Australia’s Howard heads for defeat as voting starts

By DPA

Sydney : Opinion polls Monday showed Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party widening its lead over Prime Minister John Howard’s ruling coalition as voting began in Australia’s remotest areas ahead of the Nov 24 general election.


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Two weeks before polling day for most voters, support for Labor rose to 55 percent from 53 percent a week earlier and the conservatives slipped back to 45 percent from 47 percent.

A mobile voting booth at the Aboriginal hamlet of Kybrook Farm, 250 km south of Darwin, will be the first to open.

The opinion poll published by The Australian showed Labor on track to win the 16 seats it needs to end 11 years of coalition government. Labor has been in front in opinion polling, since Rudd took over the leadership in December.

Howard was dealt a blow last week when the central bank raised interest rates for the sixth time since he won the 2004 general election on the promise that he could maintain the cost of borrowing at record lows. It was the ninth consecutive interest rate hike and dented the coalition’s reputation for sound economic management.

“There’s a mood for change in Australia,” Rudd, 50, said. “People just don’t like being told by the government that they’ve never had it so good. They really hate that.”

Howard, 68, was unwilling to concede voters had turned against him.

“I’m feeling very optimistic,” Howard told reporters. “This election has boiled down to one great overriding issue and that is economic management. Who is better able to handle the Australian economy in a period of some new challenges?”

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