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| This combo taken on July 2, 2016, shows opposition Labor Party leader Bill Shorten with his wife Chloe (left ) voting in Melbourne, and Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull voting with his wife Lucy in Sydney. ( William WEST Lukas COCH / AFP POOL / AFP) |
SYDNEY - Australia woke up to the prospect of a hung parliament or a minority government on Sunday as vote counting in a federal election was paused with the result too close to call.
The exceptionally close vote leaves Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's government in a precarious position, potentially needing the support of independent and minor parties to form a government.
Official electoral data for the House of Representatives showed a 3.2 percent swing away from the Liberal-led coalition government when officials clocked off in the early hours of Sunday with almost 10 million votes counted.
The shift to the opposition Labor Party and independent groups is a major blow for Turnbull who had gambled on a risky double dissolution of parliament in a bid to oust intransigent independents in the upper house Senate blocking his economic agenda.
With vote counting not resuming until Monday, a jubilant Bill Shorten, leader of the opposition Labor Party, declared: "The Labor Party is back."
The Election Commission said its focus on Sunday was on the declaration vote exchange - that is where the large numbers of absent, interstate, postal and other declaration votes are reconciled, sorted and packaged.
Opinion polls heading into Saturday's vote had showed a potentially tight vote after the landslide victory that brought the coalition to power in 2013; but just how tight still caught many by surprise.
