Fed:Abbott remains defiant, despite polls

AAP General News (Australia)
08-14-2010
Fed:Abbott remains defiant, despite polls

HAZELMERE, PERTH, Aug 14 AAP - With one week to go before election day, Opposition
Leader Tony Abbott says he can beat an "incompetent" and "wasteful" Labor government despite
the latest opinion polls.

Mr Abbott, speaking at the head office of Barmino, a mining contractor, in the outskirts
of Perth, he said he was running against "the full might" of an incumbent government,
five Labor states and the $1 billion backing of the trade union movement.

"I am running against big money, I am running against big factions, I am running against
big politics," Mr Abbott reporters on Saturday.

"But I think we can still do it."

The latest Nielsen poll in Fairfax newspapers on Saturday put Prime Minister Julia
Gillard's Labor party ahead by 53 per cent to the coalition's 47 per cent on a two-party
preferred basis.

This was a marked turnaround from the coalition's lead of 51 per cent to 49 per cent
just a week earlier.

A Newspoll in the Weekend Australian newspaper also showed that while Labor would lose
key seats in Queensland and NSW, there was a big swing to the government in Victoria.

Mr Abbott said ousted former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd has not been questioned
fully on where he thought Labor went wrong under his leadership and on new Labor policies
as an offshore processing centre for asylum seekers in East Timor.

"If those questions are not put, and those questions are not satisfactorily answered,
I think we can be absolutely confident that a returned Labor government, should it happen,
will be in a state of civil war between the current prime minister and the former prime
minister

"It will be hard to know if it is real Julia, or old Julia, or comeback Kev absolutely
in charge."

AAP cb/jl

KEYWORD: POLL10 ABBOTT UPDATE

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