SYDNEY -- The long reign of Prime Minister John Howard is coming to an end if the latest pre-election opinion polls are any guide. But who believes polls? Certainly nobody caught up in a new round of election frenzy suddenly sweeping Australia.
The campaigning nice guys are being trampled underfoot as a till-now boring national election campaign nosedives into its final, vicious weeks.
Not even the self-styled Canberra pundits venture to predict the balance of national politics for the three years after election day, October 9. New issues, some of them bizarre, have turned traditional campaigning on its head. Some observers even fear that the latest divisions could lead to a hung Parliament or at least to a divided Senate that could make sound government an impossible balancing act.