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Australian Election: A New Government and a Generational Change

From The Guardian (UK) -Leader

Excerpts:

Australians do not know whether they have just committed a very bold act or a very small one.

By throwing out their conservative prime minister, John Howard, in Saturday's election they may have dramatically tipped their nation away from the insularity, fear and materialism that he had encouraged.

Many Australians hope so. But hope is not the same as substance, and even as the incoming Labor prime minister, Kevin Rudd, accepted victory he sought to reassure his country about the limits to change.

Kevin Rudd fought a campaign that defied electoral gravity, achieving a landslide victory against a still-popular leader at a time of record prosperity.

John Howard, thedefeated Liberal leader, appealed to the meaner side of the national character which was not generous: an Australia that defied the world on climate change, and sought refuge from its own history on race and the rights of its indigenous people.

At its worst the Howard government represented a distasteful reaction to modernity, and its repeated exploitation of this to achieve electoral success offered an unhealthy example to the political right around the world.

That is why Mr Howard's defeat has a significance that runs beyond Australia. The politics of progress beat the politics of retreat.

The immediate consequences will be felt more abroad than at home. Iraq featured little in the campaign, but Mr Rudd will move to pull out Australian troops, further isolating President Bush. He will attend next month's Bali summit on climate change, the first leader to represent his country at such talks, and ratify the Kyoto protocol, leaving the United States alone.

These are important shifts in international policy - but they may not be matched by domestic change after a campaign that saw Mr Rudd ape many of Mr Howard's policies.

Observers in Britain, who may expect a radical shift on the monarchy, or the rights of indigenous people, will be left disappointed. Change, when it comes, will be gradual - a cleansing of values rather than a revolution in policy.

This is what most Australians want and Mr Rudd knows that if he had proposed something more radical, he would have lost.

There is no doubting his ability or his intense hard work.

Now he has won he will be tested in office to show whether a restrained and stale campaign can nonetheless breed a prime minister able to escape caution and govern - as he claims to want to do - for a bigger purpose.