Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Election outcome still five days away - Richardson

Updated at 3:12 pm on 22 August 2010

Former Labor cabinet minister Graham Richardson says Australia will have to wait another five days before the outcome of the election becomes clear.

Mr Richardson says a hung parliament is the most likely outcome of Saturday's election and Prime Minister Julia Gillard was hurt more than Coalition leader Tony Abbott by the verdict.

He told Radio New Zealand's Australian election special programme that the most damaging aspect of Gillard's campaign was the leaks from former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's camp during the second week of the campaign.

He said these leaks destroyed Ms Gillard's momentum, made her own character an issue, made pensioners question her and she never fully recovered from it.

Mr Richardson said Labor announced an election without a decent plan: the plan was simply that Gillard is better than Abbott, so she will win.

He said that was "not a very good plan" which should never have been attempted.

He said Labor needs to realise that it should not have announced an election campaign simply because it thought its candidate for prime minister was better than the opposition's.

Listen to Radio New Zealand National's Australian election special programme

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