Former Aussie PM Howard loses constituency seat

The Labour Party candidate who ousted former Australian Prime Minister John Howard from his Sydney constituency after 33 years formally declared victory today.

Howard's conservative coalition lost its 11-year grip on power last Saturday with a dramatic nationwide swing towards the centre-left Labour Party led by Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd.

After the votes rolled in, Howard was forced to concede that he had lost not only the leadership of the country, but said it also looked "very unlikely" he would be returned to represent his home electorate of Bennelong.For a week, Howard trailed his rival Labour candidate Maxine McKew by a narrow margin, with neither side willing to claim victory or concede defeat.

But with the Australian Electoral Commission formally declaring the seat for Labour and a majority of postal and absentee votes counted today, McKew finally made the call.

"One week after the polls opened I can now say that … we are comfortably ahead," McKew told reporters at a school in the constituency. "I can formally say that Bennelong is now a Labour seat for the first time."

The result is a measure of the strength of the dissatisfaction with Howard, Australia's second-longest service leader, who had been the Member for Bennelong since 1974.

He becomes only the second sitting prime minister to be kicked out of parliament, after Stanley Bruce.

Source:breakingnews.ie