Australia’s Anthony Albanese has secured an outright majority in parliament, leading the way for the new prime minister to govern alone.
Mr Albanese became the 31st prime minister of Australia after his centre-left Labor Party defeated the conservative coalition led by prime minister Scott Morrison in the 21 May election.
The 59-year-old’s party has secured at least 77 of the 151 House seats with 80 per cent of the votes counted, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
It is the minimum number of seats required to form a majority government. It was a tight race for Mr Albanese as two seats remained too close to call.
Addressing his first post-election Labor caucus on Tuesday, Mr Albanese became emotional and choked back tears as he urged his colleagues to not waste a day of their leadership as “Australians have placed their trust” in them and they have an “enormous responsibility”.
“We need to change the way that politics operates in this country,” Albanese said. “We need to be more inclusive. We need to be prepared to reach out … [and] we can do that in this parliament”.
But despite the majority in the House of Representatives, the calculus remains different in the Senate, where the Labor Party will likely need help from other liberals to command a majority and pass laws.
This is because a third of Australians voted for Greens and 12 independents or other minor-party MPs, meaning the 47th parliament will have a record crossbench of at least 16.
By the end of Tuesday, the two seats which were in contention were decided.
Labor MP Fiona Phillips retained the Gilmore seat she first held in 2019, leaving the House of Representatives with 77 Labour members.
The Liberals retained Deakin, in Victoria, according to ABC. The incumbent candidate Michael Sukkar had been battling to hold out Labor’s Matt Gregg for the seat.
“We had a good story to tell,” Mr Albanese said. “We weren’t intimidated by anyone, we didn’t get distracted, we stayed on course and the discipline we showed was magnificent.”
He also welcomed those colleagues who had won their first elections. “For those newbies, you really struck gold because opposition is not fun. At all,” he said. He said Australia would join the global effort to combat climate change “after nine wasted years.”
The leader who was sworn in last week even as the counting of votes continued, unveiled his cabinet on Tuesday, which he said has a record number of women than any other cabinet in the history of the country.
Mr Albanese announced his first Muslim ministers in the country as he promised his new government “will be as inclusive as Australia itself”.
Richard Marles has taken the role of deputy prime minister and minister for defence while Penny Wong will be sworn in as minister of foreign affairs, among other appointments.
The prime minister who flew to Tokyo for a summit with Quad partners US president Joe Biden, Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi for his first tour as the Australian leader, will fly to Indonesia on Sunday for a three-day diplomatic visit.
