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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. Six crossbenchers hold the balance of power. Greens MP Adam Bandt and independent MPs Andrew Wilkie, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor declared their support for Labor on confidence and supply. Independent MP Bob Katter and National Party of Western Australia MP Tony Crook declared their support for the Coalition on confidence and supply. The resulting 76 � 74 margin entitled Labor to form a minority government. The Prime Minister, government ministers and parliamentary secretaries were sworn in on 14 September 2010 by the Governor-General Quentin Bryce. In the 76-seat Senate, the Greens will gain the balance of power on 1 July 2011 with a total of nine seats, after winning one seat in each of the six states. The Coalition will be reduced from 37 to 34 and Labor will be reduced from 32 to 31. The two remaining seats will be occupied by South Australia's incumbent independent Senator Nick Xenophon and Victoria's new Democratic Labor Party Senator John Madigan, while Family First Party Senator Steve Fielding was defeated. 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). |
