By GREG ANSLEY
CANBERRA - Opposition Leader Kim Beazley was the only federal political leader smiling yesterday as his opponents turned upon each other in a frenzy spurred by plummeting opinion polls, Pauline Hanson and rampant Greens.
Prime Minister John Howard was backflipping on policy at one moment and the next dashing to help rescue his Coalition deputy, John Anderson, from rebels plotting to haul him from the leadership of the National Party.
Weekend polls showed that both Howard and Anderson could be unseated at the next election.
Elsewhere in Parliament House, Democrats leader Senator Meg Lees was rallying her own troops in a bid to ward off a challenge from her deputy, Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, mounted after electoral maulings in Western Australia and Queensland.
Beazley, armed with yet another poll predicting an easy victory in the election due this year, surveyed the political carnage around him and gloated at the latest humiliating u-turn forced on the beleaguered Howard.
"We can't create policy fast enough for them to adopt it," he said.
"When the Government of the day has effectively confessed that you are right, you're only moments away from the public saying, well, if the Government thinks it's right, perhaps [Labor] should be government."
The latest Newspoll in the Australian suggests the moment is at hand. Although noting an erosion in support for the major parties by One Nation and the Greens, the Newspoll said Labor's 43-39 per cent lead in the primary vote would produce a comfortable victory.
Howard conceded yesterday that the past two weeks had been very difficult for the Government.
Life does not seem likely to improve in a hurry.
Pressured by outright rebellion within the ruling Coalition and in the key rural base, Howard has wilted on a range of previously non-negotiable positions - most significantly, a backdown on the GST-triggered increase in petrol excise.
The issue contributed significantly to the demolition of the Coalition in Queensland and threatened to tear its vote apart in the federal election. Nonetheless, the backdown was embarrassing.
Howard has also stepped in to help save Anderson, the target of a shadowy political coven determined to bring him down and replace him as National leader with outback Queensland hardliner Bob Katter.
Meanwhile, the Democrats, also reeling from drubbings in state elections, have turned on leader Lees.
In addition to rock-bottom popularity in Western Australia and Queensland, Lees has not been forgiven by many Democrats for the deal she struck with Howard, using the party's balance of power in the Senate to pass GST legislation.
Nationwide support hovers at 3 per cent - well below both One Nation and the Greens.
Beazley revels in Coalition's woes
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