News
Australia votes in cliffhanger election
Millions of Australians are voting on Saturday in a national election tipped to be the closest in decades, with the country's first woman prime minister neck-and-neck with her conservative challenger.
Polls opened at 8am (2200 GMT) with around 14 million electors taking part in a mandatory vote across the huge country, with last-minute opinion surveys showing only a minute gap between the two leaders.
A Newspoll published in The Australian newspaper gave Prime Minister Julia Gillard a 50.2 to 49.8 per cent lead over Tony Abbott's Liberal/National coalition, raising the prospect of the first hung parliament since 1940.
A separate Nielsen poll put Gillard's Labor party ahead 52-48 percent, while a Roy Morgan survey gave the government a 51-49 per cent lead.
Gillard's centre-left Labor has struggled to reassure voters after June's shock ousting of elected prime minister Kevin Rudd, lifting Abbott's hopes of a surprise victory.
"When everyone asked I said it would be a cliffhanger... and so it's proving today," Gillard said.
Gillard, 48, a red-headed former lawyer who was born in Wales, has pledged better education and healthcare and played up Labor's role in helping Australia shrug off the financial crisis, as well as a planned national broadband scheme.
Abbott, a 52-year-old religious conservative who has doubts about mankind's role in climate change, has targeted fears over illegal immigration and questioned Labor's spending record, as well as its knifing of Rudd.
The right-leaning coalition needs a swing of 2.3 per cent to return to power less than three years after Rudd ousted 11-year prime minister John Howard, pledging action on climate change and the impoverished Aboriginal minority.
Victory for Abbott would make Labor the first one-term government since 1932, when the party's James Scullin lost power during turmoil caused by the Great Depression.
Both sides are targeting a swathe of marginal seats in resource-rich Queensland -- Rudd's home state -- and western Sydney, where rapid population growth has put pressure on services and raised concerns about immigration.
As campaigning closed, Abbott looked to prove his credentials as a vigorous go-getter with a 36-hour overnight push from Thursday to Friday. On Saturday, he manned a beachside barbecue before casting his vote nearby.
"This is a big day for our country," Abbott said. "It's a day when we can vote out a bad government."
Newspapers are split between Gillard and Abbott, but commentators agreed Labor had bungled by replacing Rudd so close to the polls and underestimating the opposition leader, who has tempered his image as a colourful maverick.
"If he (Abbott) wins this poll it will represent the greatest political recovery Australia has seen," said The Australian's editor-at-large, Paul Kelly.
"Win, lose, or draw, the unscrupulous gamble by Labor's factional and union heavies to remove a democratically elected prime minister eight weeks ago and rush to an election has not been a triumph for Labor or for Julia Gillard," said the Sydney Morning Herald's Miranda Devine.
Most polls close at 6pm (0800 GMT) Sydney time with the remainder two hours later due to time differences. The elections will decide the make-up of the 150-seat lower house and half the 76-seat Senate.