Labour Party Losing Primary Votes

Julia Gillard's term as Australian PM may be short-lived.

It looks like the race for government is finally drawing to a close and from latest reports it seems that Labour may have already lost.

In a week that has had plenty of ups and downs, the scent of victory has switched from Labour to the Liberals and back again as both parties tried to do deals with the four independent MPs who hold so much power in their hands.

Labour had previously declared a victory on the two-party vote, but as more primary votes were counted, the Liberal Coalition had won more than 618,000 votes ahead of Labour. This lead in the primary votes makes a deal between the Coalition and the independents more probable, especially as Mr Abbott made plans to give a huge chunk of government spending to rural and regional Australia. The independent MPs are rural-based who have long fought for more funding for rural areas.

The MPs have also stated that they want to be part of a stable government that will represent regional and rural Australia.

Seventy six seats are needed for a majority government. At the moment Labour are on 72 with the Liberal Coalition on 73. Four independents and one Green Party MP have yet to decide. The Greens may well go with Labour given Mr Abbott’s previous denials of climate change, but the Green MP has yet to state his intentions, which may speak volumes about the lack of confidence in Labour.

This week Australia should finally know which party will form their government.

Love Australia? Let us keep you informed...

• Join the Embrace Australia community today. Have your questions answered by our experts, start your own blog, get vital migration information and gain valuable insight from those who have already made the journey.
• Subscribe to our RSS Feed and have all our daily news and features delivered straight to your news reader.
• Join our mailing list -