2022 Federal Election: What is a hung parliament?

So what is a hung parliament, and is it something that should be feared?

In order to form a majority in the Lower House - or House of Representatives (the green one) - either the Australian Labor Party (ALP) or the Liberal Nationals Party need to have won a majority of the available 151 seats.

That means, that either party needs to claim a minimum of 76 seats to form a government.

If neither party secures this majority, then neither can form a government. In this case, the two-party leaders will appeal to Independent crossbenchers for their support.

"When that occurs, the major parties will have to negotiate with the crossbench and try and get them to agree to support them and form a government," said Dr Jacob Deem from the University of Central Queensland.

"What they're aiming to do is to convince enough members of the crossbench to support them in confidence motions and in supply. So passing a budget. Those are the two things that any government has to be able to do."

Either leader must convince the Governor-General that they have the 'confidence of the house' in order to be sworn in as prime minister.

When the two leaders call on the support of the crossbenchers, they need to ensure that the crossbenchers will not support any no-confidence votes, which could derail the sitting government.

They also need to ensure that the crossbenchers do not support votes that would stop the supply of ordinary government business - which includes the paying of public servants and social security bills, and the passing of the annual budget.

"And so they'll be looking to get agreement from enough minor party or independent members to support them on those particular motions," Dr Deem said.

"To do that, the crossbench will have their own list of demands or things that they would like to achieve, and like any negotiation, it'll be a question of how far each party is willing to go to compromise and meet those demands."

That depends on how quickly the leaders can garner the official support of the crossbenchers and it depends on how many crossbenchers are needed to sway a majority.

The last hung parliament in Australia occurred in 2010 when both Labor's Julia Gillard and Liberal's Tony Abbott managed to land just 72 seats each.

The power was then in the hands of six crossbenchers who took 17 days to deliberate on which side of parliament they would lend their support.

In the end, Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott, and Tony Windsor voted for Julia Gillard to return as prime minister, which was enough for the Labor leader to be sworn in again as prime minister.

"It's not quick," Dr Deem said.

"It depends on how big the crossbench is. If the major parties only need to convince one or two crossbenchers, it can be a few days.

"But if there's a big crossbench as we might see in this election, then it might really drag out as those last few independent members take their time to consider all their options and see who's willing to meet their demands and give them what they're looking to achieve in

For those 17 days in waiting back in 2010, Julia Gillard was installed as a caretaker prime minister to maintain some governance in the interim.

Before 2010, a hung parliament had not happened in Australia in more than 70 years. In fact, the last one before 2010 was back in World War II. So hung parliaments are not at all common in Australia.

That really depends on your perspective. It could mean more accountability for the sitting government, but it also could mean more difficulty in passing legislation.

"Potentially, the government of the day is held to ransom by a few independents or a few people representing only a tiny portion of the population," Dr Deem said.

"On the other hand, it ensures that the government doesn't get to just do whatever it wants. There's extra review, there are extra considerations that they have to take into account before they try and do anything."

Despite her minority government, from 2010 to 2013, Labor's Julia Gillard managed to pass more legislation than term of government.

"Julia Gillard herself was a very good negotiator," Dr Deem said.

"So the minority government definitely made things harder for her, but she was able to overcome those challenges."

Though that too became its own double-edged sword, since some of the legislation the Gillard Government pushed through ended up losing the election for Labor in 2013.

"The really tricky thing for Julia Gillard was that in order to get the full support of the crossbench, she had to concede to the Greens that they wanted to put a price on carbon which became referred to as the 'carbon tax' and that ultimately was very unpopular and brought down that government," Dr Deem said.

"So these negotiations, these compromises to the crossbench can be quite a long run for the party seeking to form a government."