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TEHRAN, May 05 - Australia's opposition party officially launched its election campaign on Sunday, putting health care and climate change at the forefront of its bid for election within two weeks.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Center-left Labor Party leader Bill Shorten promised to spend billions of dollars providing free dental care for pensioners, reducing waiting times at hospital emergency departments and eliminating costs for cancer patients.
"Cancer makes you sick. But in a rich country like ours, it shouldn't make you poor," Shorten told supporters at a convention center in Brisbane city.
Shorten also highlighted Labor's pledge to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 45% below 2005 levels by 2030.
The conservative coalition government has committed to reduce emissions by 26% to 28% in the same time frame and warns that Labor's more ambitious target would wreck the economy.
Shorten said half the Liberal Party-led coalition "simply don't believe climate change is real and the other half just don't care."
Curbing greenhouse gases is a divisive issue in a country that is the world's biggest exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas.
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was overthrown by hard right wingers in his own party in August in part because of his energy policy that would have increased electricity prices to reduce emissions.
Turnbull was replaced as prime minister by Scott Morrison, who has attacked Shorten's lack of detail on how much Labor's emissions reduction target would cost the economy. Shorten argues that failure to act on climate change also carries an economic cost.
Source: AP
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