Word: australianness
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...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...
Kevin Rudd took on what appeared to be an unenviable challenge when he became leader of the Australian Labor Party in December last year. It was to sell himself to the Australian people in time for an election - due within a year - that would pit him against Prime Minister John Howard, who, after a decade in office, had come to be regarded by many, including himself, as the natural leader of the country...
Canny, articulate and not reliant on charisma, Howard has been an indestructible force in Australian politics. As recently as 1989, his own party thought him unelectable and dumped him as leader. But since 1996, he's won four elections for the Liberal-National Coalition, twice pulling it back from the brink of defeat. He's left behind a trail of defeated Labor Party leaders, becoming in the process a hero of conservatives across the Western world...
...view is that Bennelong will fall with it." Having made history in so many personally gratifying ways as the country's second longest-serving Prime Minister, Howard may depart politics in circumstances that would surely leave him hollow - paired with the long-forgotten Stanley Bruce as the only Australian P.M. to lose his seat at a general election. A 4% swing may be all that is needed to tip Howard's opponent in Bennelong to victory...
...Howard Government gives the impression of being baffled as to how it could be facing electoral defeat at a time when the Australian economy, despite the strain of rising interest rates, is in fine shape. Of all the factors working against the Government, among the most potent is widespread distrust of its employer-friendly overhaul of the system for dealing with labor and workplace disputes. And here the dreaded parallel with the unfortunate Stanley Bruce becomes more stark. Bruce's demise in 1929 followed a period of industrial mayhem involving miners and laborers. For the perception that he's messed...