Australian Federal Election Of 2010

Australian federal election of 2010

Australian Parliament House; Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House

Less than a month after becoming Australia’s first woman prime minister, Julia Gillard of the centre-left Australian Labor Party (ALP) called an election for August 21, eight months earlier than was constitutionally required, hoping to capitalize on a surge in support for the ALP following her rise to the party’s leadership. But it was not to be: neither the ALP nor its main opposition—the alliance of the Liberal Party of Australia, led by Tony Abbott, and the Nationals—won a majority of seats (76). The final tally of seats in the House stood at 73 for the Liberal-Nationals alliance, 72 for Labor, 1 for the Greens, and 4 for various independents. Both Gillard and Abbott had begun negotiations with the independent and Green representatives shortly after the election as the results were being finalized. Ultimately, one independent backed the Liberals, while the other three plus the Green member of parliament agreed to support Labor by entering into a formal coalition, enabling Labor in early September to form Australia’s first minority government since 1940.

Australian federal election of 2007

It was only at the end of June that Gillard, then deputy prime minister, had replaced Kevin Rudd as prime minister after successfully challenging him in a bid for the ALP leadership. Although not nearly as rapid as Gillard’s ascent to power, Rudd’s rise and fall had come quickly. He had ridden into office on a 2007 election victory over Prime Minister John Howard that ended 12 years of coalition rule by the conservative Liberal Party of Australia and its junior partners, the Nationals, with one of the most dramatic vote swings in recent Australian electoral history. Early in his tenure, Rudd enjoyed unprecedented levels of public approval as his government proposed a series of domestic policies designed to preserve the environment, to improve Australian education and health care, to shore up the country’s infrastructure, and to create an equitable and flexible workplace environment for all Australians. Rudd also sought a rapprochement with Australia’s Aboriginal peoples, to whom he issued a historic formal apology for abuses they had suffered under previous Australian governments.

Deeply concerned about Aboriginal living conditions and the injustices Aborigines had experienced, the public approved Rudd’s actions, but Australians were divided on the challenge of how to deal with climate change and global warming. Rudd’s reversal of the country’s long-standing opposition to the Kyoto Protocol was widely applauded, but his environmental initiative, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), was twice voted down in 2009 by the Senate, where the ALP lacked a majority and had to rely on the support of Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull if it were to secure a victory. When Rudd withdrew the legislation, some criticized his response as timid.

The issue also divided the Liberal Party during 2009, with many members and parliamentary representatives either skeptical of climate change or reluctant to take strong action on the issue. A party crisis arose late in the year when Turnbull declared his support for the CPRS, and after a narrow victory in a party leadership election held December 1, challenger Tony Abbott took over as party head.

Australia had survived the global financial downturn better than most industrialized countries, but public support for the prime minister began collapsing early in 2010, when allegations of corruption and mismanagement were leveled at some of the government’s programs for stimulating the economy. Ultimately, Rudd’s undoing—and the issue that resulted in him becoming one of only a handful of Australian prime ministers forced from office before the end of his three-year term—was the uproar from business groups stridently opposed to the controversial Resource Super Profits Tax, a proposal targeted at the mining industry and scheduled to go into effect in 2012. With the ALP plummeting in public opinion polls, Rudd’s support within his party waned so dramatically that he did not even contest the vote that brought Gillard the leadership in June.

Almost immediately Gillard curried approval by promising to negotiate a compromise to the resources tax that would be acceptable to the mining industry, while at the same time promising to reintroduce cap-and-trade legislation. The bounce that the ALP received in opinion polls was widely seen as the impetus for her call for an early election, but the election turned out to be the tightest in decades, with the ALP dropping 11 seats and shedding the significant majority it had held.