Australia faces rare hung parliament

Tony Abbott, leader of Australia's opposition Liberal Party, arrives at the Liberal Party Election Function in Sydney.

SYDNEY // Australia faced its first hung parliament in 70 years Saturday after a furious voter backlash against the prime minister Julia Gillard, who ousted an elected leader just eight weeks ago. Ms Gillard, who became the country's first woman prime minister in a sudden party coup, was lagging her conservative rivals in national polls with 70 seats to 72, public broadcaster ABC said as vote counting went deep into the night. The Labor leader, 48, conceded her centre-left party would not gain the 76 seats needed for an outright majority and would rely on the support of parliament's projected four independent lawmakers. "The people have spoken, but it's going to take a little while to determine exactly what they have said," Ms Gillard told supporters in Melbourne. "What we know from tonight's result is there will be a number of independents in the house of representatives playing a role as the next government of Australia is formed," she added. Analysts said Australia could be in limbo for up to two weeks as parties horse-trade for leadership of the 150-seat lower house, after Gillard's Labor became the first single-term government since 1932. "What is clear tonight is that the Labor Party has definitely lost its majority," the opposition leader Tony Abbott, of the conservative Liberal/National coalition, told cheering supporters in what smacked of a victory speech. Mr Abbott's coalition was kicked out of government unceremoniously in a November 2007 Labor landslide victory led by the former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, and his deputy, Ms Gillard, who two months ago ousted Mr Rudd in a party coup. The exuberance of Mr Abbott's speech in a Sydney hotel stood in stark contrast to Ms Gillard's more businesslike address, in which she conceded she would have to seek to broker deals with four independent MPs to cling to power. The spectre of Mr Rudd has dogged Ms Gillard, with Mr Abbott saying his brutal ouster had caused voters to turn on the government, which is less than three years old, resulting in Australia's fist hung parliament in 70 years. The result has "to some extent at least been a referendum on the political execution of a prime minister" by Labor's factional leaders and that the Australian people had expressed their anger over the party coup, he said. But Mr Abbott urged his clearly elated supporters to keep the exuberance in check until the final outcome of the election is decided. "This is a night for pride in our achievements, for satisfaction at the good result that has been achieved, but above all else measured reflection of the magnitude of the task ahead," he told cheering supporters in Sydney. "There should be no premature triumphalism tonight, there should simply be an appreciation that this has been a great night for the Australian people." Mr Abbott, dubbed the "Mad Monk" after training as a Catholic priest, was magnanimous about his opponent. The "last eight weeks could not have been easy for her, but she has certainly worked extremely hard", he said. Meanwhile, the Greens snatched more than 11 per cent of the vote, likely winning a rare lower house seat in what the party described as a "Greenslide". With some 77.23 per cent of the vote counted, the environmentally minded party took a record 11.46 per cent of the ballot, figures from the Australian Electoral Commission showed. "The green vote is on the rise - green values are now mainstream values," Adam Bandt, the Green candidate winning the inner city seat of Melbourne from Labor, told ABC. The election is a record result for the party, which won some 7.8 per cent of the vote in the last election in 2007 - its highest result until now. * Agence France-Presse