Melbourne, February 02: Opposition to the Australian government’s emissions trading scheme has lifted conservatives to their strongest position since losing power in 2007 and ahead of elections expected later this year, a survey showed on Tuesday.
As the government prepared to return twice rejected carbon trade laws to parliament, a Newspoll in the Australian newspaper showed the conservatives leading the Labour government in primary votes for the first time since 2007.
“There are no guarantees in this business. Absolutely none. This will be a hard fought election, but our job is to govern in the national interest,” Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told Australian radio after seeing the closely-watched poll.
Rudd’s government remains ahead in the two-party preferred terms which decide elections, leading the conservative coalition by 52 percent to 48, halving an 8 percent gap two weeks ago.
Combative new conservative leader Tony Abbott will on Tuesday unveil a policy to tackle climate change which he says is cheaper and simpler than Rudd’s emissions scheme, which Abbott has warned voters will be “a great big tax on everything”.
The Newspoll showed the conservative primary vote at 41 percent to 40 percent for Rudd’s Labour. But in two-party terms, after votes are re-distributed to major parties, Rudd remains on track for victory later this year.
Rudd’s Labor won in 2007 with 52.7 percent of the vote against 47.3 for the conservatives.
GOVERNMENT FACES UPPER HOUSE RESISTANCE
The government is facing setbacks on its emissions scheme, likely to be rejected for a third time, as well as Senate opposition to health, education and telecommunications reforms.
“If our approach is rejected, then obviously climate change is going to figure pretty prominently, together with health and hospital reform and the economy, in an election, whatever form that election might take,” Rudd told reporters.
But voter satisfaction with Rudd as preferred prime minister remained high at 58 percent to Abbott’s 26 percent.
Rudd will most likely call an election in the second half of 2010, and is strongly tipped to govern for another three years on the back of a growing economy that has emerged largely unscathed from the global financial crisis.
But Abbott, a former champion boxer and social conservative who once trained for the priesthood, has targeted the emissions trade scheme and government borrowing as key election battlegrounds, warning they will bring higher interest rates in a country obsessed by home ownership.
Australia’s central bank is expected to raise interest rates for the fourth straight time to 4.0 percent on Tuesday as it reins in stimulus on the back of rising inflation, a revival in employment and robust consumption.
His alternative climate scheme, designed without an emissions scheme or carbon tax, is expected to focus on incentives to reduce greenhouse gases through rates of land clearing or soil improvement.
Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter and the developed world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gas per person. Rudd has promised a broad target to curb carbon emissions by between 5 and 25 percent of 2000 levels by 2020.
—–Agencies