Australian PM set for election showdown with rival
Four-term Australian Prime Minister John Howard will square off against his most popular challenger ever at elections tomorrow.
The outcome is set to be decided in a few key districts despite signs of a national swing towards the opposition.
If Labour Party leader Kevin Rudd defeats Howard, it will bring a humiliating end to the career of Australia’s second-longest-serving prime minister and usher in big changes in the country’s approach to global warming and its troop deployment in Iraq.
Rudd has held a commanding lead over Howard for almost a year in trusted opinion polls, and the numbers have barely budged during six weeks of sometimes frantic campaigning that formally ends today.
Making things worse for Howard have been a series of missteps that have cemented Labour as the favourite.
Polls indicate a strong national swing toward Labour, but the result will come down to a handful of districts where the race is tightest.
Labour must win 16 more seats in the 150-member lower house of Parliament than it did at the last election in 2004 to gain a majority and form government.
Today, both leaders said they expect the result to be close.
Economics has been a central theme of the campaign, with candidates debating who can best manage an unprecedented boom being fuelled by China and India’s hunger for the coal and other minerals dug from of the Outback without pushing up inflation and mortgage interest rates.
Australia’s foreign policy is unlikely to change much whoever wins.
But a strong underlying factor is the prospect of a generational change.
“This country is crying out for new leadership,” said Rudd, a 50-year-old former diplomat who speaks fluent Mandarin and has promised an “education revolution” and high-speed internet connections for all Australians.
Howard, 68, has staked his future on the past, by claiming credit for 17 unbroken years of economic growth and warning that Rudd’s team cannot be trusted to maintain prosperous times.
“If you believe that Australia is heading in the right direction, don’t put that at risk by changing the government,” the conservative Howard said in an appeal to voters.
More than 13.5 million of Australia’s roughly 21 million population are required to cast ballots tomorrow, with the results likely to be known late that day or early on Sunday.
Climate change – an issue sharpened in voters’ minds by water shortages as a result of Australia’s worst-ever drought – is at the forefront of an Australian election for the first time.
Rudd says his first priority if he wins power will be to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and has nominated a loose goal of reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent by 2050.
Howard, who is perceived to have embraced the issue only reluctantly, has refused to join any global warming pact that does not include China and India, and promises to set emission targets only after the election.
On Iraq, Rudd condemns Howard’s decision to send troops to join the US-led invasion in 2003 and says he will withdraw Australia’s 550 combat troops from the conflict, leaving twice that number in mostly security roles.
Howard says all the troops will stay as long as needed.
Labour reforms that many people think favour employers featured heavily in the campaign, but most analysts agree it was mostly turgid and without fire, with the rivals matching each other’s promises when deemed to have voter appeal.
Howard was stung by the independent central bank’s decision to raise interest rates during the campaign to fight inflation – Howard had promised to keep mortgage rates low. He was also embarrassed when campaigners for his Liberal party were caught distributing bogus pamphlets claiming Labour sympathised with terrorists.
Rudd’s campaign was not without hiccups, however.
An old video of Rudd rummaging around in his ear with a finger, then absent-mindedly sticking the finger in his mouth surfaced on YouTube and was a huge hit, even making it on to the US TV programme Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Whatever the outcome, tomorrow’s election will herald the end of the Howard era.
He has announced that he will retire before the next election if he wins, and hand power to his deputy and Treasurer Peter Costello.
Howard first came to power in 1996 and his three subsequent election victories have made him one of Australia’s most successful leaders.
