PRIME Minister John Howard has announced the federal election will be held on November 24, kicking off the official campaign with a promise to achieve full employment as he enters the twilight of his own career.
Mr Howard has said the country's "best years lie ahead" but only if the "right leadership" team is at the helm. Kevin Rudd has said the country is facing some of its toughest challenges and the greatest risk would be to retain a "tired, stale" Government.
But he said voters should be prepared for the "mother of all negative, fear campaigns" from the Government.
Mr Howard visited the Governor-General for about 20 minutes this morning (video) to ask that Parliament be dissolved, allowing him to kick off what is likely to shape up to be a spiteful six-week campaign that will be the toughest of his career as Prime Minister.
Mr Howard, who has lagged behind Mr Rudd in opinion polls all year, said the country needed someone prepared to take a stand on the issues that matter.
"Love me or loathe me," he said, "the Australian people know where I stand."
Mr Howard emphasised the Government's experience and argued that he still had a vision for the future. He said the country was enjoying a "remarkable level of economic prosperity" and claiming that the "best years lie ahead".
He said Australia's record low unemployment rate "could go either way" but said it would go lower under the Coalition, an echo of his claim at the start of the last campaign that interest rates would rise under Labor.
"One very important commitment I make is that to full employment," he said. "If Labor is elected ... unemployment will rise."
The Prime Minister, 68, enters this election in the unusual position of having promised to retire mid-way through the three-year term to make way for his Treasurer, Peter Costello.
Labor needs to gain a further 16 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives to win office.
In a swipe at Mr Rudd's unofficial campaign slogan, Mr Howard said: "This country does not need 'new leadership', it does not need 'old leadership', it needs the right leadership'."
He claimed that Mr Rudd was a blame-shifter and that the Labor team would be a risk to the country's economic prosperity. He said the Coalition was the only team with the "experience to expand economic prosperity and ensure everybody gets a fair share" - acknowledging that some people were missing out on the good times.
Rudd reply
In Brisbane, Mr Rudd opened his campaign by saying that "great challenges lie ahead". He said the Government had lost touch and gone stale - "when it comes to our future we need better than that".
He repeated his key theme of "new leadership", saying that "we as a country need to widen our vision".
He agreed that he too would push for full employment but said he would also act for those families struggling to keep up with the boom.
"(There are) those who are finding it impossible to make ends meet, with childcare costs going up 12 per cent a year, with mortgage interest rates having gone up five times since the last election, when rents have gone out of control," he said.
"When (Mr Howard) says to them, 'working families have never been better off', they know when they try to balance their family budget that that is simply not true."
He said a Labor government would ratify the Kyoto protocol, prohibit the construction of nuclear reactors, abolish Work Choices and invest in education and broadband infrastructure.
Six-week scrutiny
Mr Howard favours a six-week campaign to allow extra time for scrutiny to be applied to Mr Rudd in the hope that the ex-diplomat will crack under the pressure, as did then Labor Leader Mark Latham in 2004.
The Opposition Leader has warned that the campaign will "go down to the wire".
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The election ends months of speculation about the poll date and allows politicians to abandon plans to travel to Canberra for a parliamentary sitting. It comes as a new poll predicted voters under 29 were set to dump Mr Howard.
The Taverner / Sun Herald newspaper poll predicted Labor could pick up 59 per cent of the vote, compared to the Government's 41 per cent.
In Sydney this morning, Health Minister Tony Abbott saying the Government was the underdog, but that the official start of the campaign signalled a "new beginning" for both parties.
It's the economy
In a television appearance before the PM visited Government House, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said voters would be betting their financial future at the election.
"We've literally got to put our house on this," Dr Nelson said on ABC TV.
"Do we really want to place our future, that's our mortgages, our car loans, our economic security ... in the hands of a government that would be led by a former diplomat and public servant who has no experience?"
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on the Nine Network that most Australians were "happy with the way the economy's going, they're happy with Australia's place in the world, they feel very confident about our country.
"And what we'll be reminding them is that to change the government is to change the country."
