AUSTRALIA: Early counting in Australia's election points to solid support for Kevin Rudd's Labor opposition

Early counting in Australia's election points to solid support for Kevin Rudd's Labor opposition as an exit poll showed voters were ready for a change of government after 11 years of conservative rule. Australia's conservative Prime Minister John Howard was set to lose his Sydney seat to the Labor opposition in the nation's election, early exit polls indicate, Australian Broadcasting Corp. said on Saturday (November 24) . Such a result would make Howard the first Australian prime minister since 1929 to lose his own seat at a national election. Polling booths opened across Australia in national elections which will decide whether Prime Minister John Howard is re-elected for a fifth term. Conservative leader Howard, 68, has been in power for 11 years, but trails in opinion polls behind the opposition Labor leader, 50-year-old Kevin Rudd. Some polls predict a landslide victory for Labor, others say Howard and Rudd are neck-and-neck. Howard is a staunch U.S. ally and if re-elected has committed to keeping Australian troops in Iraq. He has offered voters 34 billion Australian dollars (29 billion U.S. dollars) in tax cuts, but few new policies. "I am fine, it is in the hands of the people but I will keep talking to them until six o'clock tonight, to say to any of those wavering voters, if you change the government you change the direction of our country and if you think this country is fundamentally heading in the right direction, don't change the government," Howard told reporters on Saturday, in a pitch to young voters he has struggled to woo. Rudd has pledged to withdraw combat troops from Iraq and sign the Kyoto Protocol, further isolating Washington on both issues. The Mandarin-speaking former diplomat would also be expected to forge closer ties with China and other Asian nations. Rudd voted under a hot, humid sun at his local church in the tropical state of Queensland. "Well, I am pretty confident that I have the family's vote, five going for us, I just have ten million other votes to worry about," Rudd told reporters. Initial figures showed widespread swings against Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government in the most populous eastern states, with Howard also well behind Labor's candidate in his own Sydney parliamentary seat of Bennelong. With just over two percent of the vote counted, Labor was leading in several key seats needed to win power. Labor frontbencher and strategist Stephen Smith predicted his party could win between 20 and 25 seats, enough to win power. Nationally, the Australian Electoral Commission said Labor support was up by 4.12 percent compared with the 2004 election. But the polls had only just closed in the crucial northern state of Queensland, Rudd's home state, where Labor needs to win several new seats to be able to form a government. Finance Minister Nick Minchin said the early swings were not enough to point to the election result. Howard kept grassroots campaigning until polls closed on Saturday in a desperate bid to win a fifth straight term and reject a younger opposition leader offering generational change. A Sky television exit poll of 31 marginal government seats forecast a 30-seat gain for Rudd. Labor needs to win an extra 16 seats to defeat Howard's conservatives. The exit poll also showed voters could dump Howard from his own Sydney seat, putting him in danger of becoming the first prime minister since 1929 to lose his own seat. The exit poll of 2,787 voters by Auspoll gave Labor 53 percent of the vote and the ruling Liberal party 47 percent. First polls closed at 6 p.m. (0700 GMT) in the two big east coast states of New South Wales and Victoria, as well as the small island state of Tasmania. But Howard is hoping to hold off defeat with a strong showing in the vast Western Australia state, where government support is highest and where Howard's Liberal Party hopes it can pick up one or two Labor seats. Howard once described himself as "Lazarus with a triple bypass" for his ability to be resurrected from political defeat. Even if he wins it will be his last hurrah, for he has promised to step down mid-term to make way for his treasurer, Peter Costello. Rudd says Howard is too old and tired to lead Australia, and has attacked a handover to Costello as undemocratic. Howard has criticised Rudd's lack of experience, insisting a Labor government would be dominated by former trade unionists and would wreck an economy which has recorded 17 years of growth. Howard says that under his tenure Australia has become more secure and stable. Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, Australia has been on medium security alert. Australia's military in 2006 was at its highest operational level since the Vietnam War, with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. But a majority of Australians are opposed to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and are losing faith in Howard's tough security stance.

ITN Source | November 24, 2007

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