AUSTRALIA’S prime minister, Julia Gillard, last night said she would provide regular public briefings about the progress of talks to form a new government following last Saturday’s federal election.
“I want to assure everyone that those negotiations will be conducted diligently, with integrity, properly and in good faith,” she said.
The governing Labor Party lost its majority in the election, from which no clear winner emerged.
However, the situation for Labor began to look a little brighter yesterday, when further counting revealed it was likely to retain a seat previously thought lost to an independent. This would leave both Labor and the Liberal-National coalition with 73 seats, the Greens with one, and three independents.
Seventy-six votes are required to form government in the 150-seat parliament.
Though the three independents are all former members of the National Party who represent rural constituencies, they have said they will talk to both sides and left open the possibility that they would vote as a bloc for one side or the other.
One of the independents, Rob Oakeshott, said he had phone conversations with both Ms Gillard and Liberal leader Tony Abbott yesterday. “I don’t have to pick a red team or a blue team, I don’t have to pick Julia or Tony,” he said. “What I do have to do is find a way to work together to get a process in place where we can have a confident parliament with a clear majority.”
One possible sticking point for the independents is that they all support Labor’s $43 billion (€30.22 billion) plan for a national broadband fibre-optic network, which would bring high speed internet connections to 97 per cent of Australian homes.
This was widely derided as a waste of money during the election campaign by Liberal leader Tony Abbott. The coalition’s broadband plan is far cheaper at $6 billion, but would not achieve the same speeds as the Labor version and would leave many rural areas – including the three independents’ bush seats – relying on wireless connections.
Mr Abbott was concentrating on negotiations yesterday, but his Liberal colleague Nick Minchin said the coalition was best placed to take power. “Any government formed by Labor will be divided and dysfunctional,” he said.
The divisions within the Labor Party have begun to show, with former New South Wales premier Morris Iemma launching a scathing attack on the party’s national secretary, Karl Bitar. “He [Bitar] has presided over the most inept campaign in living memory,” Mr Iemma said.
“As far as Karl is concerned . . . flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s is where he should be heading to. By the end of today . . . he should resign. He is not up to his job. It was the worst campaign in living memory.”
Further serious recriminations are likely to emerge regardless of whether Labor stays in power or not, as the party ponders just how the government of one of the very few developed countries to avoid recession in the global financial crisis lost its majority.
Senior Labor figures have already said leaks during the campaign – about Ms Gillard’s opposition to an increase in pensions and to a paid parental leave scheme – led to the loss of seats. But while these leaks were damaging, there were many other factors.
Chief among these was the manner in which Ms Gillard overthrew the former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, two months ago. It happened so swiftly that people went to bed with one prime minister in place and woke to another.
Labor MPs moved against Mr Rudd as they said his polling popularity ratings had dropped to an unelectable level. His popularity fell sharply last April when he ditched a 2007 election promise to introduce a carbon trading scheme.
Mr Rudd had previously described global warming as “the greatest moral challenge of our time”. Even climate change deniers were shocked at how quickly the government dropped the carbon trading legislation when they were unable to get it through the Senate.
Other factors were the unpopularity of Labor governments in Queensland and New South Wales. Not coincidentally, these were the states which recorded the biggest swings against the party.
The fact that Labor tried to match the opposition in promising to stop refugee boats coming to Australia was also likely to have been a factor. It may have won some votes in marginal seats, but it also led to many progressive voters defecting to the Greens.
Just who will eventually form the next government may not be known until the end of next week.