Australian election battered by circumstance

The campaign appears to be out of Kim Beazley's hands. But it may also be out of John Howard's, writes GREG ANSLEY.

Even before Prime Minister John Howard announced the date two weeks ago it was clear that the run-up to the November 10 election would be no ordinary campaign.

Australia was numbed by events that had developed their own momentum.

Abroad, the destruction of the World Trade Center had shaken the nation to its core.

At home, its second-largest airline had imploded, leaving thousands without jobs, the future of as many again almost as black, and entire towns and local economies severed from the flow of tourists that kept them alive.

The collapse of other giants - HIH Insurance, OneTel, Pasminco - was still reverberating through boardrooms, building sites, mines and the sprawling suburbs where mums and dads are among the world's most enthusiastic shareholders.

Terrorism had forced the cancellation of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Brisbane and the associated business forum in Melbourne, leaving hundreds of hotel rooms empty and caterers, drivers and dozens of other suppliers with a huge hole in their books.

Two days after Howard called the election, American jets thundered across Afghanistan, drowning out the first political assault by Labor leader Kim Beazley on the seemingly impregnable walls that have sprung up around the Prime Minister since he sent the asylum seekers aboard MV Tampa packing.

Even when Beazley seemed finally to pick up momentum, trouncing Howard in the sole debate of the campaign and making his voice heard above the roar of great events abroad, he was battered down by circumstance.

On Tuesday night Beazley was preparing to announce his banking package, feeding on the loathing of suburban and rural Australia for the nation's financial institutions, their vast profits, and their indifference to the cries of the great unwashed.

In the five 1/2 years since Howard took office, Beazley was to declare, 1500 bank branches had been closed, fees had increased by as much as 400 per cent and corporate Australia was amassing vast profits by financial chicanery. This was vintage Labor language.

Under John Howard, said Beazley's prepared statement, many executives and directors had received obscene salaries and extravagant share option packages while their companies had performed poorly. Too many companies could get away with contriving sham corporate arrangements to avoid their commercial obligations.

The package Beazley was to announce would normally have leapt into the headlines: new compulsory fee-free and no-frills accounts for the battlers, new statutory eyes on fees and charges, tighter rules on credit card limits and marketing, greater disclosure of directors' and managers' salaries, perks and share trading.

But that night President George W. Bush telephoned Howard, asking him to make good his promise of military forces for the war against Osama bin Laden.

Howard did more than he had originally proposed, adding jet fighters, P3 maritime patrol aircraft, two frigates and an amphibious command ship to the SAS troops, RAAF air-to-air refuelling tankers and warship already committed.

Beazley's banking package was another casualty of war.

The day before Bush rang Howard, prime ministerial heir-apparent Peter Costello was in Brisbane showing that even a thin-lipped Treasurer with a caustic tongue knows how to have a good time.

After his first Budget in 1996 he had kicked up his heels in a Sydney television studio, dancing a hip-swinging macarena with now-deposed lunchtime queen Kerri-Ann Kennerley.

This time he was singing a generationally - if not politically - correct spoof of Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus and the big 1970s hit Money, Money, Money on FM radio.

"I worked all night, I worked all day," Costello warbled tonelessly. "I'm Treasurer most every day, that ain't bad. My name is Pete, you must like me, you must like the GST - it's not a fad ... "

The following day, after Howard told the nation he was sending young men to war, Costello was talking money for real. World events, he said, had knocked a large hole in the Budget.

About $A1 billion had been wiped from the forecast surplus, leaving - provided things did not get even worse - about $A500 million ($611 million) in the kitty. That put an effective brake on the lavish promises that always shower across Australia in the weeks before an election.

Labor, being in Opposition and having to make the most, and most-appealing, pledges would be the hardest hit - especially with its plan to limit the GST, which would cut revenues and therefore funding for promises that in the first two weeks of the campaign have already chewed through half the new projected surplus. Such is life in opposition.

Howard has several tiers below him to support the central pillar of leadership. Costello can massage the real numbers, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Trade Minister Mark Vaille can say real things about real events, and a clutch of other ministers can drip-feed voters with real dollars. They may have already been budgeted and allocated, but timing is everything.

In contrast, the members of Beazley's team are truly shadow ministers.

This is not a problem only for Labor. The Nationals, fighting history and what most commentators believe is terminal decline, have no national voice beyond leader John Anderson, who as Transport Minister spent the early stages of the campaign furiously defending himself over the collapse of Ansett.

Along with other National MPs, Anderson has vanished into the bush, where they are fighting bare-knuckled brawls for survival in electorates that have become increasingly disillusioned with the party.

In the past two weeks Anderson has been pounding rural Australia, pressing the flesh. His trail is the legendary heartland, the exotic and even quixotic towns battling time, economics and demographics: Pialba, Urangan, Bundaberg, Mullaley, Gunnedah, Gilgandra, Tooraweenah.

In the cities, Natasha Stott-Despoja, the dynamic 32-year-old who took the leadership of the Democrats in a bruising palace coup last April, is having her own media problems.

Although holding the balance of power in the Senate and showing a consistent performance in the polls, Stott-Despoja is stuck on the peripheries of the campaign.

Her biggest impact so far has come not from what she has to say, but from the fact she can't say it where she wants to - in debate with Howard and Beazley, as the leader of the third power in Australian politics.

But then again, Stott-Despoja in turn refused to join Greens Senator Bob Brown and other bit players in a debate of their own, arguing that unlike them she had real power and a real voice.

But the Greens, like the Democrats, have a constituency that thinks outside the media hype.

The Democrats have returned to core values in the soft territory left of centre, rebuilding the faith of supporters lost by earlier compromises with Howard, and tapping new veins among the young: since Stott-Despoja took over, membership has climbed by 50 per cent, all but 10 per cent over the internet.

The Greens have come from nowhere, rising on a growing wave of dismay at the inability of governments to deal with a deteriorating environment that has already been felt in Western Australia, where they won five seats in the Upper House and helped to push Labor to a landslide victory.

And there remains Pauline Hanson, as always the great unknown. Hanson, like the Greens, came back from the dead in the Western Australia state election, winning three Upper House seats before gaining another three in Queensland - as many as the Liberals.

It has always been hard to accurately judge Hanson's support, even more so when Howard's stand on asylum-seekers has stolen much of her thunder. She also lives with the countervailing realities of media contempt and public protest.

And beyond all this are the voters. If you can believe the polls, they were ready to hurl Howard from power before the Tampa. Now they want to keep him with a passion.

But as many as 20 per cent of voting Australians have yet to make up their minds, and they are likely to vacillate until the final 48 hours of the campaign.

Many are simply deaf to the noise of the campaign.

"I haven't been following it," said Sydney executive Garry Sandilands. "It's not something people talk about at work."

While analysts and journalists were consigning Beazley's opening promises to the ashes of the Afghan war, Canberra retiree Del Arnold's attention was riveted on Labor's plan for free dental care. "A lot of people will want that."

For the young, many of whom will vote for the first time on November 10, the key issues are family, education, money, health and employment.

Across the broader voting spectrum, polling consistently shows the great areas of concern are health, education, employment and family and social issues.

How much the new uncertainties and insecurities facing Australia will impact on these will not be known until after polling booths close.