2007 Australian federal election

A federal election was held in Australia on 24 November 2007. All 150 seats in the House of Representatives and 40 of the seats in the 76-member Senate were up for election. The election featured a 39-day campaign, with 13.6 million Australians enrolled to vote.

The centre-left Australian Labor Party opposition, led by Kevin Rudd and deputy leader Julia Gillard, defeated the incumbent centre-right Coalition government, led by Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister, John Howard, and Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile, by a landslide. The election marked the end of the 11-year-long Howard-led Liberal–National Coalition government that had been in power since the 1996 election. Howard lost his own seat, becoming the first sitting Australian Prime Minister to lose his seat in nearly 80 years. This election also marked the start of the six-year Rudd–Gillard Labor government.

Future Prime Minister Scott Morrison, future opposition leader Bill Shorten, and future Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles entered parliament at this election. This would be the last time the Labor Party would win a majority at the federal level until 2022. This remains the most recent election in which both major parties won over 40% of first preference votes. It would also be the last time the Labor Party was ahead of the Liberal–National Coalition in first preference vote until 2025.

Rudd became the third Labor leader after World War II to lead the party to victory from opposition, after Gough Whitlam in 1972, Bob Hawke in 1983, and before most recently Anthony Albanese in 2022. Although the Coalition was defeated, the results in Western Australia bucked the national trend. While there was a swing against the Liberal Party and to the Labor Party, which allowed Labor to gain the seat of Hasluck from the Liberals, the Liberals managed to gain the seats of Cowan and Swan from Labor.

Under the provisions of the Constitution, the current House of Representatives may continue for a maximum of three years from the first meeting of the House after the previous federal election. The first meeting of the 41st Parliament after the 2004 election was on 16 November 2004, hence the parliament would have expired on 15 November 2007 had it not been dissolved earlier. There must be a minimum of 33 days and a maximum of 68 days between the dissolution of the House of Representatives and the day of the election. Prime Minister Howard opted for a 39-day campaign.

The prime minister of the day chooses the election date and requests the governor-general to dissolve the House and issue the writs for the election. On 14 October, John Howard gained the agreement of the governor-general, Major-General Michael Jeffery, to dissolve the House of Representatives and hold a general election for the House and half the Senate on 24 November 2007.

During the last term of parliament before the 2007 election, the deadline for new voter enrolment was brought forward from 7 working days after the issue of the writ to the same day. When the election was announced, the writ was not issued the next day, but on the following Wednesday. This kept the roll open for three days, during which 77,000 enrolment additions were processed.

Roy Morgan polling in June 2007 reported WorkChoices was a reason for Labor party support, and a fear of union dominance and support for Coalition economic management policy as the biggest reasons behind the Coalition vote. Several big business organisations, including the Australian Industry Group, declined a request from the Prime Minister to run advertisements to counter the union-funded campaign. The share of voters concerned about industrial relations grew from 31 per cent to 53 per cent in the two years to June 2006, with around three-fifths of voters backing Labor's ability to handle the issue over the Liberal Party.