Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

Strange odds for a two horse race

The Jakarta bombing was a disaster on many levels: the senseless loss of life, the exposure of our helplessness against suicidal fanaticism, the triumph of madness over decency.

In this wider context its effect on the Australian election campaign becomes a relatively unimportant corollary, but it is one that has to be faced; and the most obvious thing to note is the sheer irrationality of the Australian public.

It is probably pointless to allocate blame for the fact that security at and around the Australian embassy was less than perfect, or that intelligence produced no definite warning of the atrocity; a ruthless terrorist with nothing to lose has an inbuilt advantage over a civilised opponent. But if we have to blame someone, let's at least be sensible about the target.

The Indonesians have no doubt; in the wake of the bombing the popularity of their president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, dropped like a brick. The tragedy occurred on her watch; she was the one elected to protect the nation, she was ultimately responsible for security. The buck stopped with her, and if the system failed, she was the one at fault. It might not be entirely fair, but at least it's logical.

And by the same reasoning, if Australians want to put the blame on anyone, it should be on their own Prime Minister. But in the almost unanimous view of the commentators, the bombing will actually help him: security is supposedly his strong suit, so anything that draws public attention to it - even a catastrophic failure - should work to his advantage.

Indeed the spin is that not only is Howard entirely free from responsibility for the catastrophe, but that if anyone has to carry the can it should be Mark Latham. The preposterous idea (first advanced by Alexander Downer - who else?) was that it was not Howard getting us into Iraq which put us at risk; it was Latham promising to take us out again.

And it's not only the pundits who take this line. In the 24 hours after the bombing mug punters placed more than $70,000 in bets on the Coalition compared with less than $1000 on Labor; the bookies now have a Howard victory paying just $1.30 compared with Latham at $3.20, huge odds in a two horse race.

And yet there has been just one small sign that they might have all got it wrong. In Sunday's so-called Great Debate Latham took Howard head on over security, and according to the dreaded worm - the combined reaction of 90 swinging voters - he won that part of the debate as convincingly as he won the rest.

This may be no more than an aberration; the regular polls still have Howard very comfortably ahead on security, although Latham has started to close the gap. But if the voters really have begun to trust Labor on what the apparatchiks call DRAT - Defence, Refugees, Asylum seekers and Terrorism - then the debate will be seen as much more than just a blip in a campaign that has clearly been moving the government's way.

Really, there was no possible excuse for Howard to have performed as badly as he did. As incumbents always insist, he had rigged the format shamelessly in his own favour: it was more of a joint press conference than a real head-to-head clash, with a panel of older, Canberra-based journalists asking questions that were both predictable and familiar and with absolutely no input from a real audience to disturb the ritual.

It should have been made for Howard's dogged, straight-forward style; but he blew it. He started nervously and by the end was looking shifty, evasive and barely relevant. Latham made the odd slip, but he was generally sharper and always more engaging.

The worm scored it two to one Latham's way, which I thought was about right; there was no knockout blow (Howard's format carefully did not provide an opportunity for one) but it was a clear points decision for Latham. In a genuine one-on-one debate he would have eaten Howard alive - which is, of course, why Howard is adamant that there will be no such event, never, ever -- and this is one promise we can trust him to keep.