Turnbull to name a more conservative Cabinet

CANBERRA — Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said yesterday he will name a more right-wing Cabinet lineup next week, after his weakened coalition government scraped through one of the nation’s closest elections.

Mr Turnbull’s centre-right Liberal Party lost at least 14 lawmakers in knife-edge polls on July 2, including some of Mr Turnbull’s key moderate supporters. The junior coalition partner, The Nationals, gained a lawmaker.

Mr Turnbull said that the Nationals’ larger representation in his government entitled the more conservative, rural-based coalition partner to two additional seats in his Cabinet.

“Politics is governed by the iron laws of arithmetic and plainly the Nationals have a larger percentage of the coalition party room after the election than they did beforehand,’’ Mr Turnbull told reporters.

The Nationals’ increased influence has reduced expectations that Mr Turnbull will pursue a more progressive agenda during the government’s second three-year term.

The Cabinet will be announced shortly after government lawmakers meet on Monday for the first time since the election, said Mr Turnbull.

Mr Turnbull, a moderate in the government, replaced the polarising and socially conservative prime minister Tony Abbott in an internal government showdown in September. Mr Turnbull immediately fired some of Mr Abbott’s most rightwing ministers.

Mr Turnbull’s supporters had hoped that a convincing election victory would give him a mandate to reform government policy in several areas, including climate change and gay marriage.

Some mail-in votes are still being counted, with the government assured of 76 seats — the barest majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives, where parties form the government.

Counting dragged into its 11th day yesterday, drawing unfavourable comparisons with Japan, Iceland and Spain, where recent elections were all decided in less than a day.

Britons took just seven hours to calculate their Brexit vote last month.

Counting in Australia, where voting is compulsory, is usually resolved on the same evening Australia’s 15 million voters cast their ballots. But a tight election demonstrates how polls can drag on for weeks before final results are declared, with electoral officials recounting by hand and waiting for postal ballots to arrive.

Mr Turnbull and opposition leader Bill Shorten have backed electronic voting as a solution to Australia’s snail-paced count, although experts warn of security issues. Mr Shorten said over the weekend, after already more than a week of hand-counting of ballot papers, that it should not take “a grown-up democracy” so long to figure out who has won.

Mr Turnbull said yesterday he was confident his government would extend its majority in the House of Representatives to 77 seats.

Mr Turnbull said his government’s policies remained the same as were detailed during the election campaign, including a promise to hold a public vote this year on whether Australia should recognise same-sex marriage. AGENCIES