There is still no clear answer as to whether Australia’s new prime minister Anthony Albanese will be able to form a majority government or have to rely on the support of an increased number of independents and minor party candidates who won seats in Saturday’s election.
With counting set to continue for many days as postal votes are tallied, one prospect that emerged was that Mr Albanese may need to be sworn in as acting prime minister to attend Tuesday’s Quad summit in Tokyo with US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The election delivered a clear rebuke to Australia’s traditional two-party system, both to Mr Albanese’s Labor and the heavily defeated conservative coalition led by the Liberal party’s outgoing Prime Minister Morrison. The major parties bled votes to fringe parties and independents, including in many seats considered Labor or coalition strongholds.
Needing 76 seats in the lower Parliamentary chamber, the House of Representatives, to govern in its own right, Labor on Sunday afternoon was being called the winner in 71, with 67% of votes counted, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
The Liberal-National coalition was ahead in just 52 — drastically down from its bare-majority 76 in the 2019 poll, in what analysts called a fierce rejection of Mr Morrison and his team’s handling of many issues in its three-year term including climate, Covid-19, women’s rights, political integrity and natural disasters such as bushfires and floods.
A total of 15 seats had been declared for independents or minor party candidates. Of these, three were from the environment-centric Green party and 12 were non-aligned politicians, with up to nine of those so-called teal independents.
In a new wave in Australian politics, the teal independents are marketed as a greener shade than the Liberal Party’s traditional blue colour and want stronger government action on reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions than either the government or Labor are proposing.
Most of their successful candidates are women, their success seen partly as a repudiation of Mr Morrison for his handling of gender issues including sex scandals that have rocked Parliament during his latest three-year term.
While Labor will form either a majority or minority government, both major parties lost ground, with support for the coalition dropping by more than 6% from the 2019 election, and Labor’s vote falling by around 1.2% as of Sunday morning.
Mr Albanese vowed to bring Australians together, increase investment in social services and “end the climate wars”.
Speaking to reporters while walking his dog in his electorate on Sunday morning, Mr Albanese evoked a more cooperative approach to Parliamentary business — possibly unavoidable if Labor cannot form a majority government — and described his victory as “a really big moment”.
“It’s something that’s a big moment in my life, but what I want it to be is a big moment for the country,” he said. “I do want to change the country. I want to change the way that politics operates in this country.”
Greens leader Adam Bandt concurred, saying his party wanted to work with the next government to “tackle the climate crisis” and an “inequality crisis” he said was threatening Australia.
Thank you Australia. pic.twitter.com/58ZHJCRIlO
Advertisement— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) May 21, 2022
“The Liberal vote went backwards, the Labor vote went backwards,” he told reporters. “More people turned to the Greens than ever before … because we said that politics needs to be done differently.”
Mr Albanese, who revealed in a 2016 interview he had tracked down his biological father in Italy in 2009, four years before his death, said his surname and that of new government Senate leader Penny Wong, who is of Chinese ancestry, reflected modern, multi-cultural Australia.
“I think it’s good… someone with a non-Anglo Celtic surname is the leader in the House of Representatives and that someone with a surname like Wong is the leader of the government in the Senate,” he said.
Labor has promised more financial assistance and a robust social safety net as Australia grapples with the highest inflation since 2001 and soaring housing prices.
The party also plans to increase minimum wages, and on the foreign policy front it proposed to establish a Pacific defence school to train neighbouring armies in response to China’s potential military presence on the Solomon Islands on Australia’s doorstep.
It also wants to tackle climate change with a more ambitious 43% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050.
Mr Morrison, who became prime minister after an internal party coup in 2018, said he would stand down as Liberal leader. His popularity had waned dramatically since his surprise 2019 election victory, including after taking a vacation in Hawaii during Australia’s ravaging bushfires in the summer of 2019-20 and more lately amid the Solomon Islands’ strategic alliance with China.
