A backlash against the US-led Iraq war is damaging Australian Prime Minister John Howard's re-election chances in a ballot expected within months, with opposition Labor snaring a firm lead in a new opinion poll.
"We are in the fight of our political lives and all energy must be focused on that," Howard told a meeting of party colleagues yesterday. "The odds are very much against us."
Howard, a close US ally who sent 2,000 military personnel to the US-led invasion last March, said his government had been damaged by the negative publicity out of Iraq such as photographs of US troops abusing Iraqi prisoners.
But he said his conservative government's foreign policy would not be influenced by a swing in opinion polls after an ACNielsen poll showed 63 percent of Australians now believed the war in Iraq was unjustified, up from 51 percent in September last year.
"We did not enter the coalition [in Iraq] on the basis of opinion polls and we have absolutely no intention on the basis of opinion polls of altering our position," Howard told parliament.
Howard said he would reaffirm his support for the Iraq action when visiting US President George W. Bush in Washington next week.
The future of 850 Australian troops still in and around Iraq has become a political tug-of-war in Australia ahead of an election possible as early as August but tipped for October.
Howard wants the troops to remain until the "job is done," but Labor's new leader Mark Latham, who has reinvigorated the center-left party in the past six months, has vowed to bring them home by Christmas if he wins the close run election.
Howard's eight-year-old government has lost its lead in opinion polls this year since Latham stormed the political stage.
Despite a positive response to the government's big-spending budget two weeks ago, an ACNielsen poll published on yesterday found support for Howard's Liberal-National Party coalition had slipped to 39 percent from 42 percent a month ago.
In contrast, Labor was in its best electoral position in about three years, with support up one point to 43 percent and Latham was enjoying a higher personal approval rating than Howard, at 58 to 52 percent.
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