Gillard and Abbott desperately seeking allies

Australian Prime Minister Jula Gillard is struggling to stay in power after Saturday’s election delivered the country’s first hung parliament for 70 years. Gillard’s Labor and the right-wing opposition coalition seem to be heading for a dead heat, with 73 seats each.

Reuters

The result leaves a handful of MPs who are either independent or members of small parties holding the balance of power.

Gillard says that she has held talks with three independents from rural areas and another who is expected to take a seat from Labor.

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Q+A: Scott Ludlam, Green Party Senator for Western Australia

Leona Liu

 
She has also held face-to-face discussions with Greens leader Bob Brown and Adam Bandt, the party's newly elected member for Melbourne.

Negotiations will take place "in good faith" with "propriety, integrity and diligence", the Sydney Morning Herald quotes her as saying.

The new MPs “probably want to see more openness”, she said.

But Liberal/National alliance leader Tony Abbott said he has also held talks with the independents and Greens and declared the election result a “savage swing” against Labor.

"It was almost inconceivable" that Labor could provide competent and stable government as it was "chroniclly divided and dysfunctional", he said.

The Green Party will drive a hard bargain on measures to fight global warming, says party Senator Scott Ludlum.

"Climate change has played an important part [in the elections]," he told RFI. "It has moved to the centre of national debate. The Labor Party used that issue as a way of getting in power in 2007 and then did almost nothing with it. That's led to huge discontent. People are aware that climate change is a huge issue and I think they're looking now to elect people who are genuinely ready to deal with it."

Abott has hit international headlines by questioning whether climate change is manmade. Ludlum concedes that his party is politically closer to Labor, despite the disappointment of its last term in office.

"What's changed the landscape in the last 12 months is that the Liberal Party has taken a very sudden and sharp turn to the right wing," he says. "I think if you had to pick, you'd have to say the majority of Greens would prefer that we work with the Labor government. Particularly given the peculiar and quite vicious form of conservatism that Tony Abbott has brought to the table and brought to the national debate."

Many voters were uninspired by the election campaign, leading to more than 619,000 spoilt ballots. Voting is compulsory in Australia.