As reported by Reuters, Australia’s embattled Prime Minister Scott Morrison held an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday as his incumbent minority Liberal party stands to lose significant ground at the hands of voters within the next few months.
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Morrison met lawmakers from southern Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state, where voters overwhelmingly turned against the Liberals in a state election on Saturday, stoking panic within the Liberal-National coalition.
The meeting came just hours after Australia’s pre-eminent opinion poll showed the government on course for a heavy defeat by the Labor opposition at the next national election, which is due by May.
A Newspoll for The Australian newspaper showed Morrison’s government was on course to lose 21 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament. The Newspoll showed support of just 35 percent for the government, just one percentage point above its record low.
Morrison lost his one-seat parliamentary majority earlier in November when an independent candidate won a by-election for the affluent Sydney seat held by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who quit politics after he was ousted in a party-room coup in August.
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