The nationwide telephone poll, published Saturday by pollsters Nielsen for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, showed the Liberal-National Coalition had moved into first choice for voters.

If voters had only two choices - Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition - the Liberals' coalition would get 52 percent of votes and Labor would receive 48 percent.

This is a change from the previous week when 54 percent of votes went to Labor and 46 percent went to the Liberal's coalition.

While the "two-party preferred basis" poll showed the Liberals in the lead, if voters were to choose a prime minister, Labor leader Julia Gillard would receive 50 percent of the votes and Liberal leader Tony Abbott would get 35 percent.

The number of respondents in the Nielsen polls for the election is 1,400 and the margin of error is 2.6 percentage points, the Nielsen Web site said.

The downturn in Labor's fortunes galvanized Gillard to come out fighting.

''I think the campaign we've been running has been a traditional campaign, that is you get very stage-managed events, you get a glimpse of me,'' she told television station Channel Nine.

''Now I want to take control and make sure that I am out there, well and truly, talking to the Australian people,'' said Gillard, who took over the job from former Prime Minster Kevin Rudd in June.

Later, in a radio station interview, she said she was doing away with a risk-averse campaign strategy and she was determined to meet as many Australians as possible.

"I wake up some days and go, let's fire up, let's get more determined and that's what I've done today," she said.

But Abbott, who heads up the conservative Liberal party, dismissed her statements.

''What I hope is happening over this election campaign is that the real nature of the government is being exposed,'' he told an Australian Broadcasting Company radio station.

Instead, he said nothing would change the fact that Labor's "faceless men," who appointed her as prime minister would continue to run her campaign and the party if Labor won the vote Aug. 21.

He was referring to Gillard being elevated from deputy prime minister. She took on the mantel of prime minister as a result of an internal Labor coup to oust Rudd.

Rudd won a landslide Labor victory in 2007 but afterward he became a political liability when his ratings plummeted.

A ruling party in Australia has the right to designate who leads the party, becoming prime minister by internal appointment or ballot. Gillard, 48, called the election July 17 because, she said, she and her party needed a mandate from the public to govern.

Abbott, 52, also said he wasn't scared of Labor's plan to expose "the real Tony Abbott." He said he was a "pretty known quantity" with 16 years in Parliament and ''quite a few years'' in public life before that.

The Nielsen polls also have shown the Green Party as the third most popular choice. It has attracted around 12 percent of votes when respondents are asked to vote for any party they wish. Labor and the Liberal coalition have received consistently around the 40 to 42 percent of votes.

This means that if either the Labor or Liberal party were to win with the most votes for a single party, but a minority of all votes, they may have to work the Greens to form a coalition government.

With less than three weeks to go before Election Day, the leaders are expected to spend an increasing amount of time in seats where both parties have slim winning majorities.

Many of these seats are in rural areas where policies of both parties could have major impact.

Labor has planned a 30 percent tax on iron ore and coal mining, which could threaten mining businesses operating in small mining towns. If they go under, the local economy will suffer as well.

Labor also has planned a major $33 billion drive to ensure Internet broadband is available to many parts of the sparsely populated country, which could be a vote winner in remote areas that have at present poor telecommunication links.

Never far from the political surface in Australia is the vexed question of what to do with the continuous flow of would-be refugees in rickety boats arriving in waters off the country's northern and western coasts.

Labor, as well as refugee groups, have hit out at the Conservative Party's plans to reopen a camp for the asylum seekers on the tiny South Pacific island of Nauru. Labor closed the center on Nauru in 2008 after it had operated for 6 years.

Nauru, officially the Republic of Nauru and formerly known as Pleasant Island, has a population of around 15,000. It is the world's smallest island nation, covering just more than 8.1 square miles in the Micronesia region.

The Liberal Party says that sending the asylum seekers to Nauru would deter others from trying to reach Australia by boat.

Abbott has in the past said the best solution is to send the boats and their human cargo -- mostly from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan -- back to where they came from, rather than add people to the overcrowded refugee processing center on Australia's Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island.

Last month the Labor government was hoping to agree the setting up of a temporary refugee center in Timor-Leste. The country occupies the eastern half of the island of Timor, and lies 400 miles northwest of Darwin on Australia's northern coast.

The center was to have been run by a third party such as the United Nations. It would have taken some of the pressure off the Christmas Island center.

But the parliament of Timor-Leste decided against the Australian idea.

Meanwhile, more boat people arrive and the government has been shifting small groups of them onto the mainland, mostly to remote towns to small purpose built camps or renovated buildings.

Despite government efforts, Australia will likely receive 6,000 boat people this year, the highest intake in its history. The highest number in any year was 2001 when 5,000 people arrived.

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