AUSTRALIA / FILE: Australian PM John Howard announces the federal election will be held on November 24

Australia will hold national elections on November 24, Prime Minister John Howard said on Sunday (October 14). Howard's conservative government has been in power 11 years, but is well behind the centre-left Labor Party, led by Kevin Rudd, in opinion polls going into the election campaign. Howard visited the house of the Australian Governor-General, the representative of Australia's head of state Queen Elizabeth, earlier in the day to seek permission for the election. "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, as you know, earlier today I called on his Excellency the Governor-General and he has granted on my advice a dissolution of the House of Representatives. There will be an election held on the 24th of November for the House of Representatives and for half of the Senate," Howard told reporters. Howard, Australia's second-longest serving leader who is seeing a fifth term in office, said the country was enjoying a remarkable level of national prosperity, but promised the best years could lie ahead. "Ladies and gentlemen by common agreement Australia is enjoying a remarkable level of national prosperity at the present time but I believe very passionately that this country's best years can lie ahead of us, in the years immediately ahead. That won't happen automatically and in order for that to happen this country does not need new leadership, it does not need old leadership, it needs the right leadership and the right leadership is the leadership that delivers the team that knows how to do the job," he said. The poll will determine the future of Australia's military contribution in Iraq and its stance on climate change, with Labor promising to withdraw troops and sign the Kyoto climate pact, but it will be fought and won on domestic issues. Rudd said it was time for a fresh change of leadership, arguing Howard's government had lost touch with its constituents. "Our country has a future too full of promise to allow a government that's been in office for eleven years, a government that's lost touch and a government that's gone stale, just to continue on." The poll will determine the future of Canberra's military contribution in Iraq and its stance on climate change, with Labor promising to withdraw frontline troops and sign the Kyoto climate pact. But the poll is likely to be fought and won on domestic issues. Rudd, 50, has promised generational change to take the country into the future, including sweeping reforms to health, education and controversial labour laws introduced by Howard. Those laws, cutting benefits and making it easier to hire and fire workers, are a major reason first-time voters and those aged under 29 are set to dump Howard, with three-quarters backing Labor, a Taverner/Sun Herald newspaper poll said on Sunday. Labor has 59 percent of the overall vote, compared with the government's 41 per cent, said the poll. But Labor, which has not won for 14 years, needs to pick up an imposing 16 seats in the 150-seat lower house to take power. The survey showed Rudd was on track for a win, with up to 20 seats expected to change from government hands on polling day and Howard in danger of losing in his own Sydney-based constituency. Geoffrey Hawker, Head of Politics and International relations at Macquarie University says the coalition government is feeling nervous about Rudd's continuous positive polling results. "Labor has never been ahead like this ever before, certainly not in the Howard era and that makes it new, that means the government is worried, not confident and the opposition is trying to hide the fact that it is fairly confident. That, I think, is the huge difference, but, mind you, once the campaign starts we're going to see, I think, a whittling away of that difference," he said. Howard has stressed his economic stewardship and tough security credentials in his quest for a fifth term. Unemployment last week hit 33-year lows amid the ongoing global resources boom, fattening Australia's mining sector. But Howard's bedrock support in outer suburban mortgage belts has been shaken since the last election three years ago by successive interest rate rises to 6.5 percent under a tightening cycle that began back in 2002. Howard acknowledged that his support for the war in Iraq, to which Australia has around 1,500 troops committed, may also cost him support during the election, with as many as 80 percent of people opposed to involvement, according to surveys. He has promised a national vote on recognition for Aborigines in the country's constitution if he wins, a move dismissed by opponents as a last ditch effort to present a "vision" to lure back jaded former conservative supporters.

ITN Source | October 14, 2007

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