Australian PM takes lead in vote
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said next Saturday's vote would be one of the "closest, tightest races" in the country's history as she took the lead in neck-and-neck polls.
Gillard, Australia's first female leader, gained four points to lead Tony Abbott's conservative Liberal/National coalition 53 percent to 47 percent heading into the campaign's crucial final week.
The latest Nielsen poll of 1,356 voters showed a three-point gain for flame-haired Gillard in the preferred prime minister stakes 52 percent to Abbott's 38 percent.
A separate Newspoll in the must-win states of Queensland and New South Wales (NSW), and Gillard's home state of Victoria, showed the prime minister was on track to scrape into government.
"Possible gains in Victoria would mean Labor could govern in its own right by the narrowest of margins," said The Australian newspaper, where the Newspoll was published.
Critically, Gillard looked to hold onto the bellwether electorate of Eden-Monaro, just outside the capital Canberra, according to Newspoll.
Every government, which has won office since 1972, has taken the seat.
The former lawyer performed strongly in the campaign's fourth week -- the period during which the surveys were conducted -- rating well on two popular TV programmes and attracting a flurry of bets on Labor to win the election.
But she warned it was still anyone's race.
"I think we are heading towards one of the closest, tightest races in Australia's history," Gillard said.
"It's going to be a nail-biter of a Saturday night. I think this is going to be one of the closest races the nation has ever seen."
Gillard has led Australia for just seven weeks, ascending to the top job in June after the ruling Labor party axed elected prime minister Kevin Rudd in a backroom coup prompted by his slipping popularity.
She announced a carbon trading scheme for Australia's farmers Saturday in a bid to shore up her climate credentials, which were left in tatters after she said she would consult a "citizens' assembly" on global warming policy.
Rudd tried to pass an emissions trading scheme through parliament, but opted to shelve it after it was blocked twice in the upper house by a conservative/green bloc.
Gillard supports a carbon tax but says consensus for strong action has been shattered and she must rebuild her mandate in the community.
If re-elected, Gillard said her government would spend 46 million dollars (42 million US) on a carbon-trading scheme for farmers, with credits to flow from sustainable practices such as tree-planting or changes to tilling and fertilising land.
The scheme could be worth half a billion dollars to the country's farmers on the international marketplace over the next 10 years, Gillard said, with carbon credits currently trading at about 20 dollars per tonne.
Abbott struggled to make traction in the past week, attracting widespread derision with a vow to scrap the government's national broadband network while floundering over details of his own cheaper but slower Internet scheme.
The Nielsen poll found more people disapproved of Abbott's performance than approved (48 to 45 percent), giving him a net negative for the first time in the campaign.
The one-time trainee priest defiantly declared he was still in with a chance, attacking Labor for the damage caused to Australia's reputation by the row over its 30 percent "super tax" on coal and iron ore mining profits.
Abbott said Australia had slipped 13 places to 31 in a sovereign-risk survey of 429 mining chiefs by Canada's right-wing Fraser Institute thinktank.
"Now it is safer to invest in Argentina, in Tanzania, in Zambia and Ghana and in Botswana than it is to invest in Australia," he said of the survey.
"This is Labor's legacy to the Australian mining industry."
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