government schools. This was seen by many as a departure from modern day political campaigning and a return to old fashioned class-warfare type politics. The media portrayed the policy dishonestly, describing it as removing all private school funding. This wasn't true, the policy ensured that the pool of independent funding remained but was distributed more to low-income schools. Nevertheless, Latham would be scalded in the media for adopting the policy with Victoria's Herald Sun running an editorial against him stating "Mr Latham's commitments are based on the fallacious, ideologically driven premise that all parents who send their children to so called wealthy schools are themselves rich". The Coalition successfully countered these by running a campaign around interest rates stating that the spending envisaged by a Labor Government would inevitably see interest rates increase. The "Keep interest rates low" campaign ran by the Coalition reminded the electorate frequently about the double digit interest rates that existed under the Hawke/Keating Labor governments in the 1980's and 1990's. Labor decided to counter this by quoting a Reuters survey of 14 financial market economists that stated the party in government would make no difference to the level of interest rates over the next term of government. Many in Australia had borrowed heavily at the time to finance their home ownership and were swayed by this line of campaigning by Howard. They were justifiably nervous about their future financial prospects and voted accordingly. People saw the risk of foreclosure as a greater threat than the risk of sub-standard healthcare services or an inequitable public education sector. See also Candidates of the 2004 Australian federal election Members of the Australian House of Representatives, 2004–2007 Notes References House of Representatives 2004 Australian House of Representatives