Keating sweet-talks cane country voters: A remote Queensland town could determine the outcome of next week's election, Robert Milliken writes from Mackay

WHEN THEY go to the polls in Australia's general election next week, the people of Mackay in central Queensland will feel a brief surge of power in knowing that their vote could well determine the outcome for the rest of the country. For that reason, Paul Keating, the Prime Minister, paid the town a brief visit yesterday leading up to the start of his campaign's crucial final week.

Perhaps because Mackay knew it was being courted there was an air of polite reserve as Mr Keating and his wife, Annita, drove through the town's palm- fringed streets in sub-tropical heat. There were no crowds and the applause when he spoke at three functions was restrained rather than rapturous.

Here was a telling point, repeated at other stops all over Australia as Mr Keating criss-crosses the country in his bid to return the Labor Party for an unprecedented fifth term on 13 March. He is fighting not only John Hewson, the opposition leader, but also the ghost of Bob Hawke, the Labor Prime Minister whom he ousted as party leader and whose crowd-pulling power and charisma with ordinary voters Mr Keating has never come close to matching.

'You can forgive people for feeling a bit cynical here,' said Clive Booth, head of the Mackay campus of the University of Central Queensland. 'The last time a prime minister came to this town was three years ago. That was Bob Hawke, just before the last election. I suppose it says something about the way politicians in Canberra view people who live in more remote parts.'

Remote it may be, and caught in something of a time warp, but Mackay is where the election may be decided. The town sits at the centre of eight marginal constituencies stretching through sugar cane country for almost 1,000 miles along the Queensland coast. Labor holds the four seats surrounding Mackay, but not Dawson, the constituency covering the town itself. It would need a swing of just 0.2 per cent to unseat Dawson's popular MP from the National Party, the junior partner in the conservative opposition coalition. Pollsters believe that if Labor can regain Dawson, it could scrape back to power.

The result will depend on how far Mackay's 52,000 inhabitants are prepared to be bribed. The town's economy is sustained by two commodities: sugar and coal.

With the Whitsunday Islands of the Great Barrier Reef just offshore Mackay is also a tourist town, but it has not had the flood of Japanese tourists' yen which has transformed other parts of Queensland. It remains a quiet corner of white, rural Australia as captured in the 1950s classic play, Summer of the 17th Doll: a town of hard-working, hard- drinking cane growers whose industry has come to depend on protective tariffs, the removal of which would probably decimate prosperous sugar communities such as Mackay.

Perhaps Mr Keating had Mackay in mind in his calls for Australia to turn itself into 'more than a farm and a quarry'. To this end, the Labor government has reduced tariffs on many protected industries in a bid to make Australians work more competitively and to transform their economy from one dependent on bulk commodities.

When it comes to winning votes in vital marginal seats, though, economic theories are easily abandoned. Mr Keating had prepared last month for his Mackay visit by announcing a freeze on existing sugar tariffs for four years, plus millions in aid to the industry. Mr Hewson countered by pledging a two- year tariff freeze and even higher levels of assistance. Mr Hewson flew to Cairns, north of Mackay, to be photographed addressing cane farmers, but both he and Mr Keating denied they were playing sugar-barrel politics. In fact, Mr Keating took the high ground when he began his day in Mackay by presiding over the investiture of prefects at the local high school. He sought to sell the 600 pupils the virtues of his government's adaptable economy and education system. By illustration, he reminded them that the clerk's job he took when he left school no longer existed: it was now done by a computer.

Buoyed by official figures the previous day which showed a growth in both business investment and skilled job vacancies, Mr Keating moved on to an adult audience at a tertiary college where he demonstrated his flair for raw, street-fighting language. He claimed Australian exports were 'going gangbusters' and dismissed the opposition's economic policies: 'As the Americans say, tell it to the marines.'.

He squeezed in a live interview on the local radio station where he explained his call for Australia to become a republic. 'We will never make our way and feel comfortable with ourselves in the Asia-Pacific region unless we are masters of our own destiny.'

Then came a hastily arranged whistle stop at a pharmacy, where Mr Keating joined John Taylor, the chemist, behind the counter to point out for television cameras how suntan cream and almost every other item would rise in price under Mr Hewson's plan to introduce a Vat-type goods and services tax. A few customers wandered into the shop, but none stopped to ask him questions.

A similar stunt the following day at a cake shop in another town backfired when the proprietor told Mr Keating he could afford to hire four more workers after being free of other taxes which Mr Hewson proposed to abolish.

Labor is now neck-and-neck with the opposition in opinion polls, and Mr Keating's Mackay visit was typical of the campaign strategy he has adopted to keep him in the race: attack Mr Hewson's tax plans, talk up a bright future and avoid any mention of Australia's 1 million unemployed.

In one of the several grand pubs, built to accommodate thousands of thirsty cane-cutters, they barely noticed the Prime Minister was around. One businessman, who described himself as 'conservative but swinging', had made up his mind none the less. 'Labor's been in power 10 years. Long enough. They're tired. He may not be much better, but I'm voting for Hewson.'

(Photograph omitted)