2010 Australian federal election
Updated: Wikipedia source
A federal election was held on 21 August 2010 to elect members of the 43rd Parliament of Australia. The incumbent centre-left Australian Labor Party led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard won a second term against the opposition centre-right Liberal Party of Australia led by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Coalition partner the National Party of Australia, led by Warren Truss, after Labor formed a minority government with the support of three independent MPs and one Australian Greens MP. Labor and the Coalition each won 72 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, four short of the requirement for majority government, resulting in the first hung parliament since the 1940 election. Six crossbenchers held the balance of power. Greens MP Adam Bandt and independent MPs Andrew Wilkie, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor declared their support for Labor on confidence and supply. Independent MP Bob Katter and National Party of Western Australia MP Tony Crook declared their support for the Coalition on confidence and supply. The resulting 76–74 margin entitled Labor to form a minority government. The Prime Minister, government ministers and parliamentary secretaries were sworn in on 14 September 2010 by the Governor-General Quentin Bryce. In November 2011, Coalition MP and Deputy Speaker Peter Slipper replaced Labor MP Harry Jenkins as Speaker of the House of Representatives, increasing Labor's parliamentary majority from 75–74 (not including Jenkins as he was unable to vote on legislation due to his role as Speaker) to 76–73 (not including Slipper as he was unable to vote on legislation due to his role as Speaker). In the 76-seat Senate, 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 the Family First Party and independent Nick Xenophon. The Coalition was reduced from 37 to 34 and Labor was reduced from 32 to 31. The two remaining seats were occupied by Xenophon and Victoria's new Democratic Labor Party Senator John Madigan. Family First Party Senator Steve Fielding was defeated. These changes took effect in the Senate on 1 July 2011. More than 13 million Australians were enrolled to vote at the time of the election. Australia has compulsory voting (since 1925) and uses preferential ballot (since 1919) in single-member seats for the House of Representatives and single transferable vote (since 1949) for the Senate. At the time Australia used optional group voting tickets (since 1984) in the proportionally represented Senate but since the 2016 election has abolished group voting tickets. The election was conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). Prior to the Labor party's win in the 2022 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 outside New South Wales.