Australia set for early poll

JOHN HOWARD, Australia's prime minister, was under intense pressure yesterday to call an early federal election in the wake of the strong vote in Queensland last weekend for One Nation, the racially divisive party led by Pauline Hanson.

The conservative federal Liberal-National coalition government that Mr Howard leads has been shaken by One Nation's capture of almost one-quarter of the Queensland state election vote, especially as it was almost entirely confined to the coalition's traditional heartland in rural areas.

One Nation won 10 seats, but the opposition Labor Party seemed likely after further counting yesterday to be able to form a government without the involvement of the Hanson party, whose policies it strongly opposes.

Farmers and townspeople in Queensland, hit hard by economic decline, voted for One Nation in protest at the state's ruling coalition which they felt had lost touch with their needs.

In Brisbane, the state capital, the Liberal vote collapsed in protest at that party's decision to give second votes under the preferential system to One Nation, a party which city voters disapproved of over its bigoted policies against Asian immigration and Aboriginal rights.

Before the Queensland election, Mr Howard had hoped to call a "double dissolution" of both houses of federal parliament later this year. Its trigger would be his government's legislation that restricts the rights of Aborigines to claim native title over traditional lands.

Federal parliament has rejected the bill. Mr Howard hopes a double dissolution will deliver him a majority that he lacks now in the Senate, the upper house, where his bill came to grief. Since the Queensland debacle, federal coalition MPs have been alarmed that One Nation could wreak similar havoc in their ranks in an early federal election as it did in Queensland.

Some have called on Mr Howard to ditch the election until the last possible time, early in 1999.

But Mr Howard has indicated that he plans to stick to his guns, and there was speculation yesterday that he could call an election even as early as August.

As the economic crisis in Asia deepens, the prime minister fears that Australia could be caught up even further in its backwash and that the sooner he goes to the polls the better. There was a chilling warning in Melbourne on Tuesday from Jean-Michel Severino, the World Bank's vice- president for Asia-Pacific, who said that Asia could be entering a depression.

"We are probably at the end of a first cycle of crisis and we are entering into a deep recession, or you could probably use the term depression," he said. "This depression may be very long lasting if one does not manage it very, very carefully."

Australia sold 60 per cent of its exports to Asia last year. Mr Howard said yesterday that he found Mr Severino's language "rather extreme and not in the forecasts I have".