A federal election was held on Saturday, 21 August 2010 for members of the 43rd Parliament of Australia. The opposition centre-right Liberal/National Coalition led by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was the main challenger to the incumbent centre-left Australian Labor Party led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Labor and the Coalition each won 72 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, four short of the requirement for majority government, resulting in the first hung parliament since the 1940 election Both major party leaders are seeking to form a minority government, with an outcome expected in the coming days. On the crossbench, four independent members, one member of the National Party of Western Australia and one member of the Australian Greens hold the balance of power. .The Greens and an independent have declared support for Labor on confidence and supply votes. The National Party of Western Australia's Tony Crook says he will support the Coalition.
In the Senate, the Greens will gain the balance of power on 1 July 2011 after a projected one seat win in each state. More than 14 million Australians were enrolled to vote at the time of the election. Australia has compulsory voting (since 1925) and uses preferential ballot (since 1919) in single-member seats for the House of Representatives and single transferable vote (since 1949) with optional group voting tickets (since 1984) in the proportionally represented Senate. The election was conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).
Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2010 12:52 pm Post subject: LABOR TO FORM GOVERNMENT
LABOR TO FORM GOVERNMENT
Labor has won the support of the two remaining independent MPs to form a minority government. The independents, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, dramatically announced their decisions separately, with Mr Oakeshott being the last to signal his position to back Julia Gillard as prime minister.But he warned: "This is not a mandate for any government. This Parliament is going to be different." The decision came after 17 days of protracted negotiation between the independents and the two leaders - and an agonising prologue from Mr Oakeshott.
Ms Gillard was due to hold a press conference at 4.15pm. Mr Windsor nominated broadband as one of the critical issues that tipped his hand to support Labor. He said both sides had offered generous packages to support health, education and infrastructure for regional communities. The independents' support gives Ms Gillard the narrowest of margins in the 150-member House of Representatives, bringing to 76 the number of MPs willing to support Labor. Mr Windsor said providing stability for the country had been another key factor in his decision. "If a government is formed, how long could it last and that is a key deliberation in our view," Mr Windsor said.
"I make this plea to country people, some of whom don't agree with the Labor Party. This isn't about philosophy, philosophy in terms of both these parties died about a decade ago," Mr Windsor said. "This is about using the political system to advance the people we represent and those people in regional Australia." Mr Oakeshott said it had been "an absolute line ball, points decision, judgment call". "Australia is engaged but Australia is also divided," Mr Oakeshott said. Mr Windsor announced his decision to back Labor at the start of the press conference. But Mr Oakeshott maintained the suspense, making a long statement about the reasons for his decision before revealing that he too would support Labor.
Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2010 1:10 pm Post subject: TONY BLAIR COMMENTS
TONY BLAIR COMMENTS :
Former British Prime Minister TONY BLAIR has urged Julia Gillard to stick to the "Third Way" centrist path of recent Australian and British Labor governments. In his first Australian newspaper interview in three years the former British Prime Minister told The Australian that Gillard's new government should carefully wind back fiscal stimulus spending and avoid being locked into long-term deficit spending even if the Greens use their balance of power in Parliament to pressure the government to spend up. At the same time Blair said the unprecedented influence of the Greens in both houses of the Australian parliament would have the positive effect of increasing the chances of Australia doing more to fight climate change. The Greens' vow of support for Gillard's new Government "can mean that certain reforms obviously to do with the environment will be easier to accomplish as a result of that support," said Blair, who runs his own think-tank to champion climate action. Blair said Gillard's announcement that she would appoint her predecessor Kevin Rudd to her Cabinet was not just an astute move it was also personally admirable. "It is not for me to offer Julia advice, she is perfectly well able to do the whole thing on her own, but I think the fact is that bringing someone of Kevin's experience and talent into the Cabinet is a tribute to both of them actually," he said.
"One of the things that is important in politics today is use the talent that you have got." The Australian and UK governments now both find themselves in the awkward position of lacking single-party majorities at a time that the public wants clear and strong leadership but it should still be possible for Gillard and her British counterpart David Cameron to provide that leadership, Blair said. In his new memoir "A Journey" Blair argues that his successor as British PM Gordon Brown lost this year's election because he strayed to the political Left rather than sticking to the New Labour creed of Blair's decade in power, and he said Gillard must avoid the same temptation and keep trying to overhaul public services. "She is a very, very capable leader, I'm sure she will do well," Blair said in his London office . "Coalition politics is always tough but the key thing is that (the public) want strong direction." The biggest challenge for Gillard would be to stick to the approach launched by the Hawke-Keating government and shared by Blair's own government in trying to modernise and prune government rather than resorting to the comfort zone of an old-fashioned "big government" approach. "I hope very much that Julia does manage to do that and I am sure that she will give it a good go."
"It is a strange thing about today's politics, the paradox is that the public are unsettled and uncertain, it is an era of low predictability, you have got a coalition government in the UK as well as Australia and yet people actually want strong leadership as well. "So that is the challenge but you know provided (Gillard and the non-Labor MPs backing her government) agree their program they can carry it out but it is going to be interesting because both in Australia and in the UK government is going to have to be taking tough decisions with coalition government in place. "It is far more difficult but on the other hand it is better than being in Opposition." Blair said that after the financial crisis fiscal stimulus packages were "fine and sensible", particularly when directed at strategic areas such as schools but the trap was for governments to think that the markets had failed and so they should return to an era of big government. "What I am not in favour of doing is running long-term structural deficits because I think that can lead to problems." "You have got to get the balance right (in timing the withdrawal of stimulus packages) and it is a judgment that is right versus wrong not right versus left." "How much do you stimulate the economy, when do you withdraw the stimulus, these are incredibly difficult judgements... and it is hard to calibrate but actually Australia's economy has come through the last couple of years better than most frankly."
Centre-left governments had the added pressure of needing to show voters that they are serious about reforming public services instead of simply pumping money into them, he said. "If you are saying to people in the private sector there is going to be pain here... you have got to be able to say that the government is going to participate in these challenges and difficult decisions too, we are not absolving government of the responsibility. "When you are trying to deal with long-term deficit issues... in general terms you want a government that is strategic and empowering rather than one that is heavy and bureaucratic and that is the task for most governments today in the West, how do they change their government to pivot them into being systems of delivery and managing change rather than just large paternalistic, monolithic bureaucracies. "In today's world where the majority of people are taxpayers if you give them the choice between a big state and a minimalist state they will choose a minimalist state." "If you give them the choice between a minimalist state and an empowering state then they may choose the progressive way. "As the dust settles" on the financial crisis centre-left politicians need to challenge "this idea that the state is suddenly back in fashion.. because the taxpayer worries how much they are going to fund it and because it is the private sector that in the end is going to have to lead us out of this."
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