Rudd’s ascendance

If anything, Rudd’s ascendance shows that Latham was the last of his kind of Labor politicians. While Latham’s politics of hatred were rejected soundly by the electorate, Rudd’s focus on ideas for the future has been embraced in a way that has Howard flummoxed, and exposed as yesterday’s man.

These Old Labor types are the blokes from whose ranks, during the earlier wrangling over Beazley’s doomed leadership, came that brave (anonymous) backbencher who pronounced that “Australians would never cop a left wing sheila” as leader of the ALP.

That left wing sheila, accomplished former lawyer Julia Gillard, is now deputy opposition leader, and she’s been joined on Rudd’s team by a woman who was, until recently, one of Australia’s most respected journalists. Maxine McKew has been open about her reasons for joining the ALP now, rather than when she was first approached in Latham’s time. Simply, she believes in Kevin Rudd.

Furthermore, in running for a marginal seat against the incumbent PM, she might be facing a tougher battle, but she doesn’t feel compromised as she would have had she stood for a safe seat under Latham. She hasn’t said as much, but it’s likely that McKew was as uncomfortable with Latham as were many Australian women and younger people, including ALP members and supporters like me.

The old guard on both sides, of which Howard is the most tenacious conservative member, is struggling to come to grips with the new battle lines of 21st century politics. It’s a war that was fought a decade ago in the UK, when Tony Blair junked hard-left ideology and announced New Labor, reinventing British politics in the process.

Kevin Rudd is the best chance we’ve had for a long time to drag Australian politics out of the antiquated thinking that has dominated our public life for far too long. He mustn’t let the old burkes of the ALP, nor the policy bankrupts in this tired government, distract him from the main game: ideas for Australia’s future.