Labor wins Australian elections
John Howard concedes defeat as his 11-year-old administration comes to an end.
Published On 24 Nov 2007
He said there was “no prouder job in the world than being prime minister of Australia”.
The election was fought mainly on domestic issues, with Labor capitalising on anger at workplace laws and rising interest rates which put home owners under financial pressure at a time when Australia’s economy is booming.
New generation
Labor policy promises |
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Kevin Rudd, the 50-year-old Labor party leader, presented himself as a new generation politician compared with Howard, who is 68.
Rudd promised to pull Australian combat troops out of Iraq and sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, further isolating Washington on both issues.
The former diplomat, who speaks Mandarin, is also be expected to forge closer ties with China and other Asian nations.
His message for change attracted a swing of more than five per cent across the nation from the previous election, locking in only the sixth change of government since World War Two.
“I offer Australia new leadership for the future, a positive plan for the future because Mr Howard’s government’s best days now lay behind it,” Rudd said on Friday.
“Mr Howard has gone stale in his government’s approach to the future.”
Emphatic victory
Election analyst Antony Green predicted Labor would win at least 80 seats in the 150-seat parliament, giving it a clear majority in its own right for the first time since it lost power to Howard in 1996.
Election know-how |
Green said: “The victory is starting to become more emphatic and the Labor Party is picking up seats way beyond the 5 per cent swing required.”
The result point to Labor being in power in all of Australia’s six states and two territories, with the lord mayor of the northern city of Brisbane now the senior ranking elected official in Howard’s Liberal Party.
“We’ve all got goose bumps that finally we might have a leader who is passionate about fairness in this country.
“Finally, after 11 years, it’s happening,” Celeste Giese, 39, said at a football stadium in the northern city of Brisbane where Rudd was due to hold a victory party.
Slick campaign
Dan Nolan, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Sydney, said that Rudd and his Labor party had run a strong campaign and there have been comparisons with Tony Blair’s campaign that ended a long period of conservative rule in the UK in the 1990s.
Howard had trailed in opinion polls all year with some forecasting a landslide victory for Labor, but surveys in the final days of the campaign said the contest was close.
Howard is a close ally of George Bush, the US president, and had made a commitment to keep Australian troops in Iraq if re-elected.
He also offered voters $29 billion in tax cuts, but few new policies.
Source: Al Jazeera, News Agencies