The hard work starts for Gillard

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Independent MPs Rob Oakeshott (top) and Tony Windsor. Photos / AP, Getty Images

Julia Gillard's nail-biting victory over Opposition leader Tony Abbott, 17 days after voters went to the polls, has hardly been convincing.

She took a first-term Labor Government that had steered the nation through the global financial crisis, and which had reached new peaks of popularity, to within a whisker of the most inglorious defeat in the nation's history.

"Let's draw back the curtains and let the sun shine in, let our Parliament be more open than it was before," she said last night.

But she now faces a Parliament in which her party holds only 72 of the 150 seats in its own right, and depends on the support of one Greens MP and three independents to survive.

That support is very limited and highly conditional.

The non-Labor votes will ensure only that finance bills succeed and motions of no-confidence fail, allowing Gillard the most basic stability to continue running the country.

There will be no dictating and no bulldozing.

The independents have backed Labor only because they see a better chance of its Administration lasting longer that an Abbott government, supported by a range of other promises and guarantees.

They do not regard their support as a mandate for Labor, and have warned of absolute independence in any vote before the House, or tough negotiations, and an uncompromising approach to good and ethical management, and the fulfilment of undertakings made to them.

In the new Parliament, the crossbenchers will carry heavy artillery.

Gillard will need only to look across the dispatch box to be reminded of this.

Abbott, the Opposition leader few believed could come within sight of dumping Labor, remains a potent force who would welcome an early election.

The Coalition won more votes than Labor, and, with more than 90 per cent of the total counted, has a slim lead in the two-party preferred vote.

The support of the independents does not guarantee Gillard the passage of anything other than supply bills and confidence motions, meaning her legislative programme will need to pass tough scrutiny before heading to the Senate.

And in the Upper House, Gillard will continue with the same minority Labor held before the election until the new senators take their seats next July.

Even then, the nine Greens who will hold the balance power may prefer Labor to Abbott but will be far from a docile beast for Gillard.