Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will call an election for Sept. 7, the Sydney Morning Herald reported today, as the Labor leader seeks to capitalize on improving opinion polls.
Rudd, 55, will visit the governor-general tomorrow or Aug. 5 to seek approval for the ballot, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified people. Maggie Lloyd, a spokeswoman for the prime minister, declined to comment when contacted by phone today.
Rudd is betting he can maintain a honeymoon with voters that’s seen Labor close the gap with Tony Abbott’s opposition in polls. Since ousting the nation’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, in their third leadership showdown, Rudd has sought to neutralize opposition attacks with plans to scrap the world’s highest carbon price, curb the number of asylum seekers arriving by sea and reform his party’s leadership rules.
The government announced yesterday that Australia’s budget deficit will blow out to A$30.1 billion ($26.8 billion) this fiscal year. Rudd’s Labor party is framing the looming election as a battle between David Cameron-style austerity from the opposition and its own program that allows the deficit to widen as it prioritizes jobs and economic growth.
Rudd prevailed over Gillard in a 57-45 vote among lawmakers five weeks ago that underscored the party’s split between the man who swept Labor to power in 2007 and the woman who ousted him in 2010.
Surveys show the switch back to Rudd has boosted Labor. A Newspoll published July 23 had Labor trailing the opposition 48 percent to 52 percent on a two-party preferred basis, designed to gauge which of them is most likely to form a government, compared with a 14 percentage point gap under Gillard. The two parties are split 50-50, according to a Galaxy poll published in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper on July 28.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Heath in Sydney at mheath1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stanley James at sjames8@bloomberg.net
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