As predicted, the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has just recently announced the date for the general election. Australians will now go to the polls on August 21^st, which is just 35 days away. This has all of the really major parties scrambling to their election campaign organizers to throw something together quickly.

Ms Gillard just recently visited the Governor General to discuss these plans before announcing the date during a press conference at parliament House. Although Ms Gillard has only been the Prime Minister of Australia for three weeks, her popularity has overtaken that of opposition leader Tony Abbott. Her fans say that her take on population, emigration and economy have been her strengths.

At first Ms Gillard softened her approach to emigration by saying that Australia did still need skilled emigration in order to keep the economy running strong. However, she has been in talks with the government of East Timor about new plans for a detention center to hold as many illegal emigrants that try to enter Australia by boat.

On the other hand, Mr Abbott has promised to stop illegal emigration as well, or at least the ones by boat. He has also taken a tough stance on emigration policies and pledges to stop the new taxes. He wants to lace industrial relations at the top of the priority list.

Ms Gillard wants to move away from the Labour government under Kevin Rudd. She said that she would like to go into this second term with some lessons learned. She promised that there would be no “big Australia”, but there would instead be a sustainable Australia.