The outcome of the federal election has come down to 11 seats that are too close to call. Photo / Getty Images
The Australian election is too close to call with a narrow minority government the most likely outcome.
The country faces the prospect of having a parliament in which neither of the major parties will have enough seats to form a workable government.
The current position could easily be changed once more pre-polls and postal votes are counted
A final result may not be known for days.
76 seats are needed to form a majority government in the 150-seat Lower House
67 Coalition
67 Labor
1 Greens
4 Independent
11 seats too close to call - Labor is ahead in 6
If it wins them all, the Opposition will have 73 seats to the Coalition's 72
COALITION - The best the Turnbull Government can hope for at this stage is 74 seats, two short of an absolute majority. It would need the support of two independents to govern.
LABOR: Labor would probably need all four independents if, as it pledged during the election campaign, it refused to enter into any arrangement with the Greens.
Labor picks up Coalition seats
- Eden-Monaro, Macarthur, Macquarie, Lindsay (NSW); Longman (QLD); Bass, Braddon, Lyons (TAS); Solomon (NT); Burt (WA)
Nick Xenophon team picks up
- Mayo (SA) from the Coalition
In doubt
- Coalition trailing: Capricornia, Forde, Herbert (QLD); Cowan (WA); Hindmarsh (SA)
- Coalition just in front: Gilmore (NSW); Dickson, Petrie (QLD); Dunkley, La Trobe, Chisholm (VIC)
- 10 million two-party preferred votes counted, the Coalition has won 50.11 per cent to Labor's 49.89.
- 3.4 per cent swing nationally against the Coalition Government
- Some 52 per cent of Victorians voted for Labor on a two-party preferred basis compared with 49.5 per cent of voters in NSW
- The strongest swings against the Coalition were in Tasmania (8.8 per cent), the Northern Territory (9 per cent) and South Australia (3.9 per cent). But the Government's vote held up strongest in Victoria and the ACT.
- Divisive Queensland politician Pauline Hanson is on the cusp of a return to Parliament almost 20 years after she left. The One Nation leader rose to prominence in 1996 when she won the lower house seat of Oxley and is vying for one of the final Queensland Senate seats against other minor parties. The party had attracted about 10 per cent of first preference votes.
- Barnaby Joyce is celebrating not one but two victories after he retained New England on primary votes and the Nationals gained an extra seat. The deputy prime minister said he was humbled after fending off a strong challenge from former independent Tony Windsor to keep his northern NSW seat. After a bitterly fought campaign in which negative personal political attack ads featured strongly, Joyce gained a healthy primary vote of more than 51 per cent.
- Independent Bob Katter will hold his seat of Kennedy, with the Nick Xenophon Team's Rebekha Sharkie set to join him on the crossbench alongside Andrew Wilkie (Denison) and Cathy McGowan (Indi).
- New Zealand-born broadcaster Derryn Hinch has declared himself the winner of a Victorian Senate seat as independent Cathy McGowan retained the hotly contested regional Victorian lower house seat of Indi. McGowan addressed a jubilant crowd in Wangaratta saying she beat former Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella because her campaign was positive and stuck to its community roots. Hinch tweeted: "We've called it we are in." The man who calls himself the "human headline" told the Seven Network "it looks like I'm going to be senator-elect, it's brilliant news," even though on official figures he's still polling short of a quota. The election was the first time Hinch has voted in his life. "I waited 72 years to find somebody worth voting for," he said. "I still don't believe in compulsory voting ... but it's been beneficial (for me)."
- Labor has sunk the boot into Wyatt Roy, saying the LNP rising star faces losing his seat because he was too interested in the glitz and glamour of politics and neglected his Queensland electorate. Roy, who became Australia's youngest ever parliamentarian in 2010 at 20 and rose to become assistant minister under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, suffered an 8.5 per cent swing against him in his seat of Longman and is trailing Labor's Susan Lamb.
- AAP
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