Word: rudd
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...Into the spotlight Surprising as Rudd's popularity was to the Coalition, it was even more so to some of his Labor colleagues. Prissy, bookish, and married to a multimillionaire businesswoman, he wasn't exactly everyone's picture of the Aussie working-class man, though he lost few opportunities to remind people he'd grown up on a Queensland farm. "If he grew up in poverty in rural Queensland," sneered former Labor leader Latham, "where did the posh accent come from?" Advising Rudd to "take the piss" out of himself, his brother Greg reportedly said: "You're just not that...
...Rudd's public-relations people took polls and held focus groups and told him what those things appeared to be: vision and hope for the future. Former P.M. Keating thought Rudd was too poll-driven, a captive of advisors who "won't get out of bed in the morning unless they've had a focus group report to tell them which side to get out on." But the polling helped Rudd focus, relentlessly, on offering voters what they yearned for: a government as conservative as Howard's, only with a fresher face and a more inclusive smile. A government that...
...Rudd, youthful, blond and inoffensive, understood. None of the good stuff would change, he told voters - the economy least of all. "I am an economic conservative," he said. "Always have been. Always will be." He may be the first Labor leader in Australia's history to have scolded a conservative government for engaging in a "reckless spendathon." A Rudd government would be tightfisted with taxpayers' money, Rudd seemed to say, but open-handed too. "We have a bit of compassion," he said. "We would actually like to get out there and help people while still keeping the economy strong." Rudd...
...longer talks much about its founding principles. "The struggle of the working class against the excesses, injustices and inequalities of capitalism" doesn't strike much of a chord in a country where there are more self-employed workers than union members and more than 55% of adults own shares. Rudd gave the impression that under him, Labor would be as un-Labor-like as it could be without becoming the Liberal Party. The only revolution he was about to start was an educational one, and it didn't mean overthrowing the teacher class. It meant upgrading trades training and providing...
...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...