Security overshadows Australia poll budget splurge

Security overshadows Australia poll budget splurge

Paul Tait Reuters/Canberra

Security fears after a deadly car bomb blast outside Australia's embassy in Jakarta overshadowed campaigning for an Oct. 9 election, pushing aside even a multi-billion dollar budget bonanza announced on Friday.

Prime Minister John Howard and opposition Labor leader Mark Latham suspended their campaigns and returned to Canberra on Friday for security briefings about Thursday's blast, which killed nine Indonesians and injured 182 people.

They arrived in the national capital to newspaper headlines that read "Evil at our gate" and "Attack on Australia".

"We will not have our foreign policy or security policy determined by terrorist threats," Howard said. "Once a country starts doing that, it's handing over control of its future."

Howard announced a national security review after the blast, which came days before an Indonesian presidential run-off and two days before the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 hijacked airliner attacks on the United States.

Despite the review, Australia has left its security threat level at "medium", the second lowest level on its four-tier alert system. Security is to be beefed up at airports and other transport hubs, and at polling booths.

Howard and Latham presented a united front in saying Australia would not bow to terrorism. Neither would say if they thought the blast would have an impact on the election outcome out of respect for victims and their families.

But the two leaders have clashed in the past over Australia's involvement in the U.S.-led war on Iraq, an issue that will be under renewed focus after the Jakarta blast.

Australia's election is being keenly watched in London and Washington because it precedes the U.S. presidential vote on Nov. 2 and a British general election widely expected to be called in May or June. Security and the war on terror are key themes for all three polls and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush will watch how close ally Howard fares.

Howard said a security review was under way but vowed not to pull Australian troops out of Iraq as the Jamaah Islamiyah network had purportedly demanded in an unauthenticated Internet statement in which it claimed responsibility for the Jakarta attack.

Latham, who is running neck-and-neck with Howard a month before voting day, has said he wants Australia's 850 troops in and around Iraq to come home soon. Howard is adamant they will remain as long as they are needed.

Latham declined comment when asked his views on withdrawing Australia's troops in light of the Jakarta blast.

"It's not a time for making any political points or related observations," he told reporters in northern Queensland state.

Security analysts have said the rift between the major parties over Iraq has made Australia vulnerable to an attack like the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people three days before Spain's March 11 elections.

Latest Treasury projections show Australia's economy poised to deliver a larger-than-expected 2004/05 budget surplus, more than doubling previous forecasts to A$5.3 billion (US$3.7 billion).

The government would normally have trumpeted the figures as it pushes the message of sound economic management.

But the message was overshadowed by the Jakarta blast. A subdued Treasurer Peter Costello said the strong fiscal position would help Australia fight those who seek to harm the nation.

"We have got new challenges -- we have terrorism challenges, we have security challenges," he told reporters in Melbourne.

"We have got to keep our economy strong to get through those," Costello said.

Many commentators trod gingerly when looking at the possible election implications of the Jakarta blast, although some said Latham would suffer because Howard is seen as a strong and resolute leader.

"The bombing in Jakarta could become the event that crushed Mark Latham's bid to get a Labor government elected," political commentator Malcolm Farr wrote in The Daily Telegraph.

There is also a growing view that voters would be less likely to opt for a change of government in the face of security fears.

"What normally happens in these circumstances is that people are more likely to vote for the incumbent government," political analyst Ian McAllister told Reuters.

Before the Jakarta blast, television straw polls consistently showed that the nation's robust economy, one of the industrialized world's strongest, was the issue that would determine how most Australians cast their votes.