Polls Open Saturday - Australian Time

As I write this, it's pushing midnight, Friday morning in Australia. The polls there traditionally are held on Saturdays, so their race to the election is almost over.

Here's a commentary piece from the Australian newspaper. As you will see as you read this, Australian politics are just a bit different from ours:

Don't Mention The War
By Matt Price
October 7, 2004

As Mark Latham spoke yesterday, the US vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards was wrapping up in Cleveland, Ohio, with the pair spending much of the 90 minutes vehemently arguing over the war on Iraq.Across the pond, in Bournemouth, England, British Opposition Leader Michael Howard was making a keynote speech to his Conservative Party's annual conference. The theme? Prime Minister Tony Blair's conduct in the lead-up to the war made him unfit to govern the country.

From a podium at the Great Hall in Parliament House, Latham delivered what's become a traditional election-eve address to the National Press Club. The Labor leader's prepared speech ran to 29 pages and lasted 29 minutes. And how many times was Iraq mentioned?

Not once. Zero. Zilch.

Latham, remember, emerged as a national figure when he labelled John Howard an "arselicker" over his close relationship with US President George W. Bush. Most of his more notorious quips - "conga line of suckholes", "flaky, dangerous and incompetent" - stemmed from opposition to the war.

Recent polls show a majority of Australians don't think it was worth joining the coalition of the willing. Let's take a charitable view of the continuing conflict and conclude it's not exactly going to plan.

Yet Latham avoided the war during his speech, and when, in the second of 19 questions, he was invited to speak on the subject, the Labor leader restricted his answer - an affirmation of troops home by Christmas - to four seconds.

Only in the 57th minute was the I-word mentioned, as Latham explained he'd be far too busy to call Bush on election night, should Labor win. Pressed in the closing minute by a British journalist to justify the troop withdrawal policy to sceptics overseas, Latham became slightly more expansive.

"We're doing things that are right in Australia's national interest just as other world leaders do," he said. "It gives no joy or pleasure that if our views ... had been listened to, then they wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq for a purpose that wasn't true."

It's all rather peculiar. It's barely three weeks since the embassy in Jakarta was bombed and the nation held its breath amid fears two Australians had been taken hostage in Baghdad. Labor's main theme for the election is that Howard is not to be trusted. Exhibit A for this thesis is usually the PM's prosecution of the war.

We can assume this spectacular omission from yesterday - and the wider campaign - is no mistake. It's not as if all those hardheads and strategists have accidentally forgotten Iraq while juggling forests, Medicare Gold and other chunks of the platform.

Plainly, Labor reckons there's no gain in mentioning the war, probably because it raises fears about Latham's ability to mend fences with the US.

Just as odd is the Government's parallel silence. Howard, too, tends to avoid talking about Iraq, even during those rare minutes when the PM's conversation turns to something other than interest rates.

So the conflict that consumes the world - and had Australia agonising and arguing through most of 2002 and 2003 - is apparently a dead issue running up to Saturday, unless you're a Green candidate raking in the votes of disaffected citizens.

The Sketch isn't sophisticated enough to work this out, but it knows one thing to be absolutely certain. Long after Saturday, Iraq will still be there causing heartaches and headaches for whoever wins the election.