In the 76-seatSenate, the Greens won one seat in each of the six states, gaining the sole balance of power with a total of nine seats, after previously holding a shared balance of power with theFamily First Party and independentNick Xenophon.[15][16] The Coalition was reduced from 37 to 34 and Labor was reduced from 32 to 31. The two remaining seats were occupied by Xenophon andVictoria's newDemocratic Labor Party SenatorJohn Madigan. Family First Party SenatorSteve Fielding was defeated. These changes took effect in the Senate on 1 July 2011.[17]
Prior to the Labor party's win in the2022 Australian federal election, this was the most recent federal contest in which Labor formed government. It remains the most recent election in which the leader of the party forming government represented a division outsideNew South Wales.
The Labor Party, led by Julia Gillard, and the Liberal Party, led by Tony Abbott, were the predominant parties to contest the election. The smaller National Party led byWarren Truss is in a coalition with the Liberal Party. Following the2007 federal election, the 150-memberAustralian House of Representatives consisted of 83 Labor-held seats, 65 Coalition seats (55 Liberal and 10 National), and two seats held byindependents. TheAustralian Greens won 8 per cent of the 2007 vote, and theFamily First Party won 2 per cent, with the Greens winning 1 seat in the lower house.
The coalition total was reduced to 64 seats whenRob Oakeshott, former state Nationals-turned-independent MP, won the seat ofLyne at the September 2008Lyne by-election, resulting from the resignation of former Howard minister and Nationals leaderMark Vaile. The April 2008Gippsland by-election, resulting from the resignation of the former Howard minister and Nationals MPPeter McGauran, saw the Nationals'Darren Chester retain the seat, receiving a swing of 6%.[22] The Liberals suffered a swing in the September 2008Mayo by-election resulting from the resignation of former Howard minister and Liberal leaderAlexander Downer, and came close to losing the seat to the Greens candidate. The Liberals retained seats at theBradfield andHiggins by-elections in December 2009. The member forRyan,Michael Johnson, was expelled from theLiberal National Party on 20 May 2010, reducing the Coalition to 63 seats.[23]
Since the previous national election in 2007 there had been a number ofredistributions. These realignments of electorate boundaries are regularly undertaken by the Australian Electoral Commission and they maintain similar voter numbers in each electorate. They saw Labor's notional number of seats increase to 88 with the coalition's notional number decreased to 59, with independents in three. The swing required by the opposition to winmajority government had decreased by approximately 0.1 percent.[24]
The redistribution of electoral divisions forWestern Australia made the Liberal-heldSwan notionally Labor, and vastly changedKalgoorlie andO'Connor, with the former being safer for the Liberals, and the latter becoming more marginal. Kalgoorlie was also renamedDurack. The redistribution also damaged theWA Nationals' chances of a House of Representatives seat.[25][26][27]Tasmania was also redistributed but, while there were some changes to boundaries, little changed in terms of seat margins.[28][29]
New South Wales lost a seat toQueensland due to population changes for the second election in a row. The Labor Party suggested the abolition of the marginal Liberal seat ofMacarthur, while the Liberal Party suggested that Liberal-heldHume and National-heldRiverina be merged to create a new seat called "Bradman" in honour of SirDonald Bradman. The National Party suggested the abolition of the Labor-held city seat ofBanks.[30] The draft New South Wales redistribution, published in August 2009, proposed thatReid be abolished and thatLowe be renamed "McMahon" in honour of former Prime Minister SirWilliam McMahon. In response to widespread criticism of the abolition of the name "Reid", the finalised redistribution, published in October 2009, instead had Lowe renamed "Reid" andProspect replaced withMcMahon. Boundary changes also resulted in the Liberal seats ofMacarthur,Greenway andGilmore becoming notionally Labor-held, with major changes to other seats, includingCalare,Parkes andMacquarie.[31]
In Queensland, the seat ofWright was created as a Liberal-held seat based on theGold Coast hinterland. The redistribution saw the status ofBlair change from marginal Labor to a safe Labor seat. The status of marginal Liberal seatsDickson andHerbert also changed to marginal Labor seats.[32]
A redistribution forVictoria commenced in 2010, but was not finalised before the election was called.[33]
In the 76-memberAustralian Senate, from July 2008 to June 2011, the Labor and Liberal parties hold 32 seats each, and the Liberals' coalition partner, theNational Party (including oneCLP), five seats. Thebalance of power rests with thecrossbench, consisting of:
For a majority, the government requires an additional seven votes from non-Labor senators. If the Liberal Party chooses to vote with the Labor Party, support from the crossbench is not required.
36 senators representing the six states; each state elected half of its 12 Senate seats. The six-year terms of these 36 senators will start on 1 July 2011; the terms of the existing senators representing the states will end on 30 June 2011.
4 territory senators: the ACT and the NT each elected two senators, whose terms started on election day and will expire the day before the next election for the House of Representatives.
The party composition of these 40 senators whose terms will expire is:
Liberal: 18 (14 ongoing, to expire 30 June 2014)
National: 2 (3 ongoing)
CLP: 1 (0 ongoing)
ALP: 16 (16 ongoing)
Green: 2 (3 ongoing)
Family First: 1 (0 ongoing)
Independent Nick Xenophon: 0 (1 ongoing)
These seats are listed in order of election for the six states and two territories:[34]
The election-eveNewspoll of over 2000 voters reported Labor on a 50.2 percenttwo-party-preferred vote.[35] A post-election Newspoll taken 27–29 August 2010 of 1134 voters revealed 47 percent wanted a Gillard Labor government, to 39 percent for an Abbott Coalition government, while 14 percent were uncommitted. There was no difference between male and female voters. Ages 18–34 and 34–49 were even stronger for Labor, while those above 50 bucked the trend preferring the Coalition 45 percent to 40 percent.[36]
A JWS Research "mega-poll" was conducted byrobocall late in the campaign and published byFairfax. It polled an Australian record of 22,000 voters in 54 marginal seats and a further 6,000 in safe seats. It revealed a nationaltwo-party-preferred vote for Labor of 51.6 percent. Losses in Queensland and New South Wales were offset by the gains ofDunkley,McEwen (both 57 percent for Labor), andCowper andBoothby (both 54 percent for Labor), finishing with a total of 79 Labor, 68 coalition, 3 independent.[37][38][39]
The graph shows a timeline of the estimates by three main polling companies –Roy Morgan (green),Nielsen (blue), andNewspoll (red) – of the two-party-preferred vote for Labor from January 2008 to 20 July 2010. The pink dot on the left side represents the actual 2PP vote for Labor in the November 2007 election.
The graph shows a timeline of Newspoll's estimates of the primary vote for Labor (red), the Coalition (blue), the Greens (green), and other parties or independent candidates (magenta) from 2007 to 2010. The four dots on the left side represent the actual vote for each party in the November 2007 election.
The disproportionality of the lower house in the 2010 election was 11.34 according to theGallagher Index, mainly between the Labor and Green Parties.
Abbott described the outcome as "the election that no one really won".[52] Labor and the Coalition each won 72 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, a loss of eleven and a gain of seven respectively. Labor retained a majority of seats in a majority of states against the Coalition − New South Wales (26 to 20), Victoria (22 to 14), South Australia (6 to 5), and Tasmania (4 to 0), but fell sharply in Queensland (8 to 21) with a pre-existing minority in Western Australia (3 to 11). Labor won its largest two-party preferred vote in Victoria and Tasmania since official two-party records began in 1949, and in South Australia, its fourth-largest.[53]
Adam Bandt won the first seat for the Greens at a general election in the seat ofMelbourne. He had previously announced he would align with Labor in the event of a hung parliament.[59] On 1 September the Greens declared their support for Labor on confidence and supply.[60][61][62]
Andrew Wilkie, a former Greens candidate and now independent, was elected as the Member forDenison. On 2 September 2010 he declared his support for Labor on confidence and supply.[63]
Tony Crook won the seat ofO'Connor for theNational Party of Western Australia, defeatingLiberal Party incumbentWilson Tuckey. There was dispute over affiliation, with some classing Crook as a member of the Coalition and including him in their Coalition totals. The WA National Party subsequently issued a statement saying in part, "The Nationals WA as an independent political party are not bound by the rules of a coalition agreement".[64] Crook says, "In every news report and press report we see, my number is being allocated in with the Coalition and it shouldn't be".[65] The National Party of Western Australia prior to and for more than 20 months subsequent to the election were in no federal Coalition agreement, Crook stated he was a crossbencher, and that he and the WA Nationals were open to negotiating with either side to form government.[66][67][68] On 6 September Crook declared his support for the Coalition on confidence and supply, but would otherwise sit on the crossbenches.[69] On 6 May 2012, it was announced that Crook would join the Nationals party room and be formally part of the Coalition.[70]
Bob Katter,Tony Windsor andRob Oakeshott, all independents, were re-elected.[5][71] Both Katter and Windsor were successful at previous elections, while Oakeshott was elected at the2008 Lyne by-election. All are former members of theNational Party, a minor party in the Coalition.[72] However, all three said they would be open to negotiating with either side to form government. They said they would engage in discussion as a bloc but vote individually.[73][74] On 7 September, Katter declared his support for the Coalition on confidence and supply.[10] Later that day, Windsor and Oakeshott declared their support for Labor on confidence and supply.[75][76]
A year after the election,The Age summarised the collective positions of the crossbenchers as one of "no regrets"; the exception was Katter, who said that the Coalition had not acted on its commitment toethanol fuel legislation.[52][77] Windsor, Oakeshott, and Wilkie became well known because of their importance to the minority government, and had unusual access to the Prime Minister. Crook was less prominent because he did not support the minority government, but both government and opposition sought his backing for issues for which he was a swing vote, such as theMalaysian solution.[78] On 24 November 2011, the Coalition'sPeter Slipper replaced Labor'sHarry Jenkins asSpeaker of the Australian House of Representatives, increasing Labor's parliamentary majority from 75–74 to 76–73. On 21 January 2012 Andrew Wilkie withdrew his support for Labor, changing the majority to 75–73.[79]
The Senate has 76 seats. Forty seats were up for election; six in each of the six states and two in each of the two territories. The terms of the four senators from the territories commenced on election day, all other terms took effect from 1 July 2011.[80][81] TheCoalition holds 34 seats andLabor holds 31 seats, with thebalance of power shifting solely to theAustralian Greens with nine seats, after previously holding a shared balance of power with theFamily First Party and independentNick Xenophon. The Labor government required the support of at least eight non-Labor Senators to pass legislation.[17][57][58][82]
Labor and the Coalition incurred swings against them in votes and seats. The Greens received a four percent swing and won a seat in each of the six states at the election, a first for an Australian minor party.John Madigan (Victoria) of theDemocratic Labor Party won a seat, whileSteve Fielding (Victoria) of theFamily First Party lost his seat. Xenophon was not required to stand at this election but would be up for re-election at the next. Minor parties not winning a seat but receiving a notable swing include theAustralian Sex Party (+2.0), theLiberal Democratic Party (+1.7) and theShooters and Fishers Party (+1.4).[17][82]
Members listed in italics did not re-contest their House of Representatives seats at this election. Six notional boundary redistributed seats were contested at this election. Based on booths contested at the previous election, the seats redistributed by the AEC from being marginal Coalition seats to marginal Labor seats –Dickson,Gilmore,Herbert,Macarthur andSwan – were all retained by the Coalition.Greenway was redistributed to become a marginal to fairly safe Labor seat, and was retained by Labor.
^TheNational Party of Western Australia prior to and subsequent to the election were not in the federal Coalition agreement. WA Nationals MPTony Crook stated that he was a crossbencher, and has said: "In every news report and press report we see, my number is being allocated in with the Coalition and it shouldn't be".[1] Thus, the party has been counted separately from theCoalition totals.
^The Liberal National Party was an amalgamation of the Liberal Party and National Party in Queensland. Change is compared to the coalition total in 2007.
^TheNational Party of Western Australia prior to and subsequent to the election were not in the federal Coalition agreement. Nationals WA MPTony Crook stated that he was a crossbencher, and has said: "In every news report and press report we see, my number is being allocated in with the Coalition and it shouldn't be".[51] Thus, the party has been counted separately from theCoalition totals.
^For seats that werre affected by the redistribution theAustralian Electoral Commission calculated "notional" margins for the redistributed divisions by modelling the outcome of the previous election as if the new boundaries had been in place.[83]
^abcdeHad become a notional Labor seat as a result of the redistribution.
^abOn 6 August 2010, theHigh Court of Australia ruled in the caseRowe v Electoral Commissioner that certain provisions of theCommonwealth Electoral Act 1918 were invalid, specifically those introduced in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2006, which closed the electoral roll on the day the writ for a federal election is issued. An estimated 100,000 enrolments were reconsidered by the Australian Electoral Commission, which contacted applicants to inform them they would be eligible to vote in this election.
^An Act to constitute the Commonwealth of Australia. (Cth)s 13
^An Act to provide for the Representation in the Senate of the Australian Capital Territory, the Jervis Bay Territory and the Northern Territory of Australia. (Cth)s 6
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