Prime Minister John Howard's latest YouTube foray, meant to lure young people to spend a year after school to sample military life, was ambushed by a spoof video clip just hours after its Thursday release.

"I have to go to work heaps to afford to go to a university that has had its funding slashed so you could spend billions fighting a war you knew was based on a lie," one Internet viewer named Travturner admonished Howard, venting his anger over the war in Iraq after viewing the clip.

"You must be desperate Johnny, targeting young people."

Howard, 68, a winner in four elections but now battling voter perceptions his age is a negative, has chosen YouTube for advertising slots targeting the opposition Labor Party¡¯s economic credentials and highlighting his environment record.

But the 11-year conservative government's refusal to sign the Kyoto climate pact appears to have riled the green-conscious younger voters Howard hopes to attract. This week's fifth interest rate rise since the last election has also angered many.

"John Howard is a farting fossil fool. Australian Prime Minister John Howard demonstrates a form of wind power that is not environmentally friendly," one YouTube viewer nicknamed Unalive said in a posting.

Following YouTube successes in the United States, where racy clips supporting presidential hopefuls such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have captured valuable primetime space, youthful Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has also turned to the internet.

Rudd, backed by a "Kevin07" campaign, pictured a Howard look-alike in bed asleep on climate change. The rival Greens pictured Rudd and Howard both in bed with the coal industry.

Rudd's strategy angered Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who said Labor was focused on stunts over substance, although Downer himself once posed in fishnet stockings and high heels for a newspaper photo.

"It trivializes politics," Downer said.

Youth voters have responded to Rudd, who is 18 years younger than Howard, and Labor holds a commanding poll lead.

"The Web site offers exactly what many young Australians are looking for, a voice," one respondent named Julz said.

But another, named as Mia, said Rudd's tactics were too American in style and too shallow to win younger voters.

"Some may say he's moving with the times, but isn't this just a desperate gimmick?" she said. "For people with half a brain who can see through the gimmick, we know this isn't really who Kevin Rudd is."

After Australia's central bank on Wednesday raised official cash rates to a decade high of 6.50 percent, newspapers on Thursday tipped the election would take place in November, based on advertising space booked by Howard¡¯s Liberal Party.

"This man could lose his house," one of the country's biggest selling tabloids said on the cover after the rise, with a photo of a somber Howard striding from his official residence.

Christian Kerr, a former government adviser turned political commentator for the Web site Crikey.com, said both sides of the political fence appeared to be underestimating the dangers of YouTube.

"The fact that once you're out there online, you're virtually free game for anybody with the software that's readily available to take your message, to manipulate it, to do whatever they want," he told Australian radio.