AUSTRALIAN POLL TURN NASTY AFTER DRUGS JIBE

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's sedate election campaign turned nasty
Thursday when an opposition spokesman accused conservative Prime Minister
John Howard of being indirectly responsible for the deaths of heroin users.

In a statement titled ``John Howard's Drugs Legacy - 60 Dead in Perth
Alone,'' opposition justice spokesman Nick Bolkus accused the government of
neglecting law enforcement.

He said the price of a ``cap'' of heroin had fallen in Australia to below
that of a packet of cigarettes.

Howard became enraged after Bolkus' accusations were raised during an
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio interview. He said the
Labor opposition had adopted gutter tactics in campaigning for the October
3 general election.

``It is about as cheap a political trick in the book to try and personally
link the strategy of political opponents to the number of heroin deaths
that have occurred in a country,'' he told reporters in the Western
Australia state capital of Perth.

``That is a cheap, tawdry, guttersnipe attack.''

He demanded opposition leader Kim Beazley discipline Bolkus.

``He ought to show a bit of leadership and pull this bloke into line,''
Howard said.

``It seems that the pattern of the Labor party is that the boss sails on
serenely in a civil manner, but at the margins he allows his minions to say
anything they like,'' Howard said.

Instead of attacking the Liberal-National coalition over its plan to
introduce a 10 percent consumption tax, the central plank of its
re-election drive, Beazley was left to defend one of the opposition's most
senior members.

``(Bolkus) believes himself to have been misunderstood and his remarks
misinterpreted, and that I think was an entirely appropriate response,''
Beazley said while campaigning in the southern island state of Tasmania.

The ABC later apologized to Howard for asking a question which linked the
coalition's tax plan to the price of heroin.

Bolkus' claim enlivened an otherwise lackluster campaign.

The major parties had pressed the dry issues of tax reform and economic
competence since the poll was called on August 30, with nationalist MP
Pauline Hanson and her anti-immigration One Nation party providing
occasional bursts of color.

Howard and Beazley had vowed a civilized campaign removed from the personal
attacks which often mark Australian politics.

Opinion polls have shown Howard's Liberal-National coalition and Labor
neck-and-neck for most of the campaign, with many Australians more focused
on the success of their athletes at events such as the Commonwealth Games
in Malaysia.

One respected poll Tuesday saw Labor taking the lead over the coalition for
the first time.

Howard launched the coalition's crime strategy Wednesday, an apparently
benign plan which included pledges to spend A$50 million (US$29.5 million)
on a forensic computer network.

On Thursday, Howard promised to spend A$75 million in a crackdown on
illegal drugs and on treatment for addicts.

Bolkus said in his statement the government had cut A$417 million in
funding to national law enforcement in 1996 and 1997 and another A$70
million in 1996 from the customs service.

He argued that the price of a ``cap'' of heroin had at the same time fallen
to about A$5 from A$40.

``John Howard has put the lives of Australia's young people at risk through
two years of neglect of Commonwealth law enforcement,'' Bolkus said in his
statement.

``In Perth alone, the number of heroin-related deaths rose from 19 in 1996
to almost 60 in 1997,'' he added.

Bolkus later told an impromptu news conference that he did not blame Howard
personally for the deaths of addicts.

``I don't accuse John Howard of being personally responsible for the death
of people on our streets,'' Bolkus said in Sydney.

``What I do charge him with...is a dereliction of duty in terms of meeting
his responsibilities to the Australian Federal Police and customs.''

Beazley had been trying to use two recent studies to push the message that
the coalition's consumption tax was flawed and based on false assumptions
of growth and price changes.

(A$1 - US$0.59)

PT

Copyright (c) 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski