Voters punish Aussie PM

SYDNEY, Aug 21, AFP - Australia faced its first hung parliament in 70 years Saturday after a furious voter backlash against Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who ousted an elected leader just eight weeks ago.

Gillard, who became the country's first woman prime minister in a sudden party coup, was lagging her conservative rivals in national elections with 70 seats to 72, public broadcaster ABC said as counting went deep into the night.

The Welsh-born redhead, 48, conceded her centre-left Labor party would not gain the 76 seats needed for an outright majority and would rely on the support of parliament's projected four independent MPs.

"The people have spoken, but it's going to take a little while to determine exactly what they have said," Gillard told supporters in Melbourne.

"What we know from tonight's result is there will be a number of independents in the house of representatives playing a role as the next government of Australia is formed," she added.

Analysts said Australia could be in limbo for up to two weeks as parties horse-trade for leadership of the 150-seat lower house, after Gillard's Labor became the first single-term government since 1932.

"What is clear tonight is that the Labor Party has definitely lost its majority," opposition leader Tony Abbott, of the conservative Liberal/National coalition, told cheering supporters in what smacked of a victory speech.

"I say, on this remarkable night in our political history, that the Liberal Party is back in business," he said at the jubilant gathering in Sydney.

The events represent a stunning reverse for Labor, which swept to power in 2007 under Kevin Rudd but enraged voters by dumping the prime minister in June, after his approval ratings slumped.

Gillard quickly called elections, hoping for a honeymoon with voters, but ran a chaotic, leak-plagued campaign which failed to capitalise on Labor's big achievement of helping Australia avoid a recession during the financial crisis.

The stunning electoral upset that robbed Labor of its majority was "a referendum on the political execution of a prime minister" by Labor's factional leaders, Abbott told his supporters, while urging them not to be triumphalist.

Voters were also incensed by Labor's decision to shelve an emissions trading scheme, the centrepiece of its drive against climate change, after failing to push it through parliament.

"We shouldn't be on a knife-edge tonight and we shouldn't be losing colleagues all over the country," said Labor's Maxine McKew, who lost Sydney's bellwether seat of Bennelong.

"Clearly you cannot have the removal of a Labor leader and a prime minister, and then two months later have an election and not have that play into the outcome," she added.

Around 14 million electors took part in a mandatory vote for the lower house and half the 76-seat Senate.

Results showed voters turning on Labor in the battleground states of Queensland and New South Wales, but stronger support for the Greens, which favours the ruling party under Australia's complex preferences system. Gillard, a former lawyer and "Ten Pound Pom" who was born in Wales, had pledged better education and healthcare and played up Labor's achievement in avoiding a recession during the financial crisis.

Abbott, a 52-year-old religious conservative who has doubts about mankind's role in climate change, targeted fears over illegal immigration and questioned Labor's spending record, as well as Gillard's knifing of Rudd.

Both sides targeted marginal seats in resource-rich Queensland -- Rudd's home state -- and western Sydney, where rapid population growth has put pressure on services and raised concerns about immigration.

The coalition needed a uniform swing of 2.3 percent to return to power less than three years after Rudd's decisive election win against the Liberals' John Howard, who was prime minister for 11-and-a-half years.

"This has been a magnificent campaign," Howard told reporters. "It's clear that (Abbott) has ... potentially destroyed a first-term government. "That's a tremendous achievement."

The ABC projected 72 seats for Labor, 73 for the coalition and one for the Greens, plus the four independents.

The Australian Electoral Commission, whose official count was slower than figures published by the ABC, causing some volatility in results, had Labor on 60 and 59 for the coalition six hours after voting ended.

Three independent MPs were confirmed to have won their seats by the Electoral Commission, as was one Green MP. A fourth independent was projected to win by the ABC.