China became Australia's second largest trading partner after Japan, and foreign investment in Australia more than doubled. The coalition delivered Budget surpluses in most years which, along with the proceeds of government asset sales – most notably of Telstra – were partly invested in a Future Fund to reduce the national debt. Income inequality and private debt increased as the economy expanded, with the biggest increase in incomes accruing to the top 10 per cent of income earners. By 2007 the Howard Government was consistently trailing the Labor opposition in opinion polls, with key issues being rising interest rates, the unpopular Work Choices industrial relations reforms, and climate change policy. The government was also hampered by leadership tensions between Howard and Costello and opinion polls indicating a desire for a generational change in leadership (opposition leader Kevin Rudd was eighteen years younger than Howard and widely seen as more vibrant). Labor won the November 2007 election with a swing of more than 5 per cent and Howard became only the second sitting Prime Minister to lose his seat in an election. Labor Governments: 2007–2013 Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister in December 2007 and held office until June 2010, when he was replaced as leader by Julia Gillard, Australia's first female Prime Minister. Following the August 2010 federal election, Gillard formed a minority Labor government with the support of the Australian Greens and three independents. Gillard was replaced as Prime Minister by Rudd in June 2013, and Labor lost the subsequent September 2013 election. The first Rudd Government moved quickly to ratify the Kyoto protocols, dismantle the previous government's Work Choices industrial relations reforms, and issue an apology to Aboriginal Australians for past policies, particularly the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. The government was soon confronted by the Global Financial Crisis and subsequent global recession, responding with a series of economic stimulus measures worth A$75 billion. Although economic growth slowed in 2008, Australia was one of the few advanced economies in the world to avoid recession. Rudd declared climate change "the great moral challenge of our generation" and his government proposed an emissions trading scheme (ETS) to address the issue. The necessary legislation, however, was twice rejected in the Senate when the Opposition and Greens refused to support it. After the December 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen failed to produce an agreed international response to global warming