Australia's Labor wins debate but trend weakens
Australia's Labor wins debate but trend weakens
Agencies
Canberra
The Labor opposition's lead over Australia's conservative
government weakened in a poll trend released on Monday but Labor
leader Mark Latham took heart from his clear win in the only
debate set before the Oct. 9 election.
Australia's robust economy had been the biggest issue early in
the six-week campaign until a deadly car bomb attack on
Australia's Jakarta embassy snapped attention back on to national
security, the dominant theme in Sunday's televised debate.
The debate marked an end to an unofficial truce between Latham
and Prime Minister John Howard after Thursday's bombing, which
killed nine people and injured 182, with the two leaders going
head-to-head on the war on terror.
"Latham wins the war of words," declared The Australian
newspaper in a front-page headline.
It was much-needed good news for Latham after the Reuters Poll
Trend showed Labor's lead over the government had weakened.
The trend, using three regularly published opinion polls,
showed Labor's lead had slipped by 1.6 points to 5.2 points on a
two-party preferred basis, where minor party votes are
distributed to the main parties and ultimately decide elections.
But Howard's eight-year-old Liberal/National coalition
government took a 1.2 point lead on a primary vote basis, or
first count of votes, with 42.5 percent support.
Howard's lead as preferred prime minister strengthened to 12.7
points from a revised 11.7 points.
The three polls analyzed by the Reuters Poll Trend were all
taken before Thursday's embassy bombing.
Also on Monday, analysts said Howard adopted the "Madrid
protocols" in citing an obscure SMS (Short Message Service) text
message allegedly sent to Indonesian police minutes before
Jakarta embassy bombing.
The Madrid protocols refers to a policy of releasing
information, no matter how unreliable it may be, rather than risk
accusations of a cover up.
Indonesia's ambassador to Australian Imron Cotan said on
Sunday the message appeared to have been so non-specific police
could do nothing about it.
Trying to explain the reasons for Howard's comments, analysts
cited the protocols.
Spain's conservative government was voted out of office partly
because it blamed the Madrid bombings on the Basque separatist
movement ETA, despite early indications al-Qaeda-linked Islamists
carried it out.
"This is where the Madrid protocols come in. Howard is
convinced the conservative Spanish government suffered more
damage in its last days by being seen not to be dealing properly
with the Madrid bombing investigations," commentator Dennis
Shanahan wrote in The Australian newspaper.
"The Jakarta embassy bombing demonstrated clearly that Howard
is intent on releasing all the information he can as early as he
can but with appropriate warnings.
"Howard could be seen to be concealing vital information, even
if it later turned out to be faulty."
Political analyst Alan Dupont backed the assessment.
"I was a bit surprised that he would mention an SMS message
when it had not clearly been confirmed," said Dupont, of the Lowy
Institute.
It indicated the sensitivity of politicians on both sides of
the political divide on the issue of credibility, he said.