Australia’s government accused opposition chief Tony Abbott of dodging a TV election clash with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday as they prepared to appear separately at the same town hall meeting.
The government said the conservative Abbott, who has dragged Gillard to within a whisker of a shock election defeat, would be “hiding out the back” before facing voters and TV cameras in western Sydney half-an-hour later.
“If he was ready to be the prime minister of Australia, he would be ready to get on stage and debate Julia Gillard tonight,” Parliamentary Secretary for Employment Jason Clare told Sky News.
The colorful Abbott publicly challenged Gillard to two more head-to-head debates at their only election clash last month, when he was trailing in the polls ahead of the Aug. 21 vote.
However, after drawing level with Gillard, Abbott said his busy campaign schedule did not allow for another debate, despite both later agreeing to be quizzed by voters at Sydney’s Rooty Hill ex-serviceman’s club for live TV.
Gillard, the feisty, flame-haired lawyer who last week promised to reveal the “real Julia” as she floundered in the polls, said the famously gaffe-prone Abbott had “cotton wool packed around him” by his advisers.
“I think I came to the decision that that sort of straitjacket wasn’t for me. They do have Tony Abbott in a straitjacket,” she told Channel 10 late on Tuesday.
Gillard and Abbott were to face questions from 200 hand-picked voters later in the town hall meeting, dubbed the “Battle of Rooty Hill,” just 10 days before elections that remain on a knife-edge.
New voter analysis released by Newspoll showed Gillard’s Labor Party was lagging the Liberal/National Coalition in key states, raising the prospect that the opposition will gain the 17 new seats it needs for victory.
However, Abbott also came under fire for his shaky grasp of plans to replace the government’s A$43 billion (US$39.4 billion) national broadband network with a cheaper patchwork of services relying heavily on wireless.
“If you want to drag me into a technical discussion here, I’m not going to be very good at it,” he told ABC TV, when asked to provide details of the policy.
Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said the admission was “very embarrassing,” adding it was “unforgivable that the leader of the opposition misses any basic knowledge on this matter.”
Gillard meanwhile unveiled her biggest commitment, a A$2.6 billion rail link extension for western Sydney, as she courted marginal seats in the region ahead of yesterday’s meeting.
She received strong backing from Australian gamblers yesterday when one bet A$200,000 for a Labor win, shortening the ruling party’s odds to A$1.45 per dollar bet.
“Punters very rarely get it wrong when they bet like this, and I would suggest Ms Gillard should be looking to get removalists booked,” Sportingbet chief executive Michael Sullivan told the West Australian newspaper.
The coalition needs a 2.3 percent swing to force Labor from power, just three years after its big election win under former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, who was ousted in a shock party coup in June.
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