Word: howard
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...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...
...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...
...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 former Liberal Senator Michael Baume. Instead there was ennui. Many voters...
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...
...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. Though Australia is outside the Kyoto regime, the country has met its emissions targets. And on the question of a successor treaty to Kyoto, Rudd in mid-campaign abruptly took the Howard position: a Labor government would not ratify Kyoto II unless it required China and India to limit their emissions. On Iraq, Rudd has moderated Labor's earlier "pull-out-now" policy...