FEATURE: Australia Votes 2010

Australia will go to the polls August 21.

The Labor Party, led by Julia Gillard, and the Liberal-National Coalition, led by Tony Abbott, will have five weeks to make their case for becoming the next country's next government.

Last Updated: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:54:00 +1000

After announcing the start of campaigning, Julia Gillard set out her pitch to the nation, based around her core values of respect for people, the worth of hard work and the "transformative power" of a good education.

Ms Gillard says she believes "to my core" that Australia's best days lie ahead of it.

She says she will be asking the Australian people for their trust.

"Under my leadership we'll move forward. We'll move forward to a sustainable Australia," she said.

She says moving Australia forward involves investing in renewable power, creating budget surpluses, giving Australians a better chance to get and keep jobs and building a stronger economy.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott spoke a short time later, saying the election was about "giving a great people a better government".

He says says Prime Minister Julia Gillard has given Australians no reason to trust her and has urged voters to change government.

"Only a Coalition Government can end the spin and incompetence which marked the Rudd-Gillard government," he said.

"Why should people trust Labor's 2010 promises when you couldn't trust their 2007 promises."

The election battle for both parties is expected to be dominated by the economy, taxation, immigration and the environment.

Economy

The Labor Party has move to place the economy at the centre of the electoral campaign, with Julia Gillard promising a campaign devoid of big spending promises and has warned voters of "unpopular cutbacks".

"The upcoming campaign will have strong elements of 'clean' and 'green' but above all else it will be very lean," she said.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott also says the government should use the budget surplus to pay off debt.

"I don't believe that political parties should bribe their way into office," he said.

Taxation

It took Ms Gillard just days to announce a resolution to the two-month political stand-off over a proposed 40 per cent resource super-profits tax, on mining companies.

On July 2, the Gillard Government announced a backdown on several key areas in a bid to end the damaging stoush with the resources sector, dumping its Resource Super Profits Tax for the Minerals Resource Rent Tax.

The rate of the proposed tax has been cut to 30 per cent - it was originally proposed to be 40 percent. The changes mean the government loses $AUS1.5 billion of expected revenue.

It also means the super profits tax will only apply to iron ore, coal, oil and gas.

The tax was proposed by the previous Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and led in part to a drop in his popularity and subsequent replacement by Ms Gillard.

The industry has welcomed Ms Gillard's deal and share prices soared in the wake of the announcement, but the Opposition has said it would block the tax and the deal struck has not swayed Mr Abbott.

"The next election will be a referendum on tax," Mr Abbott said. "The government wants a new tax, the Coalition doesn't. It's as simple as that."

The Greens Party support the tax, but will seek to make amendments.

The Greens are tipped to hold the balance of power in the Senate after the election but those changes would not take place until the end of the Senate term in July next year.

Immigration

Julia Gillard's efforts to solve the asylum seeker issue went awry after confusion over where a planned regional asylum centre processing centre would be.

She says she will establish an offshore asylum seeker processing centre, most likely in East Timor, if her party is re-elected.

Ms Gillard says the regional focus of her plan made it dissimilar to the "Pacific solution" of the Howard Government, which had processing centres on Nauru, Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and Australia's Christmas Island, and was strongly opposed by the then opposition Labor party in the last election.

Although East Timor's parliament voted for a resolution saying it was opposed to the plan, the Australian government is continuing negotiations with political leaders over the proposal, and seeking to win support from other countries in the region.

Tony Abbott has not named a possible country for his rival offshore processing plan, but has said his plans would include stronger powers for the immigration minister in reviewing cases, a return to temporary protection visas and boats could be turned back if possible.

Environment

Julia Gillard is yet to announce Labor's plans to tackle climate change after the Government shelved its emissions trading scheme earlier this year.

She says she will not revive that scheme - a bid to control pollution from carbon fuels and limit climate change - until at least 2013, and has ruled out introducing a carbon tax as an interim measure.

Ms Gillard says the Government will stick with its intention of reviewing global progress at the end of 2012 before deciding whether to proceed with the trading scheme.

"The pricing of carbon I think is best done through a market-based mechanism, that is the carbon pollution reduction scheme, and the 2012 timeframe stands there," she said.

"I believe that there are a set of things we can do in the meantime."

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt says it appears the Prime Minster's preparing to adopt the Coalition's approach.

He described her policy as "a carbon copy of the Coalition's direct action policy".

Greens Leader Bob Brown says he is disappointed there will not be a price on carbon.

"Business needs the certainty of a carbon price," he said.

The leaders

The election campaign has begun only a little over three weeks since Ms Gillard ousted Kevin Rudd as Labor leader and prime minister.

Immediately she moved to head off a number of issues seen by Labor Party powerbrokers and backbench members of parliament as likely to harm their chances in national elections.

The opposition Liberal-National Party Coalition had been driving home to the electorate a perceived indecisiveness by Kevin Rudd.

Electing Ms Gillard as Labor leader not only brought electoral appeal as the country's first female prime minister, but gave her party the chance to distance itself from problems Mr Rudd was seen as having with some policies.

But the Opposition has also raised questions over the removal of Kevin Rudd, and the role of both Ms Gillard and factional heavyweights in the Labor party played in the changeover of power.

Tony Abbott became the third leader of the Opposition during this past term in December 2009, after Malcolm Turnbull faced a leadership challenge over his support for an amended Emissions Trading deal.

Mr Abbott won the vote 42-41, unseating Mr Turnbull just over a year after he himself took the reins from Brendan Nelson.

For all the latest election coverage, visit the ABC Online Election page.