Australian Election Report

This is from AFP via Google. If the polls continue to reflect the gap between Howard and Labor, Bush will lose one of his most loyal running dogs. He will also find Australian troops being withdrawn from Iraq and another country signing on to Kyoto. Of course at the same time Bush already has a new soul mate in Harper, although Harper started off yelping as if hurt by Bush's treatment of Arar.

Australian PM debates Iraq, climate change with challenger Rudd


SYDNEY (AFP) — Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Sunday engaged in a testy debate with his Labor Party opponent Kevin Rudd on Iraq and climate change in their only face-off before the November 24 election.

After more than 11 years in office, Howard is fighting for political survival against the centre-left Rudd, who has taken a commanding lead against the conservative incumbent in opinion polls.

Howard and Rudd faced 90 minutes of questions from journalists and each other at Parliament House in Canberra in the only scheduled debate of the six-week election campaign.

The debate was expected to centre on the crucial issue of tax cuts, with Howard promising to deliver 34 billion dollars (30.4 billion US) in cuts against Rudd's offering of 31 billion dollars in sweeteners.

But the war in Iraq and the problem of climate change, two key points of divergence between the parties, were the most hotly contested issues of the wide-ranging debate.

Howard, a staunch ally of US President George W. Bush who committed troops from the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq, danced around a question on whether Australia's involvement in the war had increased the terror risk.

He said he believed the threat was "very real" and there was no escaping it anywhere in the world as terrorists have no respect for religion, nationality or anything else.

"That's why they will attack whether we are in or out of Iraq," Howard said.

Rudd, who has committed a future Labor government to a staged withdrawal of troops, said the case for going to war in the oil-rich country was never strong enough.

"On the issue of Iraq itself, it stands as the greatest single error of Australian national security and foreign policy decisionmaking since Vietnam," he said.

Rudd, a former diplomat who has accused the 68-year-old Howard of lagging behind on the issues of climate change and broadband technology, renewed his pledge to sign the Kyoto Protocol if elected.

"How could it be that we're one of the only two developed countries in the world to refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol?" he asked.

"I don't understand, I just don't get it."

Howard, a previous climate change sceptic whose government has refused to ratify Kyoto saying it would put Australia's economy at a disadvantage, said a new framework was needed to combat the global problem.

"At the moment, Kyoto doesn't effectively cover the United States and China -- that's a bit like having an international World Cup in cricket without Australia and India," Howard said.

The debate was initially polite but 35 minutes in, the contenders engaged in a slanging match over Australian education funding with Howard arguing that figures contained in a recent OECD report, and quoted by Rudd, were not up-to-date and terming one of Rudd's responses "pathetic".

After accusing Rudd of trying to mislead the public, Howard told the Labor leader: "You were wrong and you knew it and you shouldn't have said it."

Rudd, 50, had argued for a series of debates throughout the six-week campaign as new policies are revealed, but Howard insisted that only one televised debate be held.

The latest polls have Rudd, who needs to win some 16 seats to gain control of the government, ahead of Howard by 54 percent to 46 percent.

But the Labor leader maintains that winning the top job from the man who has won the past four elections would be akin to climbing Mount Everest.

"This will be a really tight race... it will go down to the wire," he said ahead of the debate.