Recount will decide Tasmanian seat

Tasmanian independent candidate Andrew Wilkie. Photo / Supplied

The nail-biting continues for independent candidate Andrew Wilkie and the Labor Party in the Tasmanian electorate of Denison, where a recount of primary votes began yesterday.

Wilkie, a former intelligence analyst who won fame by blowing the whistle on government claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, could become one of four independents playing a pivotal role in deciding who governs Australia for the next three years.

The other three independents are conservative rural MPs, re-elected on Saturday and now being courted by caretaker Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in the hope of gaining their support to win power in a hung parliament.

Analysts awarded Wilkie the seat on Saturday night after apparently defeating Labor rival Jonathan Jackson on preferences.

The seat had been held for 25 years by retiring former Labor Minister and Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs Duncan Kerr.

But Denison is again in doubt through a recount that the ABC's election computer predicts will return Denison to Labor.

If elected, Wilkie will present a wild card to the main parties.

Previously a soldier, he joined the Liberals while training at Duntroon Military College, and later became a lieutenant colonel posted to the Office of National Assessments, the agency responsible for providing Prime Ministers with intelligence analysis.

In 2003, he concluded that intelligence reports being used by former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard to justify the invasion of Iraq were being doctored and he resigned to publicly condemn the war.

In his 2004 book Axis of Deceit, Wilkie claimed intelligence agencies had come under pressure to distort analysis of claims Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction, and later gave evidence in British and Australian inquiries into the war.

In the 2004 election he stood for the Greens against Howard in the Sydney seat of Bennelong, winning 16 per cent of the vote and forcing the Prime Minister to go to preferences.

Three years later, in the election that swept Howard from power, he unsuccessfully stood for the Senate with Greens leader Bob Brown.

Leaving the Greens, he ran - again unsuccessfully - as an independent for the state seat of Denison in this year's Tasmanian election.

Wilkie opposes the Greens' restrictive approach to development in Tasmania, but has so far declined to comment on his likely position on a future federal government until the outcome of the vote in Denison has been confirmed.

His sympathies - especially support for Labor's national broadband network and opposition to the Liberals' now-defunct WorkChoices industrial laws - suggest he is more likely to support the Government.

But he told the ABC he would back whoever was prepared to govern in the best interests of Denison, and that he was giving neither Gillard nor Abbott any advantage at this stage.