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Australian election heads for cliffhanger

Posted on: Thu August 12, 2010

CANBERRA: Australia s Aug 21 election is looking too close to call, raising the possibility of the first hung parliament in 70 years and confusion over policy issues vital to investment in the resource-dependent economy.

With nine days left, Prime Minister Julia Gillard andconservative rival Tony Abbott are having to concentrate their energies on marginal seats where policies on mining and carbon tax, immigration and broadband Internet investment could well determine which way the vote goes.

Gillard, campaigning on Wednesday in the key battleground of Sydney s western suburban fringe, tried to focus on her economic credentials. But she had to fend off questions that have dogged her campaign in the wake of a June party coup which unseated predecessor Kevin Rudd.

 We all make judgments in our lives. I made a judgment and I stand by it, Gillard said.

A Reuters Poll Trend found her Labor Party with 50.1percent support on a two-party basis, compared to 49.9 per cent for Abbott s conservative coalition, pointing to the closest election since 1998.

The Poll Trend, however, found Gillard was 11 points clear of Abbott as preferred leader, with 48.9 per cent support compared to 38 percent for Abbott, a former trainee priest and endurance triathlete who has upset many voters with strongly conservative views on marriage, feminism and homosexuality.

Gillard has come out fighting after a poor start, appearing confident this week before another live audience that had previously unsettled Rudd, presaging the disastrous slide in his polling support that led to Gillard s rise.

Abbott, who launched his campaign at the weekend, has in contrast been widely criticised over an interview in which he confessed to know little about his coalition s key policy for faster broadband, saying he was no tech-head in a vast continent where communications are a major issue.

The Poll Trend now places the election in too close to call territory, with the result to hang on a handful of marginal seats in the mining and tourism state of Queensland and western Sydney, where voters are concerned about immigration and the economy.

While Gillard has promised to abandon the campaign caution now choking voter interest by showing the real Julia , the usually combative Abbott has looked tentative.

 Tony Abbott has made an extraordinary personal journey from brash to meek without passing through humble, wrote veteran political journalist Malcolm Farr in the mass-selling Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The closely-watched News poll on Wednesday found big differences across states, with the opposition taking a lead in the key mining states of Western Australia and Queensland, where Labor has been hit by Gillard s plan for a 30 per cent mining tax.

The opposition has promised to abandon the tax on big coal and iron ore mines if he wins office, and to scrap a proposed$38 billion national broadband network in favour of a A$6.3billion network to be built by private enterprise.

The Poll Trend points to the closest election since 1998,when then prime minister John Howard won a second term with just 49 per cent of the two-party vote.

In 1961, the two major parties tied, but the conservative government held power because two Labor MPs did not have full voting rights.

Australia s last hung parliament, where the governing party has to rely on independents to hold power, was in 1940, with the conservative government later falling and Labor taking office in 1941 when two independents switched their support.

Online bookmakers sports bet.com.au on Wednesday said while a hung parliament was still an outside chance, the odds had narrowed to 6-1 from 9-1.

Courtesy : The News