Economic management and working conditions for average Australians will be key battlegrounds when Prime Minister John Howard stands against Kevin Rudd next month.
SYDNEY: Economic management and working conditions for average Australians will be key battlegrounds when conservative Prime Minister John Howard stands for re-election against Labor Party candidate Kevin Rudd next month. Here are the key issues of the poll:
ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT
As the country rides high on a commodities boom fuelled by surging demand from China coupled with record low unemployment, Howard has trumpeted his government's ability to manage the economy.
Polling shows that most voters believe Howard's Liberal/National coalition will best manage the economy but Rudd, who has described himself as a fiscal conservative, has narrowed the gap.
LABOUR LAWS
Howard used his control of both houses of parliament to push through controversial reforms to labour laws in 2005 that encourage individuals to negotiate personal contracts with their employers, a shift away from collective bargaining.
The reforms, which Howard claims have cut unemployment, are backed by business but the union movement has campaigned against the changes which it says reduce workers' entitlements such as holidays, overtime rates and allowances.
Rudd has pledged to overturn the legislation, with Labor maintaining that the laws leave some workers, particularly young people, unfairly pitted against powerful bosses and that the contracts will erode job security and wages.
HOUSING AFFORDABILITY
Interest rates were a deciding factor in the 2004 election, with voters scared off by the double-figure interest rates of the last Labor administration, preferring instead to trust in Howard to keep mortgage rates low.
While the rate-setting central bank is independent, Howard has long argued that interest rates will always be lower under a coalition government.
CLIMATE CHANGE
A major point of difference between the candidates, with Rudd pledging to ratify the Kyoto Protocol -- something Howard's administration has refused to do, saying it would damage the economy.
While Howard is a former climate change sceptic, Rudd has made the environment central to his campaign and appointed former rock star and Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett as his environment spokesman.
Australia and the United States are the only two major industrialised nations to have refused to ratify Kyoto.
IRAQ
Howard, a staunch ally of US President George W. Bush, committed Australian soldiers to the war in Iraq from the start and has refused to outline a timetable for their withdrawal.
Rudd has vowed to mount a staged withdrawal from the operation in Iraq, with combat troops to be removed by mid-2008, but supports Howard's deployment of hundreds of troops to Afghanistan.
Questions over Australia's involvement in the US-led wars have lessened following the repatriation of the country's last inmate at the US-military run prison at Guantanamo Bay, David Hicks, to serve the rest of his sentence in a South Australian jail.
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