Australia faces tight race overnew PM's surprise election
Source: Agencies |
July 20, 2010, Tuesday
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AUSTRALIAN Prime Minister Julian Gillard predicted a tight race yesterday despite a key poll showing growing support for her ruling Labor Party in August elections that she scheduled to confirm her mandate just weeks after coming to power.
Gillard, the country's first woman prime minister, scheduled August 21 elections over the weekend after taking over the Labor Party leadership and ousting predecessor Kevin Rudd in a sudden party coup on June 24.
A survey by the respected pollster Newspoll, a Sydney-based market research company part-owned by News Corp, published yesterday found Gillard's center-left government gaining popularity during the early weeks of her leadership.
However, Gillard said it would be a tight race. "This is going to be a tough, close contest," she told reporters. "I believe this election is on a knife edge; I believe it's going to be a photo finish."
Gillard described the election as a referendum on services to families such as health and education. She accused opposition leader Tony Abbott of planning to cut funding to these.
Also high on the list of voter concerns are climate change policy, record-high government debt and a surge of asylum seekers trying to reach Australia by boat.
Abbott said the government under Rudd was incompetent and that there's no reason to expect any difference under Gillard.
"What Australians want is a government that they can trust with their futures and you couldn't trust this government with the last three years, why should you trust them with the next?" he told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
The Newspoll survey published in The Australian newspaper found that Labor's support among voters outweighed that of the conservative coalition 55 percent to 45 percent.
The last previous Newspoll published days after Gillard grabbed power found Labor support ahead 52 percent to 48 percent - a return to levels it had enjoyed before Rudd's popularity crashed in April after a series of policy turns.
The latest Newspoll was based on a random, nationwide telephone survey of 1,140 voters at the weekend. It has a 3 percentage point margin of error.
Other polls showed Labor ahead of the coalition or neck-and-neck.
Newspoll chief executive Martin O'Shannessy said Gillard's fresh leadership seemed to boosting the government's fortunes since Newspoll found in May that Labor was less popular than the coalition for the first time in almost four years.
As a new leader, Gillard has been a circuit breaker for public anger over government mistakes such as a bungled free insulation program blamed for scores of house fires and a now-abandoned proposal for a 40 percent tax on resource companies' profits.
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