Ballot Box

Australia Faces Hung Parliament

Fate of first female PM uncertain.

Will Australian’s first female leader earn her first electoral mandate? Australians may not know the results of their election for several days, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says. It was the closest race in almost 50 years, with voters split between the Gillard’s Labor Party and the conservative Liberal-National coalition. A party needs 76 seats in the 150-member House of Representatives to form a government; with 75 percent of votes counted, the Liberal-National coalition had 59 seats and Labor had 60. Australia hasn’t had a hung Parliament in 70 years, but it could happen again if neither party manages to win a majority of the vote. A major issue in the campaign was Gillard’s proposed 30 percent tax on iron ore and coal profits; Australia is the biggest exporter of those materials in the world.