Australia's New Order

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New direction
As a Diplomat, Rudd spent eight years in Beijing; he makes much of his ability to speak Mandarin. Perhaps coincidentally, his approach to Labor doctrine resembled an Australian version of Deng Xiaoping Theory. Whether an ideology is "surnamed capitalist or surnamed socialist" is immaterial, the late Chinese leader declared. Socialism is "whatever increases the comprehensive strength of the nation."

Rudd embraced conservative policies with an ease that shocked Labor stalwarts. He supported the government's bill restricting marriage to one man and one woman; its intervention into dysfunctional Aboriginal communities; its sale of the final one-third of telecommunications firm Telstra; its takeover of the Murray-Darling basin; its use of antiterrorism laws to expel visiting doctor Mohamed Haneef, suspected of complicity in a British bomb plot. A scornful Bob Brown, leader of the Greens Party, continued the list. "Labor and the Coalition are exactly the same," he said, "on logging native forests, exporting more uranium, increasing coal mining and approving the Gunns pulp mill" in Tasmania. Cartoonists began drawing Rudd as a smaller version of Howard. Sydney student Hugh Atkin posted a video clip on YouTube depicting Rudd as China's Chairman Mao: "He unnerve decrepit Howard by deploying clever principle of 'similar difference'," the subtitles read.

Rudd does have "fundamental differences" from Howard, he insists: one of his first acts as P.M. will be to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. He'll also withdraw Australian troops from Iraq and cancel the WorkChoices laws. But the first two items are largely symbolic. Though Howard kept Australia outside the Kyoto regime, it has already met its emissions targets. And on the question of a post-2012 successor treaty to Kyoto, Rudd in mid-campaign abruptly took the Howard position: no ratification of Kyoto II unless it requires China and India to limit their carbon emissions. On Iraq, Rudd has moderated Labor's earlier "immediate pull-out" policy. He says he will begin negotiations with the U.S. and Iraq on a staged withdrawal of 500 combat troops — one-third of the total deployment there — to take place over the next seven months.

Rudd was accused of "me too-ism," but a more accurate term might have been "me-me-ism." The election wasn't about Labor vs. the Coalition. It wasn't about socialism vs. free-market liberalism. It was about Rudd the new leader, who had a MySpace page with thousands of registered friends, vs. Howard the old leader, who was, well, old. Rudd was all over the new media; he talked often of his plan to roll out a national high-speed broadband network. The self-described "big fan of baroque" went on FM rock radio, said he'd had his Web site "pimped," and managed to laugh at the YouTube clip of himself in Parliament digging in his ear and nibbling on the wax. Kids called him the Ruddinator and the Rudd-meister, and mobbed him like a rock star when he visited schools. His support among 18-to-34 year olds (who make up more than 1 in 4 voters) zoomed to 57%. In the campaign's final week Rudd appeared on the comedy chat show Rove, where he said he was sure he would knock Howard down in a bar fight.