Sydney: Australian voters go to the polls on September 7 with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor and Tony Abbott’s Liberal-led conservatives offering alternative policies on climate change, austerity, the Internet, gay marriage and taxation but similar positions on defence, trade and asylum seekers.
CLIMATE CHANGE: Rudd, who famously described climate change as “the greatest moral and economic challenge of our time,” will stick with a European-style carbon emissions trading scheme to deliver a promised 5 per cent reduction on 2000 emissions levels by 2020. Abbott, who derides carbon trading as a “market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one,” promises to meet the 5 per cent target by paying power companies and other big polluters to reduce greenhouse gases.
AUSTERITY: Abbott insists that a swift return to balanced budgets would cut the government’s borrowing costs and help householders by keeping interest rates down. Rudd, who also describes himself as an economic conservative, warns that big spending cuts could plunge the country into the recession that his 2009 stimulus packages managed to avoid.
INTERNET: Rudd is building a National Broadband Network with taxpayer funds that will see fibre optic cables feed download speeds of up to 1,000 megabits per second into 93 per cent of homes and businesses. Abbott has picked a much cheaper fibre-to-the-node scheme with a minimum 25-megabits speed that would see most homes and premises rely on the existing copper network for lines in from street-corner boxes.
GAY MARRIAGE: Abbott does not support gay marriage and will not give party members a conscience vote if a bill allowing marriage equality comes before parliament. Rudd changed his mind six months ago and has promised to introduce a bill allowing same-sex marriage within 100 days of being re-elected to government.
TAXATION: Rudd is sticking with a super-profits tax on iron ore and coal producers that kicks in when companies start earning revenues over the rate that investors get from holding government bonds. Abbott has pledged to ditch the mining tax and settle for normal corporate tax receipts and the royalties that resources companies pay on what they dig up.
DEFENCE: Both Abbott and Rudd are both strong supporters of Israel and its military alliance with the United States. Both are wary of China’s military build-up and are committed to bringing troops home from Afghanistan.
TRADE: Rudd and Abbott are pushing for more bilateral free trade deals to make up for the slow progress on multilateral agreements by agencies like the World Trade Organisation and the APEC regional grouping.
ASYLUM SEEKERS: Abbott and Rudd are promising that processing boat people in offshore centres like one in Papua New Guinea and denying permanent settlement in Australia will slow the flow of traffic via Indonesia. More than 40,000 immigrants, mostly Middle Easterners, have arrived since 2008. Abbott’s plan is to allow genuine refugees only three-year temporary protection visas that would not be renewed if security in their native countries improved. Rudd has said that no one arriving by boat would ever settle in Australia, a promise that Abbott has not made.
