Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard got off to a flying start in opinion polls yesterday as taunts over her new slogan and controversial rise to power marked the start of a “filthy” election season.
Gillard, who set Aug. 21 polls just three weeks after deposing former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, launched her campaign in the key battleground state of Queensland, pledging to safeguard Australia’s treasured quality of life.
“One of the things Australians often say when we’ve spent a few days in a crowded, congested city in Europe or the United States: ‘It’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there,’” she said in a speech in Brisbane. “Friends, I will not allow Australia to ever become a country of which it is said: ‘It’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.’”
Campaigning started inauspiciously when an opposition Liberal candidate was physically attacked over her party’s immigration policies while handing out flyers at a supermarket.
“My poor volunteer, who was on his first day of the campaign trail, got punched in the face many times,” Jassmine Wood, a candidate for the South Australian seat of Hindmarsh, told public broadcaster ABC. “I got hit in the side of the head.”
A Galaxy opinion poll taken late on Friday gave Labor a 52-to-48 percent lead over the Liberal/National Coalition with Gillard, Australia’s first woman prime minister, enjoying a 58-to-32 percent advantage over coalition chief Tony Abbott.
However, 57 percent of voters also said last month’s sudden ousting of Rudd, who was dumped in a surprise party revolt, would hurt the government’s chances.
Opposition leader Abbott, who predicted a “filthy” campaign, said it was no surprise Gillard’s slogan was “Moving Australia Forward,” which she referenced 18 times in her election announcement alone.
“‘Moving Australia Forward’ is utterly content-free,” Abbott said. “And the reason why she’s desperate to talk about the future is because Julia Gillard’s recent past is littered with failures, including the political corpse of an elected prime minister.”
Voting in the first winter polls since 1987 looks set to hinge on the touchstone issues of people-smuggling, the economy and global warming, echoing the themes of the last election in 2007.
The center-left Gillard will aim to portray the coalition as harking back to the 11-year rule of former Australian prime minister John Howard, while the right-leaning coalition will try to show the prime minister is someone who cannot be trusted.
Gillard yesterday pledged A$200 million (US$174 million) for affordable homes in regional cities, after rocketing prices put houses out of range for many Australians and saddled others with large mortgages.
“[The election] will be a referendum on our very quality of life. This is a time for choosing, between cuts or services, fear and optimism, going backwards or going forwards,” she said.
Abbott, meanwhile, attacked Gillard’s three weeks in office as “shambolic,” referring to confusion over her plan to process asylum-seekers in East Timor, and compared Rudd’s downfall to Labor’s notoriously brutal state politics.
“This is all part of the Labor political style: When things get really, really bad you change the leader and pretend everything is different,” he told Sky News. “But it’s never different, it’s always just as bad.”
Both leaders are untested in running election campaigns and are long-time sparring partners, adding spice to a vote which Labor never looked like losing until Rudd’s enduring popularity collapsed in recent months.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS