Immigration and broadband network are among the key electoral issues.
Credibility
• Convincing voters about their ability to lead has been a central problem for both Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the opposition Liberal/National coalition leader Tony Abbott.
• Ms Gillard has been Prime Minister for just eight weeks after ousting elected leader Kevin Rudd in a Labour party ballot, raising questions about her trustworthiness. New policies on immigration and climate change have flopped with analysts and the public, and Ms Gillard has been hit by a series of leaks.
• Mr Abbott has a reputation as a colourful maverick and has been indecisive about his stance on unpopular labour laws, which he once championed but now says he will not reinstate, and climate change.
Economy
• Labour has put its economic record at the centre of the five-week campaign, claiming credit for bringing Australia through the financial crisis without entering recession – the only advanced country to do so.
• Treasurer Wayne Swan has stressed Australia’s enviable unemployment rate of just 5.3 per cent, and plans to bring the budget back into surplus within three years.
• The opposition claims the government “recklessly” spent AU$70 billion in stimulus during the global downturn, with two key infrastructure programmes dogged by waste and corruption.
• It has criticised official debt, vowing to return the budget to a surplus of AU$6.2 billion by 2013 – double what the government is promising.
• The coalition opposes the government’s proposed new tax on the crucial mining industry, which is considered the backbone of the Australian economy.
Asylum seekers
• Both the government and opposition have unveiled tough policies to counter the steady stream of people-smuggling boats arriving off northern Australia.
• The ruling Labour party has hit trouble over its plans for a regional processing centre because of a lack of clarity on location and timing, and lukewarm support from neighbouring countries.
• The Coalition prefers turning boats around at sea and returning to the harsh policy of mandatory detention in far-flung Pacific nations, pioneered by former conservative leader John Howard.
• The debate polarises moderates and conservatives and has hit home with the public, which opinion polls have shown is increasingly concerned by the thousands of arrivals by boat.
Climate change
• A lengthy drought, highlighted by last year’s Black Saturday bushfire tragedy, coastal erosion and figures showing Australians as the world’s worst per capita polluters, helped make climate change a key issue.
• Labour campaigned on an environmental platform at the last election and quickly ratified the Kyoto Protocol once in office, but embarrassingly failed to pass flagship emissions trading laws which were twice blocked by the Senate and later shelved, badly damaging Mr Rudd’s credibility before his dismissal.
• Both Mr Abbott and Ms Gillard have committed to reducing emissions by five per cent of 2000 levels by 2020.
• Ms Gillard says she believes in climate change and wants to tackle it with a carbon tax, but attracted widespread derision with plans to consult a 150-member “Citizens’ Assembly” of ordinary Australians before deciding on the issue.
• Mr Abbott once called climate change science “absolute crap” but his resolute resistance to Mr Rudd’s emissions scheme earned plaudits among industry and the agriculture lobby, and helped him win the Liberal party leadership last December. He has vowed a “direct action” fund for carbon storage and reduction measures.
Technology
• Labour’s plan to build a AU$43 billion super-speed broadband network has emerged as a potential vote-changer in the campaign, with Mr Abbott announcing he will scrap the project in favour of a cheaper, but slower patchwork of services.
• Ms Gillard has touted the fibre-optic broadband network as transformative for the sprawling, sparsely inhabited continent, comparing it to the modernising impact of railways.
• Mr Abbott has proposed a AU$6.3 billion wireless “backbone”, which will give telecoms companies the infrastructure to provide wireless internet.