Upset at polls in Australia
Incumbent leader’s conservative coalition defies expectations for ‘miracle’ election win
AUSTRALIAN Prime Minister Scott Morrison thanked his fellow Pentecostal churchgoers yesterday after a miraculous election victory that defied years of unfavourable opinion polls and bruised a Labor opposition that had been widely expected to win.
Morrison’s Liberal-led conservative coalition has won, or is leading in 76 seats, the number needed to form a majority government, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.
Slightly more than three-quarters of the roughly 17 million votes have been counted.
A jubilant Morrison hugged community members after an early Sunday service at the Horizon Church in Sydney’s southern suburbs, from where he was first elected to parliament in 2007.
“You don’t get to be a prime minister and serve in that capacity unless you first are a member of your local electorate,” he said.
He drew cheers later yesterday when he arrived in the stands to watch his team, the Cronulla Sharks, in a rugby league match in his beachside electorate.
Morrison told raucous supporters late on Saturday, who had earlier seemed resigned to defeat, that he had always believed in miracles.
The result drew comparisons with Republican Donald Trump’s victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were among the first world leaders to congratulate Morrison.
“Congratulations to Scott on a great win,” Trump said on Twitter before calling the Australian leader.
Jacinda Ardern, the progressive prime minister of neighbouring New Zealand, also called to congratulate him, saying that Morrison “understands us”.
Opinion polls in Australia had all pointed to a Labor victory. So strong was the expectation the government would fall that one betting agency even paid out bets on a Labor win days before the election. Morrison, who emerged as an unlikely leader after Liberal party infighting last year, cast himself as the candidate who would work for aspirational voters – and the tactic seemed to strike a chord.
If the coalition fails to secure at least 76 seats, it will need to rely on support from independent politicians, such as maverick conservative Bob Katter, or small parties, to govern.
Labor conceded defeat even with several seats in the 151-seat House of Representatives too close to call and millions of early votes still to be counted. Its leader, Bill Shorten, said he would step down. Senior Labor figures began lining up yesterday for the leadership after the centre-left party lost what some commentators called an “unlosable” election.
Labor campaigned on a platform of reducing inequality through tax reform, higher wages, better public infrastructure and faster action on climate change, but Shorten, a former union leader, was never seen as a popular leader.
Attempts by populist and far-right parties to win influence in the upper house Senate largely fell flat.
Fraser Anning, who sparked outrage when he blamed Muslim immigration for the New Zealand mosque shootings that killed 51 people in March, lost his Senate seat in Queensland state.
Morrison’s coalition defied expectations by holding on to a string of seats in the outer suburbs of Australia’s largest cities, as well as in the resourcerich states of Queensland and Western Australia, and the small island state of Tasmania.