How They Roll in Australia

You get up early to watch the Socceroos fall short of the World Cup round of sixteen--or, in my case, stay up late to watch the USA snatch victory from the jaws of defeat--turn on the Today show only to learn that there's a leadership challenge with the ruling Australian Labour Party, then check the net at your morning coffee break and learn that wham! bam! Australia has a new head of state, or a new Prime Minister at least. (Technically speaking Oz's head of state is the Governor General, appointed by QE-II, but I couldn't even tell you the Governor General's name.) The basic plot line is that Kevin Rudd's poll numbers have been tanking and the ALP leadership didn't see Kev as a horse that was going to carry them through the next federal election which comes no later than April of next year, and so, Goodfellas-style, they capped him just when he--and the general public--least expected it.

To me, though, aside from the giddy thrill of contrasting this nearly instantaneous change of national leadership with the 24 month extravaganza that characterizes the my native America's presidential elections, the interesting questions are where and how Rudd went wrong and why over no more than the past 3 or 4 months he has become so exceedingly unpopular. It's a pretty confusing picture. It seems that some are angry at him for abandoning his cap-and-trade carbon pricing scheme, and yet in seeming conflict with such green opposition, people seem nonplussed with his latest policy initiative, a massive "super tax" on mining industry profits. I suspect that the Venn diagram of those who both support cap-and-trade and stand in opposition to the mining tax is small indeed, but that may be precisely the problem. Rudd alienated both the latte-drinking urbanites by chucking the emissions trading scheme, driving them over to the Green Party--ironic since it was opposition from the Senate Greens who felt the ETS didn't set strict enough carbon targets that put the final nail in its coffin--and the working-class miners' union types who have been persuaded by management propaganda that the super tax is going to cost jobs. I do wonder too how much of it is simply the fact that Rudd is personally not all that likable, coming off like a pedantic, annoying, prickly little nerd. It is no accident that Tony Abbot, the leader of the Liberal (read conservative) Party opposition has been getting himself photographed doing things like surfing and finishing an Iron Man triathalon. Too bad for him that he has ears like a pair of satellite dishes and a tendency to get himself tongue tied at the very moment when he should be driving the message home.