CANBERRA – Australian prime minister Julia Gillard yesterday claimed her Labor Party was best placed to run a stable minority government after the election dead heat, warning of political gridlock if a consensus is not found.
Ms Gillard said she was not in favour of calling a fresh election to resolve the impasse thrown up after neither of the country’s main parties won a majority in the August 21st polls.
Labor and the conservative opposition are competing to win the support of four independent deputies to cobble together the parliamentary numbers needed to form a government.
Ms Gillard, who became Australia’s first woman prime minister after a Labor Party leadership coup in June, said the next government needed to find ways of building consensus and support in parliament – and she was best placed to deliver. “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 in a speech to Canberra’s National Press Club.
Conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott earlier claimed the upper hand as counting from the election briefly gave his party more votes and parliamentary seats than Labor, but that situation soon turned around, cheering Ms Gillard’s supporters.
Election-count projections point to the conservatives ending up with 73 seats and Labor with 72, with four independents and one Green MP – who has said he favours Labor in the race to gather the 76 seats needed to govern the 150-seat lower house.
Courtship of the independents could drag into next week. One report stated independent Rob Oakeshott’s office was receiving 1,000 calls a day and his personal mobile registered 1,700 missed calls in four days.
Bookmakers are tipping Mr Abbott to be next prime minister. – (Reuters)