SYDNEY, Sept 29: Australia's last federal election this millennium has been dominated by the perennial issues of taxation and unemployment but the divisive issue of race hangs like a dark cloud over the October 3 poll.The far-right One Nation party will make its national debut there, after a spectacular performance in Queensland state polls where it grabbed a quarter of the vote and helped unseat the Conservative government.Australia's Asian neighbours were shocked by One Nation's success, forged on populist attacks on Asian immigration, proposals to scrap funding for Aboriginal programmes and support for gun owners.Prime Minister John Howard's Conservative coalition and Opposition leader Kim Beazley's Labour Party have kept a close eye on the party headed by maverick MP Pauline Hanson, who has become as much an issue in the election as a competitor.While opinion polls show One Nation's national support has slipped to about seven percent, from 12 percent in the euphoric aftermath of the JuneQueensland elections, no one can afford to underestimate its potential.Surveys indicate the government could lose most of the 40-plus seat majority it won in the 1996 landslide victory and could even be forced to secure support from One Nation as a minority government in the House of Representatives.Beazley has been more vocal than Howard in his attacks on Hanson and slammed her policies, which include a two percent flat tax on everything and the reintroduction of capital punishment, as divisive and ill-considered.Howard has been criticised for failing to repudiate former fish-and-chip owner Hanson but both leaders have been careful not to criticise and further alienate her supporters, predominantly poorly-educated and gullible blue-collar workers from the bush and the outer fringe of big cities.During the campaign both have focused on economic management - an area where opinion polls show Beazley lags slightly behind Howard.The prime minister is staking his re-election campaign on sweepingreforms to Australia's outmoded taxation system, a move he says is vital to open up the revenue base and relieve pressure on middle-income earners, or ``battlers'' as he calls them. However, the 10 percent goods and services tax he is pushing is considered electoral poison and was credited with scaring voters away from the Conservative coalition at the 1993 poll.Howard is constantly being reminded by Labor that, after the Conservatives lost that ``unloseable'' election, he vowed ``never, ever'' to introduce a goods and services tax.His decision to nonetheless dust off the old policy is considered by commentators as courageous or foolhardy, depending on perceptions.Beazley has done his best to again frighten Australians away from ``a tax from cradle and grave.''``This is a tax Australia should never, ever have. And which we could never, ever get rid of,'' he thundered at the Labour Party's policy launch last week.In an equally impassioned address to the party faithful, Howard said Australiafaced a crucial choice at the October 3 ballot.``I have never, in 24 years of public life, been more certain than I am today that I'm doing the right thing for Australia in pursuing the cause of taxation reform,'' he said.
