Asian immigrant vote crucial as outgoing PM's seat on knife-edge

Outgoing Australian Prime Minister John Howard looked set to suffer the humiliation of losing his own seat yesterday, with a key role in the shock result played by Asian immigrants.

If confirmed, the loss of his constituency, Bennelong, would make Mr Howard the first sitting Australian prime minister since 1929 to be dumped by voters.

He had represented Bennelong, a constituency in Sydney, for 33 years. But it recently became a marginal seat after shifting west under election boundary changes, taking in working-class suburbs with large Chinese and Korean populations.

The opposition Labor Party calculated that the rise in Asian-born residents - now close to 25 per cent, up from 13 per cent a decade ago - would favour its candidate, Maxine McKew, a high-profile former journalist and anchor for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Many Asian-Australians regard Mr Howard with suspicion after comments he made in the 1980s about putting the brakes on immigration and because of his tough stance against asylum seekers.

Asian immigrants also worry about the citizenship test the government introduced this year, which they see as favouring immigrants from countries like Britain and New Zealand because of its questions on Australian history and culture.