Australia Turns- Toward China?
At The Box, one of Kunming's popular watering holes, the mood last night was jovial. The Australian general election results came in and Labor scored a decisive victory, booting long-tenured Prime Minister John Howard and his Liberal Party from office. Aussie expats, like their American counterparts, tend to be decidedly left-wing. As a result, many high-fives and celebratory cheers were exchanged. The Americans in attendance wistfully called for a similar result in our own election next year.
Like most people outside of Australasia, I have never paid much attention to Australian politics. Yet John Howard was a distinctly loathsome figure, perhaps the only leader outside of the United States to match President Bush's belligerent, hawkish rhetoric. Howard was no Tony Blair- a brilliant politician felled by a monumental error in supporting Iraq. Howard was a neocon's neocon. He marched lockstep with Bush and never questioned the White House's prosecution of the war. For that, he paid the ultimate political price.
Howard's fealty toward Washington was often a point of embarrassment for Australians, even among those ordinarily sympathetic to his politics. Perhaps no moment better exemplified Howard's disregard for opponents of the Bush Administration than his appalling comment about Barack Obama, uttered earlier this year:
If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for [Barack] Obama, but also for the Democrats.
Such comments are common fare among members of the American right, but for the prime minister of a foreign country and a major US ally, they were extremely inappropriate to say the least.
So who becomes the new Australian premier? Kevin Rudd. The Labour Party head campaigned on two central issues: reversing Howard's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and removing Australian troops from Iraq. What interests me about Rudd, though, is his background. In the 1980s, he served in the Australian diplomatic corps in Beijing, acquiring fluent Mandarin in the process. Earlier in the year, Rudd made quite a splash in China by delivering a speech in Mandarin in front of the suitably impressed President Hu Jintao.
Does this mean Australia will tilt toward China? Probably not, and I would suspect the Australia/US alliance won't suffer in the slightest. Yet the West needs better leadership in terms of China policy, and Rudd seems uniquely positioned to offer it. In the meantime, let me offer a hearty "good on ya mate!" to the collective voters of Australia. As one so eloquently put it last night, "Sanity has been restored to the people of my homeland"
Indeed.
More: Excellent analysis by Salon's Glenn Greenwald, from which I culled the Howard quote regarding Obama.
November 25th, 2007 - 17:12
Hope you’re right; I fear that Australia is continuing the policy the Mother Country followed disastrously vis a vis the earlier fascist countries for a quick profit
November 28th, 2007 - 09:12
Gday mate. Just a quick comment about your blog entry on the Australian election. You do make a few decent points, particularly in relation to Howard’s constant bowing to the US (but lets be honest, does a country as small as Australia really have any room to say no to one of our biggest allies?). You are however incorrect in some of your views on Howard and the election. Regardless of which side of politics you back, Howard is the consummate politician, arguably the most successful politician in Australian history. This is not a statement on his policies, rather the actual success of his political career. As for what lost him the election, it had nothing to do with Kyoto, and probably very little to do with the war in Iraq. The two issues that were the determining factors in the Australian election were: 1) A backlash against Howard’s radical industrial relations changes, and 2) change for the sake of change. On this second point, people tend to have short memories, and soon the grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. Other than these two areas, the two political powers in Australia are basically a dead heat, with everything else (climate change, iraq, etc) being basically exactly the same.
November 29th, 2007 - 09:20
Chris,
Interesting comment. The international media said nothing about the industrial relations changes as far as I saw- I’ll go and Google that. As for the second point, change for change’s sake, anecdotal evidence suggests that is true. Eleven years is a long time in a democracy.
I mentioned Kyoto and Iraq only because these were the reasons given by the international media in their coverage of the Australian elections. It wouldn’t be the first time that visiting journalists completely missed the point.
Australia certainly had position to maneuver on Iraq, though. New Zealand is one fifth the size of Oz and refused to back the war without any apparent damage to their relations to the US. I’d say as far as Iraq was concerned, Howard, like Blair, Aznar, and others before him, was a victim of bad judgment. And unlike the others, he dug his heels instead of admitting he might have made a mistake.
November 30th, 2007 - 14:58
this is a no-brainer. Rudd’s election will mean even more closer ties to the PRC. Practically the entire economy of Oz is riding the back of mining, and guess who is the major purchaser of the Minerals of Oz. No, not Midnight Oil fans, but the PRC, by far of any other nation. There is no way Rudd or the ALP is going to do anything to make that cash cow run dry.