Long weekend of soul searching
IT will be a long weekend for Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott as they wait for independent MPs to decide who will form a minority government.
Federal Election 2010
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IT will be a long weekend for Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott as they wait for three country independent MPs to decide who will form a minority government.
Two weeks after the election, Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott said they would spend the weekend weighing their options before delivering their verdict on Monday or Tuesday.
The three have kept open the option of voting as a bloc or going their separate ways.
A Newspoll in The Australian today shows 47 per cent of people want them to back Labor, while 39 per cent want them to back the Coalition; 14 per cent were undecided.
A separate JWS poll in today's Sydney Morning Herald finds 37 per cent want the three to back Ms Gillard, 31 per cent favour Mr Abbott, and 26 per cent want another election.
But it also says a fresh election is likely to deliver another hung Parliament.
The Greens and Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie have said they would back Ms Gillard.
Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb warned the three independents that a Labor-Greens coalition "would be the most Left-wing government in Australia's history".
But Mr Windsor said: "There are a lot of people in the country concerned about the Greens - I'm not."
He said the "easy pathway" in his conservative-leaning electorate of New England would be to back the Coalition.
"I've got to make a decision, whether it's the best one, I haven't made that call yet," he said.
Mr Oakeshott said the decision was not about personalities, parties or policies, though they were factors.
"The Government's probably hoping I go with them and the Coalition's expecting I go with them," he said.
"This is a decision I'll be making very clearly on what I've said for 12 days now, and that is how we can have a stable government for the next three years."
Mr Oakeshott said a gap of up to $10.6 billion in the cost of the Coalition's election promises found by Treasury was "a big consideration".
Mr Katter, who is close to Kevin Rudd, said the former PM had twisted his arm "pretty firmly" to try to persuade him to back Ms Gillard when they dined this week.
He released a 20-point priority list of "moderate demands", calling for Coles and Woolworths to be forced to sell supermarkets to reduce their market share to 22.5 per cent each, and reducing the value of the Australian dollar.
Mr Katter wants petrol to contain 22 per cent ethanol, which he said would slash the price at the bowser to about 73-84c a litre and reduce the carbon footprint.
He would also create a Future Fund to "buy back the farm" and help Australia become self-sufficient in food and fuel.
"I'm not naive enough to believe I'm going to get all of this," he said, expressing disappointment that both sides had tried to buy Mr Wilkie's vote.
"The Wilkie thing yesterday just seems we're back to the bad old days ... they're out there buying support."
The Liberals accused Mr Wilkie of double-crossing Mr Abbott by attacking as unethical his pledge to meet the Tasmanian's demand for $1 billion for Hobart Hospital.
