On election eve, Australia's opposition leader says climate change is No. 1 priority

Labor leader Kevin Rudd supports policy breaks from the past on Iraq and the environment, including a commitment to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

from the November 23, 2007 edition

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While his holier-than-thou reputation has not always sat well with Australians, the perception of Rudd as a man-of-the-people appears to have been boosted, rather than diminished, by revelations that he once visited a New York lap-dancing club.

Much has been made in Australia of Rudd's fluency in Chinese – a legacy of his stint as a diplomat in Beijing in the 1980s.

The government, however, has accused him of being "a showoff." Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he was fluent in French and questioned why the opposition leader chose to repeatedly flaunt his linguistic skills.

"I'm familiar with those types of people who like to show off but I don't think, realistically, there are a lot of votes in the People's Republic of China for Kevin Rudd to win."

Mr. Downer may be mistaken – the opposition has paid for a giant, 20-ft.tall billboard of Rudd to be erected above a busy street in Hong Kong to woo the votes of Chinese-Australians and expatriates.

Howard faces a tough fight

The latest poll, released on Wednesday, indicated that Rudd is set to win the election with 54 percent of the vote compared to Howard's 46 percent.

Rudd warned, however, that if Labor wins, it will be "by a nose."

For his part, Howard, who is fighting for his political life, repeated his mantra that it would be dangerous to entrust the economy to Labor, because of the party's close ties with unions. He urged voters not to seek change for change's sake. "It's not like the Christmas present you didn't want and you can take it back at the Boxing Day sale, it's not like that, it's much harder than that."

He also stressed that if Labor won, it would then – for the first time since the separate colonies came together in a federation in 1901 – control the federal government as well as all eight of Australia's state and territorial governments, creating an unhealthy lack of balance.

Howard said he was anticipating a tough fight but believed the election – his fifth – was still "very winnable."

Howard's government has been damaged by his pledge that even if he wins the election, he will hand over power to his unpopular treasurer, Peter Costello, nicknamed Captain Smirk.

"There is a sense of what is the point in voting for him if he's only going to leave halfway through the next term?" says political scientist Wayne Errington, of the Australian National University in Canberra.

In his speech, Rudd hammered home the message that – like Britain's Gordon Brown after Tony Blair's departure - Mr. Costello could become prime minister "without ever having to face the Australian people."

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