Melbourne
\nAustralia\u2019s conservative coalition government is at risk of losing power after a new poll revealed the opposition Labor Party is neck-and-neck in a knife-edge by-election triggered by a constitutional crisis.<\/p>\n
A by-election is being held in the Sydney seat of Bennelong after government member of parliament John Alexander was forced to resign after he declared he held dual British citizenship.<\/p>\n
Under the Australian constitution, dual citizens cannot hold federal office. Alexander is among eight Australian politicians who have left parliament because of dual citizenship.<\/p>\n
The coalition government is hanging onto power by just one seat. If it loses the Bennelong by-election, it will be plunged into minority government.<\/p>\n
A second by-election is being held in Queensland state but the government is widely expected to win that one.<\/p>\n
Alexander has renounced his British citizenship and is standing in the December 16. by-election for his old seat.<\/p>\n
Labor candidate Kristina Keneally, a former high-profile New South Wales premier, is polling 50-50 with him in two-party preferred polls.<\/p>\n
Alexander, a former tennis champions, is leading by just three percentage points in the primary vote; that is more than eight percent down on his primary vote when he won the set in a general election in July last year.<\/p>\n
The poll, published in the Saturday Telegraph, shows the Labor Party snatching a 10 percent swing, meaning it could win the seat and be in striking distance of being in a position to form a government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Melbourne Australia\u2019s conservative coalition government is at risk of losing power after a new poll revealed the opposition Labor Party is neck-and-neck in a knife-edge by-election triggered by a constitutional crisis. A by-election is being held in the Sydney seat of Bennelong after government member of parliament John Alexander was forced to resign after he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10512,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10513,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10511\/revisions\/10513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}