A federal election was held on 9 October 2004 to elect members of the 41st Parliament of Australia. All 150 seats in the House of Representatives were up for election, along with 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate. The incumbent Liberal Party of Australia led by Prime Minister of Australia John Howard and coalition partner the National Party of Australia led by John Anderson defeated the opposition Australian Labor Party led by Mark Latham.

Both leaders were from the same city area, something which did not occur again until the 2022 election. Future Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull entered Parliament in this election as the MP for Wentworth.

In the Senate election, a coalition of Liberal Party and the National Party (and one Country Liberal MP) won a majority of seats. This majority went into effect on July 1, 2005.

Pre-election issues

In the wake of the 2002 Bali Bombings and the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, the Howard government along with the Blair and Bush governments, initiated combat operations in Afghanistan and an alliance for invading Iraq. Latham committed a Labor government to withdrawing Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas. At that time, Australia had about 850 troops in Iraq, mostly involved in patrol work and in training members of the new Iraqi defence forces. Howard accused Latham of a "cut and run" approach and said "it's not the Australian way not to stay the distance". Latham's initial commitment to withdraw from Iraq was seen as divisive, and potentially harmful to his chances of electoral success. In June 2004, Labor's "troops home by Christmas" policy came under fire from U.S. President George W. Bush who, at a White House press conference during Howard's visit to Washington DC, described it as "disastrous". Not only was Howard's staunch stance on Iraq and Afghanistan unappealing to Labor voters, but also some Liberals, including former president of the Liberal Party, John Valder, who during his time as president was a close Howard Ally. Valder's discontent led to him being closely involved with the 'Not Happy, John!' campaign, which sought to unseat Howard from his seat of Bennelong, hence making him ineligible to be prime minister.

The second issue was the ongoing and continued worsening of the Millennium Drought continued to bolster support for the Nationals water management policies of the Murray-Darling river system, diverting focus away from rural and inner-city community water supplies and focusing on Regional and Farmland water supplies.

Campaign

The Prime Minister, John Howard, announced the election at a press conference in Canberra on 29 August, after meeting the Governor-General, Michael Jeffery, at Government House.

"Who do you trust?"

Trust was a central theme of both the Liberal and Labor campaign platforms.See Museum of Australian Democracy Election Speeches In a press conference announcing that the election had been called for October 9th, Howard asked "Who do you trust to keep the economy strong and protect family living standards?" "Who do you trust to keep interest rates low? Who do you trust to lead the fight on Australia's behalf against international terrorism?"See transcript of Howard's press conference.

Howard, who turned 65 in July, declined to answer questions about whether he would serve a full three-year term if his government was re-elected. "I will serve as long as my party wants me to," he said.See full report and transcript of Howard's press conference.

At a press conference in Sydney half an hour after Howard's announcement, Opposition Leader Mark Latham welcomed the election, saying the Howard government had been in power too long. He said the main issue would be truth in government. "We've had too much dishonesty from the Howard Government", he said. "The election is about trust. The Government has been dishonest for too long."See full report of Latham's press conference.

Initial polling

The campaign began with Labor leading in all published national opinion polls. On 31 August, Newspoll published in The Australian newspaper gave Labor a lead of 52% to 48% nationwide, which would translate into a comfortable win for Labor in terms of seats. Most commentators, however, expected the election to be very close, pointing out that Labor was also ahead in the polls at the comparable point of the 1998 election, which Howard won. Howard had also consistently out-polled Latham as preferred prime minister by an average of 11.7 percentage points in polls taken this year.

After the first week of campaigning, a Newspoll conducted for News Corporation newspapers indicated that the Coalition held a lead on a two-party-preferred basis of 52% to 48% in the government's 12 most marginal held seats. To secure government in its own right, Labor needed to win twelve more seats than in the 2001 election. In the same poll, John Howard increased his lead over Mark Latham as preferred prime minister by four points. The Taverner Research poll conducted for The Sun-Herald newspaper revealed that younger voters were more likely to support Labor, with 41% of those aged 18 to 24 supporting Labor, compared with 36% who support the Coalition.

Jakarta embassy bombing

On 9 September, during the second week of campaigning the election was rocked by a terrorist attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. John Howard expressed his "utter dismay at this event" and dispatched Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to Jakarta to assist in the investigation. Mark Latham committed the Labor party's "full support to all efforts by the Australian and Indonesian governments to ensure that happens". The parties reached an agreement that campaigning would cease for 10 September out of respect for the victims of this attack and that this would be in addition to the cessation of campaigning already agreed upon for 11 September in remembrance of the terrorist attacks in 2001.

Leader's debate

A debate between John Howard and Mark Latham was televised commercial-free on the Nine Network at 7:30pm on Sunday 12 September. In a change from previous election debates, which involved a single moderator, the leaders were questioned by a five-member panel representing each of the major media groups in Australia. There was a representative from commercial television (Laurie Oakes), the ABC (Jim Middleton), News Limited (Malcolm Farr), John Fairfax Holdings (Michelle Grattan) and radio (Neil Mitchell). After an opening address, Howard and Latham responded to questions posed by the panel and had the opportunity to make a closing statement. The Nine Network permitted other television organisations to transmit the feed, but only the ABC chose to.

The debate was followed (only on the Nine Network) by an analysis of the leaders' performance by the "worm". The worm works by analysing the approval or disapproval of a select group of undecided voters to each statement that a leader makes. Throughout the debate, according to the worm, Latham performed strongly and Howard performed poorly. A final poll of the focus group found that 67% of the focus group believed that Latham won the debate and that 33% of the focus group believed that Howard won. Major media outlets generally agreed that Latham had won the debate, although they pointed out that with no further debates scheduled and nearly four weeks of the campaign remaining, Latham's gain in the momentum from the debate was unlikely to be decisive. Political commentators noted that the 2001 election debate, between Howard and then opposition leader Kim Beazley, gave the same worm results yet Labor still lost that election.

Campaign midpoint

By the midpoint of the campaign, after Labor had released its policies on taxation and education, polls showed that the election was still too close to call. The Newspoll in The Australian, showed (21 September) Labor leading with 52.5% of the two-party-preferred vote. The ACNielsen poll published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age showed the Coalition ahead on 52%. The Morgan poll, which has a poor recent record of predicting federal elections, showed Labor ahead with 53% on the weekend of 18–19 September. A Galaxy Poll in the Melbourne Herald Sun showed the Coalition ahead with 51%, but showed Labor gaining ground.

Despite Latham's strong performance in the debate, most political commentators argued that he had not gained a clear advantage over Howard. They pointed to anomalies in Labor's tax policy and the controversy surrounding Labor's policy of reducing government funding to some non-government schools as issues which Howard was successfully exploiting.

John Howard and John Anderson launched the Coalition election campaign at a joint function in Brisbane on 26 September. Howard's policy speech can be read at the Liberal Party website. Anderson's policy speech can be read at the National Party website.

Mark Latham's policy speech was delivered, also in Brisbane, on 29 September.

Midpoint polling

During the fourth week of the campaign contradictory polls continued to appear. The ACNielsen poll published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on 25 September showed the Coalition ahead with 54%, which would translate into a large majority for the government. The Newspoll in The Australian on 28 September showed Labor ahead with 52%, which would give Labor a comfortable majority.

Tasmanian forests logging In the last days of the campaign the environment policies regarding the logging of Tasmania's old-growth forests were released by both major parties, but too late for the Greens to adjust their preference flows on how-to-vote cards in most electorates as the majority were already printed. In the game of "cat and mouse" on Tasmanian forest policy between Mark Latham and John Howard, Latham eventually lost out when Dick Adams (Labor member for the Tasmanian seat of Lyons), Tasmanian Labor Premier Paul Lennon and CFMEU's Tasmanian secretary Scott McLean all attacked Latham's forest policy. At a timber workers' rally on the day Labor's forestry policy was announced, Scott McLean asked those gathered to pass a resolution of no confidence in Mr Latham's ability to lead the country. Michael O'Connor, assistant national secretary of the CFMEU said the Coalition's forest policy represented a much better deal for his members than Labor's policy. Australian Labor Party national president Carmen Lawrence later said that "Labor has only itself to blame for the backlash over its forestry policy" and that it was a strategic mistake to release the policy so late in the election campaign. She stated that she was disappointed in criticism from within the ALP and union movement, and that the party did not leave itself enough time to sell the package.

Treasury and the Department of Finance reported on the validity of Labor's costings of their promises. They claimed to identify a different flaw to that identified by Liberal Treasurer Costello, but overall Labor was satisfied with the report.

The handshake