Australia opposition opens election fight on climate

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's conservative opposition has opened its campaign for this year's elections, targeting the environment as a key battleground in its attempt to stop Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gaining a second term.

But while new conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott released a series of green initiatives, he stopped short of announcing a key climate change policy -- prompting one environment group on Friday to accuse him of "cheap political opportunism".

Abbott is seen by many voters as a climate change skeptic after becoming opposition leader last December on the back of opposing the government's climate change policy of a carbon emissions trading scheme.

"Australia should be a good international citizen and play our part in any effective international campaign to reduce the risk of man-made climate change," Abbott said late on Thursday, kicking of a series of speeches he hopes will dent strong support for Rudd's Labor government ahead of expected polls late in 2010.

Abbott promised a referendum vote on a national government takeover of state-governed rivers feeding Australia's food bowl and currently stricken by drought.

He also promised $699 million a year to recruit a 15,000 environmental workers, in a pledge aimed at luring crucial green party support away from the government.

"I think a lot of middle-of-the-road people and green voters will be attracted to the sorts of initiatives that I'm flagging," Abbott said.

Rudd will most likely call an election in the second half of 2010, and is strongly tipped to govern for another three years on the back of a growing economy that has emerged largely unscathed from the global financial crisis.

Opinion polls showing Rudd's Labor maintaining an election-winning lead and surprisingly strong job figures on Thursday will reinforce his government's popularity, although they also carried the threat of higher interest rates in a country obsessed by home ownership [ID:nSGE60C06P].

Australia is the world's biggest coal exporter and the developed world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gas per person and Rudd has promised a broad target to curb carbon emissions by between 5 and 25 percent of 2000 levels by 2020.

While the main election issue will be the economy, Rudd is also expected to campaign on the environment, flagging he will reintroduce his emissions trading legislation into parliament in February.

Abbott said the proposed emissions laws, already rejected twice by a hostile upper house Senate, were not the answer to Australia's environmental woes and has promised to again oppose carbon trading or a carbon tax.

Rudd wants carbon trading to start in July 2011, obliging 1,000 of the biggest companies to buy permits for their carbon emissions and providing a market-based incentive to clean up pollution.

The Australian Greens, who control five key Senate swing votes, said some of Abbott's ideas had merit, as the government had done little to solve the over-allocation of dwindling water inflows to the nation's food bowl Murray-Darling river basin.

But the National Farmers Federation, which has a strong influence in crucial regional areas, said it would only back a national takeover of the Murray-Darling if farmers' rights were respected.

($1=1.073 Australian Dollars)

(Editing by David Fox)

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