13 Jul 2016

It took a full 9 days to count all the votes, but it’s finally been confirmed that Turnbull’s Liberal/National Coalition has won enough seats to form a government in their own right. Malcolm has retained his position as PM and everything will go back to normal soon. But wait… will it actually?

This election was a really close one (that’s why it’s taken so long to count all the votes) and although we have the same leader, it’s a pretty bad result for Malcolm Turnbull, who has lost a lot of support. In fact the government has changed significantly.

Double Dissolution?

This was a double dissolution election, which is when the Prime Minister pulls the pin on both the House of Representatives and the Senate and asks the Australian people to reassess the situation.

Turnbull’s idea was that by holding another election, the Coalition could gain more power in the Senate and he would be elected in his own right (remember that he hadn’t been elected by the people, he’d just taken Tony Abbott’s job out from under him). And even though Turnbull won this election, the Coalition have won by far less of a majority than they had before. This means Labor is now more powerful, and Independent senators will have a significant say on how things go from here on in.

The results

House of Representatives

There are 150 seats in the House of Representatives. These are literal seats, where people who’ve been elected get to sit down and do the politicking. To win a seat, you need to get the majority of votes for a specific area, which contains between 85,000 and 105,000 voters.

This time round, the Coalition won 78 out of the 150 seats, which is the bare minimum needed for a majority government. So far, it looks like Labor will win 69 and Independent parties have secured the other 5.

In the 2013 election, when Tony Abbott won, the Coalition secured 90 seats. So this time, under Malcolm Turnbull, they lost 14 of them. That’s a bad result for the Coalition, and will mean that they’ll have to get the Senate onside if they are able to pass bills and make laws.

The Senate

Senate voting takes much longer to count and some say it might take until August to find out who will be in the Senate. However, it looks like a few Senators have secured spots, namely Pauline Hanson and Derryn Hinch, who are the rogue wildcards of the bunch.

Derryn Hinch is an infamous media personality who calls himself, “the human headline”. He has a reputation for naming and shaming sex offenders before they’ve been granted their right to a fair trial in court. The dude has been to jail twice and been fined $100,000 for breaching court orders, which raises the question: should a person who has defied the law multiple times be allowed to govern the rest of us?

Pauline Hanson is even more controversial because it’s pretty well documented that she’s an outright racist. It’s not her first time in the Senate: the former fish and chip shop owner debuted in politics in the ‘90s, at which point she warned everyone “we are in danger of being swamped by Asians … [who] have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate.”

Scary stuff.

What now?

Things are still pretty up in the air but questions will inevitably be asked.

What will happen with the Coalition’s bill to crackdown on union corruption? If the Senate still won’t approve it, this means Turnbull called an election for nothing, or rather, to lose 14 seats.

And people are already asking, how long will Malcolm Turnbull remain Prime Minister?

Surely someone else in his party will put their hand up for the job. Afterall, this is what happened with Kevin Rudd, then Julia Gillard, then Tony Abbott.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Australian politics keeps getting weirder and weirder.