Australia's Labor wins debate but trend weakens<\/p>\n
Agencies
\nCanberra<\/p>\n
The Labor opposition's lead over Australia's conservative
\ngovernment weakened in a poll trend released on Monday but Labor
\nleader Mark Latham took heart from his clear win in the only
\ndebate set before the Oct. 9 election.<\/p>\n
Australia's robust economy had been the biggest issue early in
\nthe six-week campaign until a deadly car bomb attack on
\nAustralia's Jakarta embassy snapped attention back on to national
\nsecurity, the dominant theme in Sunday's televised debate.<\/p>\n
The debate marked an end to an unofficial truce between Latham
\nand Prime Minister John Howard after Thursday's bombing, which
\nkilled nine people and injured 182, with the two leaders going
\nhead-to-head on the war on terror.<\/p>\n
\"Latham wins the war of words,\" declared The Australian
\nnewspaper in a front-page headline.<\/p>\n
It was much-needed good news for Latham after the Reuters Poll
\nTrend showed Labor's lead over the government had weakened.<\/p>\n
The trend, using three regularly published opinion polls,
\nshowed Labor's lead had slipped by 1.6 points to 5.2 points on a
\ntwo-party preferred basis, where minor party votes are
\ndistributed to the main parties and ultimately decide elections.<\/p>\n
But Howard's eight-year-old Liberal\/National coalition
\ngovernment took a 1.2 point lead on a primary vote basis, or
\nfirst count of votes, with 42.5 percent support.<\/p>\n
Howard's lead as preferred prime minister strengthened to 12.7
\npoints from a revised 11.7 points.<\/p>\n
The three polls analyzed by the Reuters Poll Trend were all
\ntaken before Thursday's embassy bombing.<\/p>\n
Also on Monday, analysts said Howard adopted the \"Madrid
\nprotocols\" in citing an obscure SMS (Short Message Service) text
\nmessage allegedly sent to Indonesian police minutes before
\nJakarta embassy bombing.<\/p>\n
The Madrid protocols refers to a policy of releasing
\ninformation, no matter how unreliable it may be, rather than risk
\naccusations of a cover up.<\/p>\n
Indonesia's ambassador to Australia Imron Cotan said on Sunday
\nthe message appeared to have been so non-specific police could do
\nnothing about it.<\/p>\n
Trying to explain the reasons for Howard's comments, analysts
\ncited the protocols.<\/p>\n
Spain's conservative government was voted out of office partly
\nbecause it blamed the Madrid bombings on the Basque separatist
\nmovement ETA, despite early indications al-Qaeda-linked militants
\ncarried it out.<\/p>\n
\"This is where the Madrid protocols come in. Howard is
\nconvinced the conservative Spanish government suffered more
\ndamage in its last days by being seen not to be dealing properly
\nwith the Madrid bombing investigations,\" commentator Dennis
\nShanahan wrote in The Australian newspaper.<\/p>\n
\"The Jakarta embassy bombing demonstrated clearly that Howard
\nis intent on releasing all the information he can as early as he
\ncan but with appropriate warnings.<\/p>\n
\"Howard could be seen to be concealing vital information, even
\nif it later turned out to be faulty.\"<\/p>\n
Political analyst Alan Dupont backed the assessment.<\/p>\n
\"I was a bit surprised that he would mention an SMS message
\nwhen it had not clearly been confirmed,\" said Dupont, of the Lowy
\nInstitute.<\/p>\n
It indicated the sensitivity of politicians on both sides of
\nthe political divide on the issue of credibility, he said.<\/p>",
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