Australian Elections, 4 Days To Go

Prime Minister John Howard represents the Liberal Party Coalition, while Mark Latham is the Labor Party Leader of the Opposition. the Australian Parliamentary Government is roughly based on the British system, where the party getting the largest number of seats in the lower house gets to name the Prime Minister.

The positions of these politicians may sound just a tad familar.

Latham stands by Iraq exit
By Matt Price and John Kerin
October 1, 2004

MARK Latham is standing by his policy of withdrawing Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas, and believes the Prime Minister should say sorry for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in the wake of the war.But John Howard has resisted following Tony Blair's lead and will not apologise for intelligence failures in the lead-up to war in Iraq.

Mr Latham failed to mention the proposed troop withdrawal during Wednesday's official policy speech in Brisbane, instead focusing on his intention to work closely with the US Government to promote peace and security.

But yesterday the Opposition Leader confirmed a significant proportion of Australia's relatively small contingent of troops would return.

"I've said a thousand times through the course of this year and the answer is yes for (the withdrawal of) Operation Catalyst, the Labor policy that we've announced many, many times now," Mr Latham told the Nine Network. The Labor leader was referring to roughly 300 troops on the ground in Baghdad.

The Labor leader challenged Mr Howard to take a lead from Mr Blair, who earlier this week told a British Labour Party conference he regretted having suggested Saddam Hussein had WMD.
"The first thing for a leader is to be big enough to confront the truth and then take responsibility for it when you've made a blue," Mr Latham said.

But Mr Howard remained defiant when invited to issue an apology for intelligence shortcomings. "I deal with these matters in my own way. I don't automatically follow what Mr Blair or indeed anybody else says," he told Sky News yesterday.

"We were given intelligence, I believed that intelligence. That intelligence has so far not been vindicated by the work that has been done by the Iraq Survey Group, although it's beyond argument that Saddam Hussein had a clear intention of resuming his quest for weapons of mass destruction once the UN pressure disappeared."

Mr Howard echoed Mr Blair's belief that the coalition of the willing had done the right thing removing Saddam from power in Iraq.

"If action had not been taken he would still be there," Mr Howard said.

The upsurge in kidnappings and suicide bombings only reinforced his position that Australia could not "cut and run" and "must stay and finish the job" to at least ensure democratic elections could be held.

"It would be a terrible defeat for the West if everybody cut and ran. It would be a huge victory for the terrorists if we were to cut and run, if the US was to cut and run and the British were to cut and run," he said. "It is difficult and it's nasty ... you are dealing with people whose lack of moral code is beyond our comprehension," he said.

Mr Latham praised Mr Blair for assuming responsibility for the error on WMD intelligence. "Mr Howard takes no responsibility," he said. "At this stage he has not even owned up to the fact that there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Howard said Australia had no current plans to send more troops than the current 920 it has dispatched to the Middle East including around 300 who are based in Iraq.

This story from the newspaper 'The Australian'.