Australian PM wins key backer

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard won the support of a key independent MP yesterday, leaving her close to breaking the worst political deadlock in decades after elections failed to produce a winner.
Former Iraq war whistle-blower Andrew Wilkie said Gillard’s centre-left Labor party was most likely to deliver “stable” and “competent” government, an endorsement that put her within just two seats of a parliamentary majority.
“I have judged that it is the Australian Labor Party that best meets my criteria that the next government must be stable, must be competent and must be ethical,” Wilkie told journalists in Canberra.
Wilkie’s vote gives Gillard 74 seats in the 150-member lower house, just shy of an absolute majority of 76. But Tony Abbott’s opposition coalition remains firmly in the hunt with 73 seats and three independents still undecided.
Tasmania’s Wilkie urged the three remaining “kingmakers” to make their move soon, following nearly two weeks of political paralysis after August 21 polls returned the first hung parliament since 1940.
“I hope that this sends a signal to the other three independents and they move as soon as they can to make their decisions,” he said.
Rural MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, and cowboy hat-wearing maverick Bob Katter, have pledged to begin formal negotiations today.
But momentum is now firmly behind Gillard, Australia’s first woman prime minister, after she confirmed the support of parliament’s lone Greens MP on Wednesday.
She said Wilkie’s decision was smoothed by a 100 million dollar (90 million US) pledge for a hospital in his electorate, and assurances the government would try to ease gambling problems caused by omnipresent “pokie” slot machines.
“I thank Mr Wilkie for bearing in mind at all stages the national interest,” she said. “He has clearly been motivated to enter this agreement based on his view of the national interest.”
Gillard also received a boost yesterday when the opposition was accused of a policy blow-out of up to 10 billion US dollars, prompting the “kingmakers” to question Abbott’s trustworthiness.
Windsor said an official Treasury tally had revealed a major discrepancy in the opposition’s spending plans, and said the figures raised questions about whether Abbott had been honest with voters about the cost of his policies.
Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb dismissed the official assessment as a “difference of opinion”, saying the Treasury used different models and data to tally the costs of campaign promises.