(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - The opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) is the clear frontrunner in Australia, according to a poll by Roy Morgan International. 49.5 per cent of respondents would support the ALP in this year's legislative election, while 34.5 per cent would vote for the governing Coalition of Liberals and Nationals.

The Australian Greens are third with nine per cent, followed by Family First, the Australian Democrats, and One Nation. Australia's preferential voting system—where electors indicate an order of predilection for each contender, and the ballots from smaller parties are re-distributed—gives the ALP a 19-point lead over the Coalition.

In the October 2004 election, prime minister John Howard was rewarded with a fourth term in office, as the Coalition secured 87 seats in the House of Representatives. The ALP—led by Mark Latham—elected 60 lawmakers. In December 2006, foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd became the new leader of the ALP, defeating Kim Beazley in an internal caucus ballot.

On Apr. 7, Rudd called for action on global warming saying, "I can't understand why the government would not want to calculate the economic cost and the jobs costs of failing to act on climate change. We need to put numbers around that as well and that's why we need an Australian-Stern Report."

Last year, a 700-page report written by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern warned that global warming could end up shrinking the world's economy by up to 20 per cent, which would make it a more costly crisis than either of the 20th century's world wars.

The next legislative election is tentatively scheduled for late 2007.

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