Australian Prime Minister John Howard Lost His Re-election Bid
Much is being said all over the blogosphere about his loss. John Howard is owed our gratitude for his staunch support to this country and the world in the Global War On Terror.
Michelle Malkin shares with us who the new PM is:
“Today Australia has looked to the future,” said the country’s newly elected Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, claiming victory for his Labor Party for the first time since 1996. Poll after opinion poll had predicted a Labor triumph in national elections, but few had forecast its scale. Labor captured at least 22 seats from the ruling Liberal-National coalition ” including, it appears, the northwestern Sydney seat held for the past 33 years by Prime Minister John Howard. With 77% of votes counted in Sydney’s Bennelong district, Howard trailed by several hundred votes. In an emotional speech Nov. 24 Howard took full responsibility for the conservatives’ defeat. Then one of Australia’s most successful leaders ” and one of President George W. Bush’s staunchest western allies ” walked off the stage and into retirement.
A year ago, few even in his own party believed Rudd, a 50-year-old former diplomat and bureaucrat who has been in Parliament for only nine years, had a hope of overturning the P.M. Indeed, Howard had seen off four Labor opponents in a row. A prissy, bookish multimillionaire, Rudd was far from the stereotypical Aussie bloke. But with the help of focus groups, public-relations advisers and expressions like “mate” and “fair dinkum,” he made himself over as a cooler, younger version of 68-year-old Howard: not a revolutionary, just a renovator. His slick, buzzword-driven campaign ” “New leadership,” “fresh ideas,” “plans,” “the future” ” took Labor’s popularity rating into the high 50s, and kept it there.
Pundits have spent much of the past year debating what the trend to Labor said about Australia. In a country where voting is compulsory, elections turn on a dozen or so marginal seats, where small shifts in voter sentiment can make or break governments. There was reason to think swinging voters would applaud Howard: Australia is in its 16th successive year of economic growth, and unemployment and interest rates are the lowest since the ’70s. “This is the first defeat of a government in decades where there was no evident anger or public rage,” said Liberal Senator Michael Baume. Instead there was ennui. Many voters were tired of Howard, and unexcited by Treasurer (now Opposition leader) Peter Costello, 50, who was due to take over from Howard in 2009. There were also concerns about small interest-rate rises, new industrial relations laws, health care and education, and ” in a period of drought ” water and climate change.
Australian elections have become increasingly presidential, and Labor cast this one as a two-man race: Kevin vs John, youth vs age, the future vs the past. A vote for Rudd was a vote for someone new. But not too different. Cartoonists drew Rudd as a mini-Howard. A satirical video on YouTube cast the Chinese-speaking Labor leader as Chairman Mao, with subtitles reading: “Rudd unnerve decrepit Howard with clever strategy of ’similar difference.’” Rather than attacking Howard’s strengths, Rudd appropriated them. “I am not a socialist,” Rudd insisted. “I am an economic conservative.” On issue after issue, from federal intervention in dysfunctional Aboriginal communities, to national security, to the expansion of coal and uranium mining, Rudd adopted the government’s line.
The new P.M. is likely to go Howard’s way on foreign policy, too. What he described as “fundamental differences” with Howard ” his vows to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and pull troops from Iraq ” are largely symbolic.
The important point to remember is that Australian-American friendship goes back much further than any one administration in either nation. It is a friendship of the peoples, not the leaders, and that relationship and our mutual interests in freedom and liberty will remain long past any one election. Just as our alliance with Britain did not rely on Tony Blair alone, our ties to Australia will continue with Kevin Rudd ” and perhaps even grow stronger.
Still, we will miss John Howard. It’s impossible not to regret the retirement of a man who stood tall and firm against the murderous onslaught and told the world exactly what was at stake in the conflict. Thank you, Mr. Howard, and the best of luck to you in the future.
Won’t happen. For even though the labor party won over some 26 seats in the house, the same didn’t happen in the Senate. Besides Austrialias presence in Iraq as far in numbers, some 1600 in country and 550 in combat roles. Like Spain earlier the support lost was largely along the lines of leader support and Rudd promises that the relationship with the US will remain strong.
Status quo for now.
Australia has condemned itself to a labor government. I suspect that by the time they figure out how badly they succeeded and damaging themselves will be too late.
The mood among the Labor supporters pretty much resembles that of Pelosi’s supporters after their Congressional win.
November 26, 2007 - 01:52 AM on November 26th, 2007
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