Australia goes to the polls with Tony Abbott confident of becoming next Prime Minister
Tony Abbott has cast his vote in the Australian election and appeared "supremely confident" after final polls showed he was headed for a landslide victory against Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Tony Abbott and his family cast their ballots at Freshwater Surf Club in Sydney, Australia Photo: AP
By Jonathan Pearlman in Sydney
4:41AM BST 07 Sep 2013
Two polls on the eve of the national election both showed Mr Abbott's conservative Liberal-National candidate was leading the ruling Labor party by 54 to 46 per cent. Labor is facing a devastating loss of long-held seats across outer Sydney and Mr Rudd is at risk of losing his Brisbane seat.
The British-born opposition leader appeared relaxed as he voted on Saturday morning in his Sydney electorate though he noted earlier he regretted that he had missed out on going surfing.
"You will be pleased to know I am in a suit not in budgie smugglers [swimming costumes]," he told Channel Nine. "I wish I was out in the waves.
It is a nice swell for an elderly long boarder."
At the ballot box, Mr Abbott, 55, was greeted by a woman who laid out her concerns for the country and was then told by the Liberal leader: "I think you'd be best off voting Green." A Fairfax Media correspondent, Tony Wright, said Mr Abbott was "the portrait of a supremely confident man".
Mr Rudd, 55, has kept a lower profile on voting day but insisted he could still win.
The Labor leader, who was prime minister from 2007 to 2010, returned to the job in June after ousting Julia Gillard, Australia's first female leader.
Despite an initial boost in the polls, Mr Rudd has lost ground to Mr Abbott during the campaign and struggled to present a clear case for his re-election.
A Newspoll today showed 50 per cent of voters were dissatisfied with Mr Abbott compared with 44 per cent who were satisfied and the remainder uncommitted. But Mr Rudd's disapproval has gone from 47 to 58 per cent during the five-week election campaign, as he resorted to a negative scare campaign and targeted Mr Abbott's spending cuts.
Mr Abbott was slightly ahead of Mr Rudd as preferred prime minister but trailed in a separate Nielsen poll.
Mr Rudd has campaigned on Labor's success in steering Australia through the global financial crisis but admitted today that the government had got "stacks of things wrong".
"One of the things in political life, and like life in general, is that it should never be a case of would have, could have, should have," he told Channel Seven.
Mr Abbott, a former boxer and Rhodes Scholar, has pledged to scrap Labor's carbon and mining taxes, cut spending and take a tougher approach towards asylum seekers. He has not been a popular leader but has presented a stable alternative to the Labor party, which has been racked by years of infighting and leadership turmoil.
"There are lots of things that people don't like about the current government: the boats, the tax, the waste," he told The Australian. "But, in the end, the thing the public really don't like is that they are not people you want to trust your future with."
Voting in Australia is compulsory. Polls close around the country at 6pm.
