SYDNEY: Australia’s economy is booming, so the question of why the opinion polls show the government heading for defeat in elections on Saturday puzzles Prime Minister John Howard.

The conservative leader has gone from suggesting the electorate must be joking to complaining that Asian growth is getting the credit that is rightfully his for the performance of the economy.

“I think one of the reasons is that the Labour Party has successfully created the impression that it doesn’t matter who is in government, the economy will continue to grow.” Howard’s ministers have been equally plaintive, with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer likening the government’s economic success to the winning ways of the nation’s world champion cricket team.

While the election is about more than the economy, hip-pocket issues have dominated the campaign and analysts say Howard is partly right when he complains that he is not given credit for the economic boom.

“Most people realise the main strength of the economy comes from overseas factors rather than anything the government has done,” said Wayne Errington, academic and co-author of a biography on the prime minister.

Rapid growth in Asian countries such as China and India has seen a blow-out in demand for Australia’s vast mineral resources, firing up the economy and cutting unemployment to 30 year lows.

But the very strength of the growth has presented a problem for Howard, Errington said, with inflationary pressures forcing six interest rate hikes since the last election and putting pressure on mortgage-belt home buyers.

“That in itself wouldn’t be a big problem apart from the fact that Howard made a lot of the promise to keep interest rates low at the last election so it brings up all sorts of credibility problems.” But Errington and others believe the government has been hurt most on the economic front by its new union-busting labour laws, which critics say erode job security and wages by forcing workers to sign individual contracts.

Despite the economic boom “there are great disparities in wealth, large numbers of people not doing so well,” he said. But the opinion polls show that the government is deeply unpopular even in some of the most affluent parts of Australia, suggesting that the electorate’s gripes go beyond the economy.

The government’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and its deployment of troops to the Iraq war are both widely unpopular.

The prime minister could simply be his own political longevity, stretching from his first stint as a minister in the 1970s to the past 11 years as prime minister.—AFP