KEY POINTS:
John Howard smiles out of posters all around Bennelong, the seat on Sydney's North Shore he has represented for nearly 34 years. But the man himself is nowhere to be seen. The Australian Prime Minister is criss-crossing the country, trying not to lose the general election on November 24.
In the past, Howard has not had to worry much about campaigning in his own seat. Bennelong was a blue-ribbon constituency, solidly Liberal.
But boundary changes have made it a marginal. And the Prime Minister has a formidable challenger, in the shape of Maxine McKew a former high-profile and highly respected television presenter.
McKew resigned from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last year and a few weeks later went to work for Labor Party Leader Kevin Rudd.
Before long, she was being touted as a possible election candidate. Then came the bombshell - Labor's star recruit would be taking on Howard on his home ground. At first glance, it seemed madness.
After all Howard, a 68-year-old former suburban lawyer, has triumphed in 13 straight elections in Bennelong. He has held it, as one TV commentator pointed out, since Australia had black-and-white television.
But thanks to the boundary changes, it now embraces blue-collar, Labor neighbourhoods.
McKew, 54, needs a swing of only 4 per cent to win, and opinion polls suggest the Liberal-National Party Coalition Government, which has ruled for 11 years, will be ousted.
For Howard, that would be bad enough. But if he lost his seat, he would be the first Prime Minister to suffer such an ignominy since Stanley Melbourne Bruce in 1929, and only the second in Australian history. That is not the way that Howard - Australia's second-longest-serving Prime Minister and most successful conservative leader in the West - wants to go down in the history books.
While Howard has the advantage of long incumbency, McKew has celebrity appeal. She worked for the ABC for 30 years, most recently presenting the flagship current affairs programmes, Lateline and The 7.30 Report. Charming, friendly and articulate, she was one of the most familiar faces on TV.
Unlike her opponent, she can spend every day door-knocking and pressing the flesh. Howard - on a punishing national campaign schedule - generally returns to his constituency only at weekends. The pressure is telling - he looks tired and is uncharacteristically irritable.
When McKew turned up for some street canvassing recently, she was greeted like a film star, with passers-by queuing to shake her hand.
She remains cautious about her prospects, saying that it would be "exceptionally difficult" to unseat the Prime Minister.
A newcomer to the electorate, she is campaigning mainly on national issues, the appeal of Rudd's "new leadership", and Labor's pledge to scrap unpopular industrial relations reforms - an issue that McKew calls "John Howard's poll tax".
"This cuts across people's working conditions, and the concept of the 'fair go', which is one of the things we prize in this country," she said.
"Howard has been the member here for 34 years. He knows this community, and I find it bewildering that he doesn't understand the hurt that this piece of legislation is causing."
It is not just the traditional Labour voters the Prime Minister has to fear. Bennelong is no longer the monocultural seat he won in 1974. One in four of its residents was born in a non-English speaking country. Many of those people are Asian, and they have not forgiven Howard for a speech he made in 1988 calling for Asian immigration to Australia to be "slowed down" - nor for his failure in the late 1990s to condemn the xenophobic policies of Pauline Hanson, leader of the short-lived One Nation Party.
On the streets of Epping, Chinese-born Geoffrey Lee, a Labor volunteer, addressed passers-by in Cantonese, urging them: "Vote for Maxine McKew, it's good for Asian people."
Lee said that for 30 years he was the sole Asian member of his Labor branch. "But this year you can't believe it," he said. "There are that many Asians helping us to hand out leaflets and balloons. John Howard divides the community. He uses Asians as a political football."
Hong Kong-born Samson Kwang is planning to vote Labor. "I like Maxine. I'm her fan. I watch her programme," he said. "I don't think John Howard has spent much time here until recently... In Bennelong there are all nations, all cultures, and you need someone like her [McKew] who can understand local needs."
Howard, of course, has a big advantage over McKew. As Prime Minister, he can make promises to his own voters and back them with cash. Last week he pledged more than A$3m (NZ$3.53m) for Bennelong, to be spent on refurbishing a community centre and installing 50 closed-circuit cameras to combat crime.
No matter that neither of these things would normally be funded by the federal government. Citing a recent shooting and the stabbing of a 17-year-old boy as evidence of a local crime problem, Howard said the Labor state government had failed to ensure community safety.
"Mr Howard is offering a series of desperate 11th-hour promises to save his skin, nothing to do with the future of this nation," said McKew.
The Prime Minister is throwing billions of dollars at the national campaign - $64.1b so far, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Not a day goes by without more windfalls being announced. The most recent round included tax rebates for the parents of all school-age children, money for new childcare centres and tax-free savings accounts for first-time home buyers.
Yet the opinion polls refuse to improve in the Coalition's direction. One published in the Australian last Monday gave Labor a 10 per cent lead over the Coalition. Rudd also leads as preferred Prime Minister.
The Government's fortunes have not been helped by last week's interest rate rise - the sixth since the election of 2004, which Howard won after promising to keep rates low.
Rudd says he will boost spending on health and education, but calls himself an economic conservative. His economic policies are almost identical to the Coalition's.
Howard is resorting to the race card. A Liberal campaign leaflet paints a bleak picture of life under Rudd, warning voters that if Labor wins the election, "there will be nothing to stop a softening of our immigration laws". Howard and his wife Jeanette could soon find themselves moving from the Prime Minister's official Sydney residence back to the family home he has been renovating in Wollstonecraft, north Sydney.
- INDEPENDENT
