Melbourne: Prime Minister-elect Tony Abbott today got “down to business” with a pledge to work for all Australians, a day after disillusioned voters punished the outgoing Premier Kevin Rudd's Labor Party for its six years of turbulent rule and bitter in-fighting.
Saying he would not let voters down, the conservative leader vowed to govern for all Australians. “From today, I declare that Australia is under new management and open for business... We will not leave anyone behind.”
His Liberal-National coalition yesterday defeated the Labor Party in the general election with a national swing of 3.5 per cent, seizing a swathe of seats in Tasmania, Victoria and across New South Wales.
The Australian Election Commission confirmed that the coalition had won 88 seats while Labor 57 in the 150-seat House of Representatives.
“This is essentially a working day,” Abbott told reporters outside his Sydney home. “People expect that, the day after an election, an incoming government will be getting down to business. And that's what I'll be doing today.”
The 55-year-old Liberal Party leader has since attended his first meetings with the nation's most senior public servants - the heads of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and Finance and Treasury departments.
In brief opening remarks, he told them he is an optimist about the economy but also wants to move quickly to implement his policies. “Obviously a very early item of business is scrapping the carbon tax,” he said.
He assured the departmental heads he is up to the job. “I've had a long experience of working with senior levels of the public service as employment minister,” he said.
“Obviously I had some economic role so and then as health minister I was responsible for a USD 40 billion-a-year-plus budget.”
Labor Party, on the other hand, is searching for a new leader after outgoing Prime Minister Rudd declared last night that he would not recontest the post he seized back from Julia Gillard.
Rudd had called the election as he defeated Australia's first woman premier Gillard in a bitterly fought leadership ballot in June, after she did the same to him in 2010.
