Julia Gillard will stay as Australia’s prime minister after winning the backing of two key independent MPs.
Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott held the balance of power in parliament after a fellow independent MP, Bob Katter, backed opposition leader Tony Abbott.
The dramatic announcement ended more than two weeks of political deadlock following indecisive elections.
It gives Ms Gillard’s Labor Party the backing of one more MP in the lower house than the Liberal-led coalition.
The minority government is Australia’s first since World War II.
“The events of the past fortnight show us unequivocally that our democracy is very, very strong indeed,” Ms Gillard told a news conference in Canberra.
“With today’s agreement… Labor is prepared to deliver stable, effective and secure government for the next three years. Ours will be a government with just one purpose – to serve the Australian people.”
BBC World News
German factory orders unexpectedly fell in July as demand in the euro region weakened, indicating the recovery in Europe’s largest economy is losing momentum.
Orders, adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation, declined 2.2 percent from June, when they surged a revised 3.6 percent, the Economy Ministry in Berlin said today. That’s the biggest drop since February 2009. Economists forecast a 0.5 percent gain, according to the median of 40 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. From a year earlier, orders climbed 18 percent, when adjusted for working days.
Evidence of slowing growth comes after the German economy expanded at the fastest pace in two decades in the second quarter, boosted by exports. An index of manufacturing fell in August and investor confidence dropped to a 16-month low. Still, Daimler AG, the world’s second-biggest manufacturer of luxury cars, said yesterday that sales jumped in August.
Bloomberg
A survey of industry analysts suggests that unemployment in the US could reach 10% if growth in the economy does not improve over the next few months. So far this year, a total of only 723,000 new jobs have been created; an estimated 8.4 million jobs were lost during the recession and at the current rate of growth, it will take years for the job market to recover.
“Growth is too sluggish to successfully bring down the unemployment rate,” said Michelle Meyer, a senior economist at BofA Merrill Lynch in New York. “At this stage, about one year into the recovery, this was still quite feeble job growth.”
Source: Bloomberg
