Sydney, August 19: Australia’s first woman Prime Minister Julia Gillard will fight for her political life in a nail-biting election Saturday which could doom her as one of the country’s shortest-serving leaders.
Gillard, 48, who came to power in a hail of controversy after knifing elected leader Kevin Rudd, has shrunk to a wafer-thin lead in the opinion polls over conservative Tony Abbott, the pugnacious opposition leader.
Defeat of the Welsh-born Gillard, whose parents emigrated in 1966, would make her Labor Party the first single-term government since World War II, and return the Liberal/National Coalition to power after less than three years.
It would also cap a dramatic period of upheaval in Australian politics, starting with the once enormously popular Rudd’s slide down the approval ratings and highlighted by his spectacular ousting in June.
“When I became prime minister I said to the Australian people I would very quickly call an election so people could have their say,” Gillard said Wednesday. “Everybody gets their say on Saturday.”
The latest Newspoll gives the former industrial lawyer a 52-48 percent advantage over Abbott, but with some 40 marginal seats in the 150-seat lower house, the race is viewed as too close to call.
Haydon Manning, head of politics at Adelaide’s Flinders University, said the election – a compulsory vote by about 14 million electors, spread across the vast and varied continent – could be the tightest in decades.
“Voters are looking at two of the least exposed leaders since World War II,” he told AFP. “To a lot of average voters, Gillard and Abbott are not names they know well. They wouldn’t know very much about them at all.
“At this stage there’s a lot of undecided voters and anything could change their minds.”
During the bitter campaign, Gillard has struggled to dispel memories of June 24, when as deputy prime minister she suddenly turned on her boss, Rudd, and deposed him in a party ballot backed by shadowy factional chiefs.
She has also bungled announcements on the key issues of climate change and immigration, and admitted failing to project the “real Julia” – known for her down-to-earth charm and sharp wit – during a highly stage-managed campaign.
But Gillard can point to Labor’s impressive economic record in avoiding a recession during the financial crisis, and popular plans for a high-speed national broadband network to connect some 93 percent of homes.
Abbott, 52, meanwhile has toned down his image as a maverick “Mad Monk” in a tightly orchestrated campaign which has played on fears over illegal immigrants, the government’s budget deficit and soaring living costs.
He opposes a new tax on the vital mining sector and accuses Labor of planning a “great big” carbon levy which will hit consumers, while reminding voters of a botched free home insulation scheme which left four workers dead.
The two leaders slugged out a fighting draw in the campaign’s final major event on Wednesday, a town hall-style meeting with voters in Brisbane, capital of Rudd’s home state of Queensland.
The election will be fought in a swathe of swing seats in resource-rich Queensland, which depends heavily on the mining industry, and New South Wales, which has a large intake of ethnic minority immigrants.
But despite the drama of recent events and the populist charisma of both leaders, many voters have been left uninspired by a campaign of small-scale promises targeting scattered electorates, with little vision beyond August 21.
Analyst John Keane calls it the “discount chain store” election, where voters are treated as consumers to be bought off with promises and the competing brands are almost indistinguishable.
“This feels like a rather poor theatrical performance and not surprisingly… I haven’t come across anybody who waxes eloquent about ‘the great choosing day’,” he told public broadcaster ABC.
The race is a far cry from 2007, when Rudd captured the mood of a country baying for action on climate change and Australia’s downtrodden Aborigines, decisively ending right-winger John Howard’s 11 years in power.
Rudd gave a landmark apology to Aborigines and signed the Kyoto Protocol, but failed to ease the native population’s plight and shelved flagship emissions trading laws in April, precipitating his demise.
Disappointment with the Labor government now threatens to halt Gillard’s reign at just 58 days, the briefest stint since the 1940s, and bring Abbott to power less than a year after he became Liberal Party leader.
–Agencies