Opposition look set to win Australian election

Australians headed to the polls today in an election that is expected to see opposition leader Tony Abbott guide his Liberal Party-led coalition to victory.

The contest pits a ruling party marred by infighting and a much-maligned carbon tax against a conservative opposition led by a man who has never been particularly popular and has long been divisive.

But despite the lack of overwhelming enthusiasm for Mr Abbott, opinion polls gave his party a commanding lead over the ruling Labour Party.

A poll by Sydney-based market researcher Newspoll published in The Australian newspaper showed the coalition was leading Labour 54% to 46%.

Polling booths opened at 8am local time in eastern Australia and were set to close 10 hours later, with western states voting another two hours beyond that due to time zones.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was once widely loved by the public, becoming the nation’s most popular leader in three decades when he took on the top job in 2007.

Now, his party is facing the prospect of an end to its six years in power – and a long stretch of conservative rule – amid deep voter frustration over years of party instability and bickering, and widespread hatred of a carbon tax on major polluters.

The carbon tax has long been a thorn in the side of the Labour Party. The previous prime minister, Julia Gillard, broke an election promise and agreed to impose the tax in a bid to form a coalition Labour needed to stay in power.

Labour required the support of the minor Greens party – which insisted on the tax – in order to have enough seats in Parliament to control government.

The deal helped lead to her downfall, and in June, Ms Gillard lost her job to Mr Rudd in a vote of party politicians. Ms Gillard herself came to power by unseating Mr Rudd in a similar party coup three years earlier.

The Gillard v Rudd drama and the bickering between their camps left many voters disillusioned and worried about the party’s stability.

To some former Labour supporters, Mr Abbott – once dubbed “unelectable” by a former boss – was seen as the lesser of two evils.

He has vowed to scrap the carbon tax and instead introduce taxpayer-funded incentives for polluters to operate cleaner.

Mr Abbott has long struggled to connect with women voters, with Ms Gillard once famously calling him a misogynist and sexist in a passionate speech at parliament.

In a bid to improve his image, he introduced a paid maternity leave plan that would give mothers the taxpayer-funded equivalent of their salaries for six months.

Yet the plan has proven divisive even within the Liberal Party, with some of Mr Abbott’s own allies dubbing it unaffordable.

The government and opposition differ on how to curb a growing number of asylum seekers reaching Australia by boat.

Labour has promised that every bona fide refugee who attempts to reach Australia by boat from the policy announcement date of July 19 will be settled on the impoverished South Pacific island nations of Papua New Guinea or Nauru.

The party claimed this week that the policy was already working. Only 1,585 asylum seekers arrived by boat during the month of August, less than half of the 4,236 who arrived in the previous month.

The Liberals promised new policies requiring the navy to turn asylum seeker boats back to Indonesia, where they launch, and the government to buy back fishing boats from Indonesian villagers to prevent them falling into the hands of people smugglers.

Labour dismissed the boat-buying policy as “crazy”, saying it would be a boon to Indonesian boat builders, without denting the number of vessels available to people smugglers among the estimated 750,000 fishing boats in Indonesia.