Pauline Hanson might have been banished from the Australian parliament by Saturday's devastating electoral defeat for her xenophobic policies, but her One Nation party said yesterday it was still in business.
In a remodelled political landscape, the Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, was returned for a second term with a substantially reduced majority. He said he would reconvene parliament before Christmas to pass his controversial goods and services tax plan.
Mr Howard said the 5 per cent swing against the government made him fear at one stage during the count that he would lose the election as Labor won 51.4 per cent of the national vote.
With 80 per cent of the vote counted the Labor leader, Mr Kim Beazley, had not officially conceded defeat yesterday, but said the best Labor could hope for was a hung parliament, after preferences and postal votes were counted.
He said cutting the government's majority to perhaps eight was a wonderful result. And he rejected the Prime Minister's claim that the election result gave him a mandate to introduce the 10 per cent tax on food and other goods.
Mr Beazley said: "Mr Howard goes back into parliament with a mandate for good government, which we'll assist him with by being a good and effective opposition over the next few years."
The latest figures suggest the conservative coalition government's 48-seat majority, secured after its 1996 landslide, had been reduced to a manageable but less comfortable margin in the 148seat House of Representatives.
Despite Ms Hanson's failure to hold her Queensland seat, some of her anti-free-trade candidates scored up to 20 per cent of the primary vote. None was elected, however. The party's senate candidate for Queensland, Ms Heather Hill, appears to have been returned.
The National Party senate leader, Mr Ron Boswell, said One Nation was finished as a political force. Ms Hanson "had her chance to make the big time here and she has failed".
But an unsuccessful One Nation senate candidate and party henchman, Mr David Oldfield, said the party would carry on fighting for seats in state elections. "We've still got a strong contingent in the Queensland parliament, we have Heather Hill in the senate in Queensland, we may yet get perhaps another senator in Western Australia and we're well resourced for following elections," he said.
Reporters were frog-marched away from One Nation's campaign function on Saturday night after it became apparent that the party, despite its confident predictions of winning 12 seats in the lower house and six in the senate, was in trouble.
Ms Hanson is believed to be lying low and considering her options. But before her defeat she said: "I have always gone with the attitude that you move on and pick up the pieces."
The win gives Mr Howard the green light to pursue his radical economic and social agenda which includes introducing the 10 per cent goods and services tax, which many political pundits considered electoral suicide. But the government will have a battle on its hands to push the tax package through the senate because of gains by the Democrat Party, which is opposed to levying the tax on food.
"I regard it as a privilege beyond belief to have been twice elected as Prime Minister of Australia," a jubilant Mr Howard told the party faithful in Sydney. "We have weathered the ferocious fear campaign and won the mandate from the Australian people."
Labor almost defied political gravity to become the first opposition in 60 years to oust a government after one term. But while Mr Beazley emerged as a viable alternative leader, insufficient voters believed in his plans to create 500,000 jobs and the swing in key marginal seats was not enough.
It seems that despite One Nation's politicking, or perhaps because of it, a Democrat senate candidate for New South Wales is set to become the only aborigine in federal parliament. Mr Aden Ridgeway, a lawyer and land rights negotiator who fought strongly against One Nation policies, said the result showed Australia wasn't an intolerant country, but much work needed to be done.
Sydney newspapers reported yesterday that Mr Howard is expected to retire in mid-term and, after opening the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, will hand over the leadership to his treasurer, Mr Peter Costello.