Australian Prime Minister John Howard swept back to power for a historic third term Saturday in a triumph widely attributed to the strength of public support for his hardline refugee policies.
Although the opposition did not immediately concede defeat, computer projections gave Howard's Liberal-National coalition a comfortable majority of seats in an expanded 150-seat Australian parliament.
Howard's deputy and heir apparent, Treasurer Peter Costello, tipped to succeed him in two years, told supporters in Melbourne: "This has been a great victory, a very, very large swing against the Labor Party."
Howard had a wafer slim majority after the last election in 1998, with 11 seats categorised as extreme marginals with a majority under one percent.
But with 70 percent of the vote counted, the coalition had won a swing of about two percent and Labor was struggling to gain any ground in the eastern states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.
The results pointed to a coalition victory even before any votes were counted in opposition Labor leader Kim Beazley's home state of Western Australia, which is three hours behind the eastern states.
An ABC projection gave Howard's Liberals 65 seats and its National Party coalition partners 13, totalling 78 seats, to Labor's likely 69 with three independents claiming the remaining places.
Former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke said: "You would have to say on the preliminary figures New South Wales is the problem for us."
He accused Howard of adopting the anti-immigration policies of right wing firebrand Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party.
One Nation's vote was halved in Saturday's election, most of its former supporters apparently giving the coalition their vote and helping it to win.
Former Labor Senator Stephen Loosley told ABC television labor appeared to have been hurt by the issue of asylum seekers which dominated the election campaign and by ethnic gang crime in Sydney's southern suburbs.
Former Labor minister Graham Richardson told the Channel Nine network Howard was heading for victory. "I can certainly say Labor is not going to win tonight," he added.
Howard, who first won government in March 1996, sought a third term to equal the record held by only two previous Liberal leaders, Robert Menzies and Malcolm Fraser.
Seen as a tough and resolute leader, Howard campaigned hard on the need for strong leadership during a period of international crisis.
His major election theme was his warning: "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come."
He revelled in the overwhelming domestic support but ignored the international condemnation he received over his uncompromising stand on illegal immigration, using the navy to divert asylum seekers away to tiny Pacific island nations to have their claims processed.
Two of three polls published on Saturday tipped a narrow government win, but they were completed before another controversy flared late in the week with the potential to seriously damage the government's credibility at the last minute.
Howard and two of his senior ministers were accused of misleading the voters over an incident last month involving asylum-seekers.
Evidence emerged that the government had falsely or mistakenly claimed Middle-Eastern asylum seekers threw their children from a stricken boat into the Indian Ocean in a bid to blackmail Australian authorities into granting them asylum.
The claims blew up in the government's face as navymen refused to back the government, some officers saying the children ended up in the sea only when the boat sank.
But the election result suggested it was a non-issue as far as the electorate was concerned.
Beazley, who at one stage faced annihilation, managed in a strong campaign to force domestic issues like education and health to the forefront. But all he managed to do was minimise the Labor losses -- SYDNEY, (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
