Australia's Howard reprimands his political fixer

CANBERRA, May 2 (Reuters) Conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard reprimanded his chief political fixer today for attacking a senior female opponent as unfit to govern because she was childless and ''deliberately barren''.

In an election year embarrassment for Howard, his friend and political troubleshooter Bill Heffernan said the deputy leader of the centre-Left Labor Party, Julia Gillard, did not understand the community because she had no children.

''One of the great understandings in a community is family and the relationship between mum, dads and a bucket of nappies,'' Heffernan said in an interview published in The Bulletin magazine today.

With his government trailing in the polls and struggling to regain voter support ahead of an election in the second half of the year, Howard made it clear he did not support Heffernan's personal attack on Gillard.

''The question of whether people have children, whether they marry and have children is entirely a matter for them and I do not think it should be a matter of public comment,'' Howard told reporters.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Treasurer Peter Costello also distanced themselves from Heffernan's comments.

Blunt-speaking Senator Heffernan, a sheep farmer, is the man who enforces discipline on Howard's Liberal Party. He also has a reputation for turning up at media conferences and heckling his political opponents.

Women's groups and Labor politicians condemned Heffernan's comments, forcing the 64-year-old Senator to issue a brief apology late in the day.

''I apologise to Julia Gillard and anyone else who was offended by my completely inappropriate remarks,'' he told AAP today.

Gillard, 45, took over as Labor's deputy leader last December and has been regularly criticised in the media for a range of personal issues, from her hair style and strong working-class accent to being unmarried and living in a house with little furniture.

REUTERS ABM KP1418