Gillard's lead looks shaky after debate

CANBERRA - Julia Gillard's future as Australia's first female Prime Minister is becoming increasingly fragile as the second week of the campaign for the August 21 election opens to a horizon of dark omens.

The polls have begun to swing against both Gillard and the Government. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is facing voters with increased confidence after the sole leaders' debate showed him in surprisingly good light, and the first signs are emerging of a weakening in gender loyalty to the Prime Minister.

Miners with the country's smaller companies are about to renew their powerful campaign against the deal Gillard brokered on a resources rental tax, her unpopular prevarication on climate change has been thrown into sharp contrast by strong new action in Victoria, and the Christian right is weighing in.

And while the latest Newspoll nonetheless shows two-thirds of voters still expect Labor to win a second term, Gillard's predictions of a "knife-edge" finish to the campaign are looking increasingly accurate.

Both leaders are not only fighting for votes in key marginal seats - especially in Queensland and New South Wales - but also to convince a large, unpredictable, bloc of voters across the country who have still to make up their minds, or may change their vote by polling day.

The Newspoll in yesterday's Australian said only 54 per cent would definitely vote the way they had indicated in the latest poll, and 43 per cent suggested they may change their minds.

An Essential Research poll yesterday gave further evidence of a volatile electorate: 51 per cent were already decided, 23 per cent would decide over the course of the campaign, 9 per cent would wait until the eve of the vote, 10 per cent would decide on the day, and 7 per cent did not know. For Gillard and Abbott, that means hammering away until the last moment.

Both have their work cut out.

Newspoll showed the Coalition has regained the lead in primary votes, and that Labor's advantage in the two-party preferred vote that decides election outcomes has narrowed to just 52 per cent to the Opposition's 48 per cent.

A News Ltd Galaxy poll showed an identical two-party preferred margin, although the Essential poll, averaged over two weeks, retained the 10 per cent lead the Government had held in previous polling.

Abbott has also gained as preferred Prime Minister.

Newspoll reported a seven-point exchange that saw Gillard's support slipping to 50 per cent and Abbott's rising to 34 per cent, while Essential showed a much smaller easing in backing for Gillard.

The strong support for Gillard from female voters that showed in the worms tracking Sunday night's leaders' debate may also be more illusory than real.

Newspoll said that the Government's female primary vote - which was responsible for much of the boost in Labor support following Gillard's ousting of predecessor Kevin Rudd - had fallen four points during the first week of the campaign.

"In the end it's competence, not gender, that people are interested in," Abbott told Fairfax Radio yesterday.

But there was some good news for the Prime Minister from the marginal New South Wales electorate of Eden-Monaro, which surrounds the nation's capital and is regarded as a bellweather seat.

A Patterson Research poll in the Canberra Times yesterday said Labor was ahead by 61 per cent to 39 per cent in a seat that has always gone to the party winning power.

While Abbott continues to suffer blows on industrial relations - new union polling showed three in four voters do not believe his promises - Gillard now faces a concerted and well-financed television blitz against the Government.

Small and medium-sized miners remain furious at the resources rental tax deal brokered with giants BHP-Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xtrata following the original mining "super profits" tax proposal that triggered Rudd's final downfall.

As Gillard comes under renewed fire from the miners, environmentalists are using new plans by Victoria's Labor State Government to enforce deep cuts in greenhouse emissions against her climate change policy.

Gillard has been pilloried for the policy she announced last week, which offered few new alternatives and proposed a "citizens' assembly" to see whether consensus could be reached on carbon pricing.

Elsewhere, the evangelical Christian organisation Catch The Fire Ministries has attacked Gillard for trading votes with the Greens, her atheism, for living in a de facto - and childless - relationship, and for refusing to swear an oath on the Bible.