Australian election: Tony Abbott's coalition sweeps to power

Australia's Liberal Party-led opposition has swept to power in a national election and ended six years of Labour Party rule.

Prime minister Kevin Rudd conceded defeat today.

The Liberal Party-led coalition managed to win over a disenchanted public by promising to end a hated tax on carbon emissions, boost the nation's flagging economy and bring about political stability after years of Labour Party infighting.

A win for the coalition comes despite the relative unpopularity of party leader Tony Abbott. Abbott is a 55-year-old former Roman Catholic seminarian and Rhodes scholar who has long struggled to connect with women voters and was once dubbed "unelectable" by opponents.

"I know that Labour hearts are heavy across the nation tonight, and as your prime minister and as your parliamentary leader of the great Australian Labour Party, I accept responsibility," Kevin Rudd said in a speech to supporters, after calling opposition leader Tony Abbott to concede defeat. "I gave it my all, but it was not enough for us to win."

But voters were largely fed up with Labour and Rudd, after a years-long power struggle between him and his former deputy, Julia Gillard. Gillard, who became the nation's first female prime minister after ousting Rudd in a party vote in 2010, ended up losing her job to Rudd three years later in a similar internal party coup.

The drama, combined with Labour reneging on an election promise by imposing a deeply unpopular tax on the nation's biggest carbon polluters, proved deadly for Labour's re-election chances.

"This is an election lost by the government rather than won by Tony Abbott," Former Labour prime minister Bob Hawke told Sky News.

Abbott, who becomes Australia's third prime minister in three months, will aim to end a period of extraordinary political instability in Australia.

The swing away from Labour was a resounding rejection of Australia's first minority government since the Second World War. Voters disliked the deals and compromises struck between Labour, the minor Greens party and independent MPs to keep their fragile, disparate and sometime chaotic coalition together for the past three years, including the carbon tax.

Abbott has vowed to scrap the carbon tax from July 2014 - two years after it was implemented - and instead introduce taxpayer-funded incentives for polluters to operate cleaner.

It is unclear whether Abbott will be able to pass the necessary law changes through parliament, but he has threatened to hold early elections if the Senate thwarts him.