The first female Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard is attempting to keep her job by calling an early election, she has been in the job only 3 weeks, on August 21. This will give all contenders a five-week campaign.
The battle is drawn on jobs in Australia, climate change, asylum seekers, and record-high public debt. Ms Gillard met with Governor-General Quentin Bryce to request permission to call an election and dissolve the Parliament.
The election Coalition needs a swing of 2.3 percent, or an extra 17 seat, to get back into government just one term after Kevin Rudd ousted John Howard from the top spot. At a press conference Gillard acknowledged she had not been elected and had pledged to allow Australians to choose who they want to serve the country as Prime Minister.
“Today, I honour that pledge,” she said. “This election, I believe presents Australia with a very clear choice, whether we move Australia forward or go back. Moving forward requires convictions, it requires confidence… it requires a willingness to embrace new challenges. It requires a strong set of convictions and a clear set of values… all my adult life I have been driver by a clear set of values. I believe in hard work, I believe in what comes as an individual when you do your best and earn your keep.”
Along with taking the opportunity to kick off her election campaign, Ms Gillard talked about opposition leader Tony Abbott, saying he wants to make Australians “afraid of their future”.
She also said he was in “climate change denial” and his gaze is “fixed in the rear view mirror”.
Mr Abbott was in Brisbane when Ms Gillard called the election and, in a speech to the Liberal-National Party, he said the party is “ready to govern”.
“The people of Queensland won’t be conned by a prime minister who is now running to the polls before she has established her credentials to lead our nation,” Abbott said.
In return to Ms Gillard’s comments, Mr Abbott said the Labour Party are stagnant.
“They waste money and they maladminister programs. Then when it all gets too hard they change the leader. But they don’t change the policies and they don’t change their ways. They change the leader and the problems get worse. The problem is not the leader – the problem is Labour.”
At the beginning of the speech, on “day one of the election campaign”, Mr Abbott told party members, “we are ready to go. An incoming Coalition government would not seek to change the Fair Work Act at least for the three years of the next term of parliament,” Mr Abbott said.
Gillard called the election after grabbing power in a surprise ruling Labor Party coup. She said the government had “lost its way” under her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, and has attempted to steer new courses in key policy areas.
“We would go into our second term with some lessons learnt,” Gillard told reporters at Parliament House. “We would be able to implement and deliver programs differently than we have in the past.”
Polls point to Labor winning a second three-year term, but analysts sees a tight contest against a resurgent conservative opposition Liberal Party led by Tony Abbott.
Both have shifted their parties’ directions but maintain bipartisan support for major foreign policy issues.
While Rudd went to the 2007 election declaring climate change the “greatest moral challenge of our time,” Gillard has yet to announce a new Labor policy on reducing
Australia’s carbon gas emissions, which are among the world’s highest per capita.
The latest Newspoll shows Labor 53 per cent with of the two-party preferred vote against 47 per cent for the Coalition.
In recent weeks Ms Gillard has been clearing the decks, repairing key policy weaknesses that had undermined the government’s standing in the polls and led to the spectacular evaporation of support among Labor MPs and faction leaders for Mr Rudd, forcing his downfall.
