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| Tony Abbott the newly-elected conservative PM. |
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia's
conservative opposition swept to power Saturday, ending six years of Labor
Party rule and winning over a disenchanted public by promising to end a hated
tax on carbon emissions, boost a flagging economy and bring about political
stability after years of Labor infighting.
"I know that Labor hearts are
heavy across the nation tonight, and as your prime minister and as your
parliamentary leader of the great Australian Labor Party, I accept
responsibility," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a speech to supporters,
after calling opposition leader Tony Abbott to concede defeat. "I gave it
my all, but it was not enough for us to win."
A victory for the conservative Liberal Party-led coalition comes despite
the relative unpopularity of Abbott, a 55-year-old former Roman Catholic
seminarian and Rhodes scholar who has struggled to connect with women voters
and was once dubbed "unelectable" by opponents and even some supporters.
But voters were largely fed up with
Labor and Rudd, after a years-long power struggle between him and his former
deputy, Julia Gillard. Gillard, who became the nation's first female prime
minister after ousting Rudd in a party vote in 2010, ended up losing her job to
Rudd three years later in a similar internal party coup.
The drama, combined with Labor reneging
on an election promise by imposing a deeply unpopular tax on the nation's
biggest carbon polluters, proved deadly for Labor's re-election chances.
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| Opposition leader Tony Abbott voting with family. |
In his concession speech, Rudd said he
would be stepping down as party leader. "The Australian people, I believe,
deserve a fresh start with our leadership," he said. Former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke
blamed the party's loss on its inability to unite. "This is an election
lost by the government rather than won by Tony Abbott," he told Sky News.
With more than 90 percent of votes
counted late Saturday night, official figures from the Australian Electoral
Commission showed the Liberals ahead 53 percent to Labor's 47 percent. The
coalition was on track to win 91 seats in the 150-seat House of
Representatives, and Labor 54.
Abbott, who becomes Australia's third
prime minister in three months, will aim to end a period of extraordinary
political instability in Australia.
The swing away from Labor was a
resounding rejection of Australia's first minority government since World War
II. Voters disliked the deals and compromises struck between Labor, the minor
Greens party and independent lawmakers to keep their fragile, disparate and
sometime chaotic coalition together for the past three years, including the
carbon tax.
Abbott has vowed to scrap the carbon
from July 2014 — two years after it was implemented — and instead introduce
taxpayer-funded incentives for polluters to operate cleaner. It is unclear
whether Abbott will be able to pass the necessary law changes through
Parliament, but he has threatened to hold early elections if the Senate thwarts
him.
Abbott's popularity seems to have
peaked at the right time. Two polls published this past week by Sydney-based
market researcher Newspoll are the only ones in which Abbott beat Rudd as
preferred prime minister since Newspoll first began comparing the two leaders
in 2010.
There is unlikely to be any honeymoon
period for Abbott, as he inherits a slowing economy, hurt by the cooling of a
mining boom that kept the resource-rich nation out of recession during the
global financial crisis.
Australia's new government has promised
to slash foreign aid spending as it concentrates on returning the budget to
surplus. Labor spent billions of dollars on stimulus projects to avoid
recession. But declining corporate tax revenues from the mining slowdown forced
Labor to break a promise to return the budget to surplus in the last fiscal year.
Abbott has also promised to repeal a tax on coal and iron ore mining
companies, which he blames in part for the downturn in the mining boom. The 30
percent tax on the profits of iron ore and coal miners was designed to cash in
on burgeoning profits from a mineral boom fueled by Chinese industrial demand.
But the boom was easing before the tax took effect. The tax was initially
forecast to earn the government 3 billion Australian dollars ($2.7 billion) in
its first year, but collected only AU$126 million after six months.
Abbott was a senior minister in the
government of Prime Minister John Howard, who ruled for 11 years until Rudd
first took office in 2007. Under Howard, Australia — one of the
world's worst greenhouse gas polluters on a per capita basis — and the United
States had been the only wealthy countries to refuse to ratify the Kyoto
Protocol on reducing global warming.
One of Rudd's first acts as prime
minister was to ratify the Protocol, and he became Australia's most popular
prime minister of the past three decades with his promise to introduce a carbon
emissions trading scheme. His popularity fell after he failed to persuade the
Senate to deliver the scheme.
Saturday's election likely brought
Australia's first Aboriginal woman to Parliament. Former Olympian Nova Peris is
almost certain to win a Senate seat for Labor in the Northern Territory, but
the final results will not be known for days. Less likely is WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange's bid for a Senate seat in Victorian state.
Related posts at following links:
What is wrong with Tony Abbott? Nothing Really!
Labor's Carbon Tax kills the Australian Mining Boom
Related posts at following links:
What is wrong with Tony Abbott? Nothing Really!
Labor's Carbon Tax kills the Australian Mining Boom
