From Cliff Thies:

The latest from Australia... it appears that the Liberal-National Coalition has caught-up with, and may even have surpassed Labour in the polls. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a climate change advocate, who was elected in 2007, may turn out to be a one-termer. The next election must be held by April 11, 2011.

From Bloomberg:

May 17 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is losing backers to deputy Julia Gillard, a Newspoll opinion survey shows. Some 45 percent of Australians preferred Rudd as Labor leader in May, down from 57 percent in February, while Gillard’s popularity rose eight points to 40, according to a telephone survey of 1,159 people between May 14 and 16 and published in the Australian newspaper. The opposition Liberal-National coalition and Labor are tied on a two-party preferred basis, the poll showed.

LR's Aussie correspondent James Fryar offered this analysis:

The Rudd government has caused this situation themselves through bad policies and sheer incompetence in their implementation. While the Liberals under Howard were able to bring the budget into surplus and repay debt failed completely to halt the growth of government spending, which had they done so would have reduced the average tax burden to around 20%.

In less than three years though Rudd has spent the future fund created by the Liberals and gone into massive deficit spending.