Australia’s Labour government has pulled ahead of the conservative opposition, according to a poll published yesterday, a week away from an election expected to be the closest in years.
The Aug. 21 election will decide the fate of the government’s planned 30 percent mining tax on big iron ore and coal projects, and the future of government plans for a US$33 billion national broadband network. The opposition has vowed to abandon both.
“I think we are heading toward one of the closest, tightest races in Australia’s history. I think this will be a photo finish,” Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard told journalists during campaigning at the weekend.
Other polls have shown the race too close to call, with analysts saying the next government could well be decided by marginal seats where voters are likely to be swayed by the major policy differences between the two sides.
Opposition leader Tony Abbott declared himself the underdog yesterday, but said the opposition could still win. The Nielsen poll results, published in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age newspapers, showed Labor leading the opposition 53 percent to 47 percent on a ‘two-party’ basis, eliminating minor parties under Australia’s system of transferable voting. This represents a swing of four percentage points to Labor in a week.
The government’s primary vote was at 40 percent, up four percentage points, with the opposition at 41 percent and the Greens at 12 percent. As preferred prime minister, Gillard led Abbott by 52 percent to 38 percent.
It follows a strong week of campaigning for Australia’s first female prime minister and a public reconciliation a week ago with former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, whom she ousted in an internal party coup in June.
On Wednesday, the latest Reuters Poll Trend showed Gillard’s Labor marginally ahead with 50.1 percent support, compared with 49.9 percent for the opposition, as the tightest race since 1998 pointed to the possibility no single party will form a government after Saturday’s election.
Abbott was in resources-rich western Australia yesterday, where he launched a new policy on mining and resources, saying government plans to increase taxation on mining had badly damaged Australia’s status among international investors.
Despite the government’s rebound, government plans to increase taxation on mining and the dumping of Rudd as leader have damaged its standing in some key areas, including his home state, resources-rich Queensland, where there are several Labor marginal seats.
A separate poll by Newspoll in marginal seats, published in the Australian newspaper yesterday, suggested the government might lose several, but might also win enough marginals from the opposition to stay in power.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
French singer Kendji Girac, who was seriously injured by a gunshot this week, wanted to “fake” his suicide to scare his partner who was threatening to leave him, prosecutors said on Thursday. The 27-year-old former winner of France’s version of The Voice was found wounded after police were called to a traveler camp in Biscarrosse on France’s southwestern coast. Girac told first responders he had accidentally shot himself while tinkering with a Colt .45 automatic pistol he had bought at a junk shop, a source said. On Thursday, regional prosecutor Olivier Janson said, citing the singer, that he wanted to “fake” his suicide
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other