Hung Parliament

At the moment that is what Australia might be facing. The ABC is tipping that Labor will have 72 seats and the Coalition (Liberal party, National party, and the Liberal National party) will have 73.

The Greens managed to win Melbourne and there will be four independents, from Denison (Tasmania), New England, Lyne (both NSW) and Kennedy (QLD).

These are the people that the major parties will have to woo to be able to make a government. It would be interesting to see what the Liberals will do given that the latter three MPs are all former National party members who left for differing reasons. In my opinion Labor have the easier job forming a government and actually running it.

The Senate results have made it clear that the Greens will be running the show this time, and they are more likely to support Labor's policies then the Liberals and I'm sure that Abbott knows it.

But the count isn't over yet and some cases the count is close.

Boothby, my electorate, has a difference of about 1000 votes with only 77% of the vote counted. The possibility that Labor will take this seat is still very real. If the State election is anything to go by it will take about a week to find out who wins.

SA itself had a pretty big swing towards the Greens, and because of people who filled out the how to vote cards, gave many preferences to Labor as well. The most common trend was that people weren't voting for Labor.

Neither leader has conceded defeat but I would like to point out something that Tony Abbott said. He said that this election was a "referendum on the political execution of a prime minister". He might be right but this election was telling in another way. Abbott didn't win. This very fact tells us that although the people might not like what happened to Rudd they don't trust Abbott. I suspect that this was the reason that people voted for the Greens in the Senate.

There are three other things that I might as well point out. First the Australian Sex Party, although they failed to win any seats, had a pretty good turnout for their first time with 1.99% of the national primary vote. They polled worst in SA with 1.66% of the vote, and best in NT with 4.43% of the vote. In NSW, QLD and Victoria they managed to get about 2% of the vote.

Secondly, at present, Family First have failed to win any seats in the Senate this election. However uncounted ballots in SA may change this. The ABC results page for the SA senate election has had the Liberals and Family First flip-flopping between them getting the last seat.

Lastly it's the end of an era of sorts. Wilson Tuckey, a man known for his comments ranging from somewhat silly to inane, has lost his seat of O'Connor losing to Nationals candidate Tony Crook.

Based on what happened in the state election earlier this year I think it will be about a week before we figure out if we really do have a hung parliament and how many Independents/Greens the parties will have to convince to join them.