AUSTRALIA:Polls ahead of Saturday's Australian election suggest Kevin Rudd could lead the next government, writes Pádraig Collinsin Sydney
Australia's Labor Party leader, Kevin Rudd, said yesterday he would lead his country's delegation to December's Bali climate summit and sign the Kyoto pact if he wins power at this weekend's parliamentary elections.
Mr Rudd, strongly leading conservative prime minister and Kyoto critic John Howard in polls, said the fight against catastrophic climate change would be his top priority if he won.
"I want to simply demonstrate that we have gone from outside the tent to inside the tent, I think it is important to make that statement," Mr Rudd told the Australian Financial Review.
Australia, the world's biggest greenhouse polluter per head of population, has along with the US refused to sign the Kyoto treaty, with Mr Howard arguing it would harm the economy and cost jobs.
If he wins, Mr Rudd's decision to sign up to Kyoto would further isolate the US on climate issues and send a message that Australia intends to work closely with the UN on a post-Kyoto treaty.
Four separate polls over the weekend indicated that Australians would vote to change their government on Saturday.
Two pointed to a landslide win for Labor, while the other two, which polled marginal seats only, said it would be much tighter. Regardless, these polls and more than 80 others over the past year all say the Liberal-National coalition's days are numbered, with Mr Howard possibly losing his seat.
The coalition has had a dreadful campaign, while Labor, with few exceptions, has been disciplined and on message, with Mr Rudd (50) emphasising his relative youth compared to Mr Howard (68).
Having won the last election on his promise to keep interest rates low, Mr Howard has been hoping to weather the storm of six rate rises, the last one two weeks ago.
The coalition's campaign advertisements have been uniformly negative and centred on one theme - Labor's union links. They claim 70 per cent of Labor's front bench are "anti-business former trade union officials".
This bogus figure includes people who were nothing more than union members and one who was a barrister specialising in industrial relations cases. The old reds under the bed scare updated for the new millennium has barely dented the polls.
Another anti-union advertisement, financed by business groups, focused on what it called "union thugs". It had to be pulled when it emerged that, though two of the three actors in the advertisement were indeed thugs, with convictions and charges for drug trafficking, violence and underage sex, they were not union members.
The coalition's election slogans have not helped. Their campaign theme, "Go for growth" (used by Labor in 1996), was sidelined after the rate rise.Mr Howard's "love me or loathe me" personal slogan is not working either.
While blue-blood Liberals do love him, and some diehard Labor voters definitely loathe him, the swinging voters who decide elections think it is time for him to go. A Labor advertisement taps into that feeling, with an average suburban mum saying: "No offence Mr Howard, but you've been there too long."
In the race between Mr Howard and Mr Rudd, it has been hard for the sideshow parties to get a look in, and when they do it is not a pretty sight. Liberty and Democracy Party candidate Bede Ireland confirmed mainland stereotypes concerning the island state of Tasmania by calling for the decriminalisation of incest between adults.
Ben Jacobsen of Christian party Family First said voters had a right to know the sexual preference of all candidates contesting the election. He demanded Liberal candidate Charlie McKillop declare if she is gay.
Mr Jacobsen's colleague, Andrew Quah, had to resign as a Family First candidate after self-taken photos of himself parading his private parts appeared on gay websites.
The left-wing Climate Change Coalition has done a preference swap deal with far-right anti-immigrant candidate Pauline Hanson.
Wackiness is not limited to minor parties or politicians. Liberal candidate Pastor Peter Curtis says homosexuality is a perversion and wants creationism taught in schools.