Rudd to Debate Abbott in Start to Election Campaign

By Marion Rae

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will face opposition leader Tony Abbott in an unprecedented leaders’ debate on health next week, effectively starting the election campaign before a date has been set for the ballot.

“The campaign has begun,” political commentator Malcolm Mackerras at the University of New South Wales said in a telephone interview today. “The election will be quite early. I think it will be the 21st of August, that’s my tip.”

Australian leaders typically face off in a debate only after an election date has been set. Rudd and Abbott agreed yesterday to discuss health on March 23 at the National Press Club in Canberra, in the first of three debates before the ballot that is likely to be held this year.

Rudd, 52, who has to call an election before April 2011, is using his health plan as a key element of his election platform. His approval rating fell to 48 percent, its lowest level since he became Labor leader in 2006, according to a poll last week.

Rudd has support on health, according to a poll cited in the Sydney Morning Herald daily newspaper today. The Age/Nielson poll of 1,400 people between March 4 and 6 shows 53 percent of voters trust Labor on health compared with 37 percent for the opposition Liberal-National coalition, and 79 percent support a greater role for the federal government in funding Australia’s hospital system. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

System Wrecked

“I am ready” for the debate, Abbott told Nine Network television today. Australians “don’t want their public hospital system wrecked by this prime minister,” he told parliament yesterday. “They don’t want their public hospital system wrecked by someone who is engaging in amateur-hour experimentation.”

Rudd wants the central government to take control of funding and policy for doctors and other primary health services as the first part of an overhaul of the health service promised during the 2007 election. He is asking Australia’s state governments to support the plan.

To pay for the revamp, announced on March 3, Rudd intends to use 30 percent of the goods and services taxes that now flow to states. That would leave the state governments paying for 40 percent of the health care bill with less control over how money is spent.

“Labor’s strategists think health is their strongest point,” Mackerass said. “They’re wanting to make the most of their strongest point while they can and hope that they can get this proposal of Rudd’s through and embarrass Tony Abbott because he doesn’t have any policy.”

Health Talks

“What I sense across the board with all the (state) premiers is a desire and a determination to move ahead with health and hospitals reform,” Rudd told reporters today after talks last week with the leaders of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. “Plainly, they have raised a number of questions.”

The government will “seek a further mandate from the Australian people” to implement the plan if no agreement is reached with the states, he said.

“I don’t think anyone out there is saying the system at present is good enough,” Rudd said. “People want better health and better hospital services.”

Abbott, a health minister in the former conservative government which introduced a private health insurance tax rebate to take the pressure off the public health system, wants more control for local hospital boards and is yet to provide other details of the opposition’s health policy.

About 44.7 percent of Australia’s population, or 9.87 million people, have insurance policies covering hospital treatment, the latest Private Health Insurance Administration Council data shows.

The Labor-led state governments in South Australia and Tasmania go to the polls tomorrow in elections that may result in hung parliaments where Labor will need the support of smaller parties to govern.

“We expect they will both go down to the wire,” Rudd’s Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told ABC Radio today.

--Editors: Paul Tighe, Ben Richardson.

To contact the reporter on this story: Marion Rae in Canberra at mrae3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Iain Wilson at iwilson2@bloomberg.net
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I wish those policies especially with regards to health insurance will greatly benefited the Australians people.