Around 15 million Australians voted in the Federal election held on 2 July.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had called for a double dissolution election, so seats in both the lower house, the House of Representatives, and the upper house, the Senate, were up for grabs. After winning a landslide in the 2013 Federal election, Turnbull’s conservative Liberal-National Party Coalition government was expected to win comfortably.
In the event, 2 July proved to be a day of surprises. The government was returned to power with the slimmest of majorities, of one seat, in the 150 seat lower house, suffering a 3.5% swing against it. The opposition Labor Party’s scare campaign that the government was planning to abolish Medicare, the national health system, gained considerable traction – although it is clear that the government never had that intention.
