 years.

“How on earth did Mr Turnbull think than an idea of reform could end up with two or three One Nation senators in the Senate?”

Speaking today with Nationals leader and deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, Turnbull said “there is no doubt that there is a level of disillusionment with politics, with government, and with the major parties” among voters.

An election campaign poster of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull against a backdrop of tourists riding camels along Bondi Beach in Sydney.

The incumbent government however is facing a revolt in and outside its own party as the conservative wing of the Liberal party to make sure they are consulted on what offers are made to the cross-bench to secure power, should a minority government come about. “He has delivered instability”.

As she has been scathing of the election result, and the party members who backed Mr Turnbull to topple her former boss.

According to the official count, the Coalition government looks set to win about 67 seats while the opposition Labor Party may receive 71.

A hung parliament would force the Liberals and Labor to try to strike alliances with independent and minor party politicians in a bid to form a minority government.

As well as pointing to the new composition of the Senate, likely to be more hard to navigate than the last for an incoming government, the Opposition Leader compared the Prime Minister’s actions to what has unfolded in Britain following the decision to leave the European Union.

“I know many Australians find this sort of frustrating, the wait, and you can imagine that we are among them”, he said. The party leader said he has reached out to independents and has also indicated he would be willing to work with Turnbull’s Liberal Party.

Australian Electoral Commission spokesman Evan Ekin-Smyth said the Senate was likely to take a month to resolve.

Five seats were listed as close, and another six as “not yet determined”.

The dead heat has put Australia’s treasured AAA credit rating at risk, financial markets broadcaster CNBC reports.

The final result from Saturday’s polls is still unclear, but Mr Turnbull’s conservative coalition has lost its comfortable majority in Canberra’s 150-seat House of Representatives.

Attorney-General George Brandis said the Coalition remained “quietly confident” it could secure a “working majority” in the Lower House.

Peter Chen, a political analyst at the University of Sydney, said the election had exposed Turnbull as a failure.