Australia’s first woman Prime Minister Julia Gillard announces Aug 21 general elections

Australian PM Gillard announces Aug 21 elections

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, called elections Saturday buoyed by strong support only three weeks after taking power, but she faces a tough fight from conservatives on climate change, asylum seekers, and record-high public debt.

Gillard scheduled polls for Aug. 21 after grabbing power in a surprise ruling Labor Party coup. She said the government had “lost its way” under her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, and has attempted to steer new courses in key policy areas.

“We would go into our second term with some lessons learnt,” Gillard told reporters at Parliament House. “We would be able to implement and deliver programs differently than we have in the past.”

Opinion polls point to Labor winning a second three-year term, but analysts expect a tight contest against a resurgent conservative opposition Liberal Party led by Tony Abbott.

Gillard, a 48-year-old Welsh-born atheist, was once considered too far left to successfully win over the political middle ground essential to an Australian election victory. Abbott, a 52-year-old former seminarian, was viewed as too far right.

Both have shifted their parties’ directions but have not withdrawn support for major foreign policy issues, including Australia’s deployment of 1,550 troops to Afghanistan.

Gillard broke a bitter deadlock between Rudd and major mining companies over a proposed 40 percent tax on mineral profits, hammering out a deal on a compromise tax of 30 percent. The tax is expected to raise 10.5 billion Australian dollars ($9.3 billion) in two years.

Abbott, who in December became his Liberal Party’s third leader in two years, has vowed to oppose the tax.

Gillard has attempted to stem a surge in asylum seekers trying to reach Australia by boat by asking its tiny neighbor East Timor to host a U.N.-endorsed regional refugee processing hub.

Labor has condemned a Liberal plan to deter asylum seekers by introducing temporary protection visas, which would enable the government to send refugees back to their homelands if conditions there improved.

The election issue is key with more than 4,000 asylum seekers having arrived in Australia by boat in the past year.

Gillard was deputy to Rudd, who became a Labor hero when he led the party to a crushing election victory in November 2007 after 11 years in opposition.

He remained one of the most popular prime ministers in modern Australian history until he made a series of unpopular political moves earlier this year, including shelving a key pledge to make major industries pay for the carbon gas they emit.

While Rudd went to the 2007 election declaring climate change the “greatest moral challenge of our time,” Gillard has yet to announce a new Labor policy on reducing Australia’s carbon gas emissions, which are among the world’s highest per capita.

Under Abbott, the Liberals abandoned their polluter-pays policy and proposed that Australia cut greenhouse emissions by paying major polluters taxpayer-funded incentives. No penalties would be imposed for failure to reduce emissions under his plan.

Abbott has led an attack on the government over its AU$52 billion economic stimulus spending that helped Australia scrape through the global economic recession with a single quarter of mild economic contraction in late 2008.

Abbott told a conservative party meeting in Queensland, a key state to the outcome of the next election, the government has wasted money and the leadership change from Rudd to Gillard was a “seamless transition from incompetence to incompetence.”

“The people of Queensland won’t be conned by a prime minister who is now running to the polls before she has established her credentials to lead our nation,” Abbott said.

Gillard has promised to return Australia to a surplus budget in three years.