Terror blast likely to benefit Coalition

The following article by AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten is the second in a five part election commentary series appearing in the Sunday Herald Sun in the lead up to the 2004 Federal Election due to be held on 9 October.

The bombing outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta has had a chilling effect across the country.

The attack brought the federal election campaign to a halt, with both major party leaders cancelling planned campaign events on Friday.

The Jakarta blast came just after the horror of the terrorist slaughter in Beslan in southern Russia, and just before the anniversary yesterday of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.

The combination of events added to the sense of fear and threat so that terrorism completely dominated public debate by the end of the second week of election campaigning.

While the terrorist attack moved attention away from domestic issues, it also provided an opportunity for Mark Latham to exercise a new leadership role in a time of international crisis. With appropriate restraint, both Latham and John Howard have tried to avoid saying anything that could be interpreted as making political capital out of the Jakarta bombing.

However unseemly, the reality is that the Government is likely to benefit politically from the Jakarta bombing.

Greater public awareness of terrorism and a sense of insecurity may make voters more cautious of any change, regardless of the policy differences between the parties.

The Government's tough talking on terrorism builds on the natural advantage of holding office. Latham's alternative national security team - Kim Beazley, Kevin Rudd and Robert McClelland - combines experience and caution with new talent and ideas.

We can expect the ALP's approach to trying to keep matters of national security above party politics will be maintained through the next four weeks of the election campaign.

Although the Jakarta bombing obscured the debate, the week's big policy announcements - both parties' Medicare plans and the ALP's tax and family program - deserve further analysis.

I believe that the alternative policies highlight some of the traditional differences between the parties. While the ALP's focus is on improving the living standards of average working families, the Coalition panders to millionaire welfare.

Independent comparisons of the competing tax and Medicare policies show working families on average incomes could be more than $100 a week better off under Latham than Howard.

The tax advantage may range from $8 a week for singles to more than $110 a week for couples on a combined income of $50,000, which includes many members of my union.

Labor's Medicare plan is based on rebuilding bulk billing and the future of public medicine, as opposed to the Coalition's preference for benefiting doctors and private insurers at the expense of the public system. The election is still a month away - more than a long time in politics. By October 9, policies to relieve the financial pressure on working families may well be uppermost in the minds of voters.