³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Has the government of Kevin Rudd lost the plot? Or has he even got one? Is Australia's cleverest policy wonk still searching for a big, animating guiding principle? Less than a year after taking office, is the government a bit, well, Rudderless?

The prime minister's approval rating has fallen to 54%, the lowest since he took office last November. While he remains twice as popular as the new Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull, the most recent Newspoll poll suggests that more voters trust the Liberals when it comes to running the economy than Labor. That is a worry for Labor.

Former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, who is enjoying something of a revival at the moment - the brilliant musical which bears his name has been playing to packed houses - says that Rudd needs an overarching narrative. The opposition has also come up with a neat line that the Rudd government hit the ground reviewing, which has such resonance because it sounds so very accurate. Now it has started calling him "Kevin 747", because of his 46 days of international travel since taking office.

Certainly, Rudd's small-bore policies, like FuelWatch and its food equivalent, GroceryWatch, have been a bit of a flop. His education policies, grandiosely dubbed the "Education Revolution", are not particularly revolutionary. The phrase was appropriated from the former Labor leader, Mark Latham, and the policies were mainly appropriated from the former Liberal leader, John Howard. Admittedly, the emissions trading system promises a major reform, but John Howard advocated one, too, albeit on a slightly less ambitious timetable.

The grand gestures that attached meaning to his first few months in office were gifted to him on a plate by the Howard government. Ratifying Kyoto was easy. So, too, was saying sorry to indigenous Australians for past injustices. Having plucked and then feasted on these low-hanging fruit, the menu now looks a bit meagre.

Last month, as parliament reconvened after its eight-week winter break, Kevin Rudd delivered what was billed initially as important, agenda-setting speech where he would lay out his plans for the remainder of his three-year term. Then the prime minister's spin doctors tried to rein in expectations, and said that he would only be addressing education.

Some policies, like Rudd's idea for an Asian equivalent of a European Union, were announced with great fanfare and then followed by silence.

These days the most eagerly anticipated announcements come not from the government but the Reserve Bank, as it decides what will happen to interest rates.

When all those reviews publish their reports, new policies will no doubt flow from them. But this preference for reviews and studies tells us much about the prime minister. He is a process man, with a bullet-point mind rather than a visionary political imagination. For him, governing is about prose rather than poetry. The former diplomat and Queensland civil servant - he used to be the Queensland Premier's chief of staff - offers cautious "managerialism". After 11 years of conservative rule, should not a first-term Labor government offer something bolder and exciting?

Pushing for an Australian Republic might lend his government some crusading zeal, but his offer to Malcolm Turnbull to jointly come up with a timetable for a new referendum appeared like a political stunt designed to split the Liberal Party rather than a genuine attempt to accelerate the debate.

As your excellent comments amply demonstrate, there is clearly an appetite for a debate, and a high quality one at that. Many people seem unhappy with Malcolm Turnbull's new formulation that a Republic is off the agenda while Queen Elizabeth is alive. Though a Republican, tazitiger80 validates that stance, but I wonder whether many Australians will increasingly come to agree with scrapthejack that the country should set its own timetable.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Australia's most impressive curriculum vitae has just been embellished with yet another blue ribbon entry. Malcolm Turnbull, the former Rhodes Scholar, personal advisor to Kerry Packer, Spycatcher barrister, millionaire banker and head of the Australian Republican movement, has now become the leader of the Liberal Party. That puts him one successful election away from the job he has long coveted: prime minister. I suppose it could even put him one successful referendum away from a post he would love to see created: Australian president.

With the collapse of Lehman Brothers, this has not been a good week for self-styled "Masters of the Universe". Turnbull has bucked the trend.

Now the 2010 election is starting to look interesting. Kevin Rudd is facing a plausible prime minister in waiting, at a time when economic issues will be front and centre.

A few words about the man that Turnbull defeated, Brendan Nelson, who called a speedy leadership election in the hope of throwing his rival off balance. Nelson always looked like a hostage to events rather than a commanding figure who could shape them. Nowhere was this more evident than in his response to Peter Costello's recent vacillations over whether he wanted the leadership. During that period of uncertainty, Nelson came across as ludicrously submissive and chronically indecisive.

Like Costello, Nelson is probably a politician for a different age. He is shy and error-prone, a losing combination in a fast-paced political culture which requires snap policy judgments and high personal exposure. The former earring-wearing doctor might have boosted his public image by emphasising his love of guitars and motorbikes. Instead, he came across as a rebel without a personality.

I saw him once on the Mike Carlton radio show being handed a guitar and offered the chance to play. But he awkwardly refused. These days, of course, politicians have to be much more availing. To win elections, you have to lose your inhibitions. Nelson remained resolutely buttoned-down.

Turnbull has problems. Within sections of his party, he is regarded as an over-ambitious elitist, with dangerously subversive views on the future of the monarchy. He is the richest parliamentarian who lives in Australia's richest street in Australia's richest constituency, Wentworth, which takes in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. No wonder he emphasised his humble roots in his first speech as leader, because Labor will seek to portray him as haughty and out of touch.

What this does mean is that Australia's two main parties are now headed by the country's most well credentialed politicians. Two avowed Republicans are also in charge, which opens the way for a measure of cross-party consensus on the question of a future Australian Republic.

2010 is now a real contest. Can Turnbull win over the country? And can he win over his party?

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

The motto of the Melbourne University Press is "Books with Spine". The joke within the Labor Party at the moment is that its latest publication, from the pen of the former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello, has been written by a politician without one.

For the uninitiated, Mr Costello is the most tragic figure in Liberal Party politics - a politician who waited for almost a decade to be handed the prime ministership by his rival, John Howard, but who may now have lost the chance to claim what he believes is his rightful political bequest.

In an arrangement with shades of the famed "Granita deal" hatched between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Mr Howard reportedly promised to hand over the prime ministership to Costello after serving about five years in The Lodge. As we know, Mr Howard went on to serve 11. Mr Costello's reluctance to take on the prime minister, as Paul Keating did to oust Bob Hawke, has offered what his critics say is a profile in political cowardice. They say he has not got the "ticker"; that he is a spineless politician.

For the past few months, the Liberal Party has allowed its future to be held hostage by the publication date of Peter Costello's memoirs. Now, finally, on the eve of publication, Mr Costello has ended the speculation and announced in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald that he will be not be seeking the leadership of the Liberal Party.

the paper's parliamentary sketch writer, Annabel Crabb: "So here we are. After the longest and most politically erotic Dance of the Seven Veils modern observers can bear to recall, the last scarf has wafted to the floor. Peter Costello stands before us, exposed. And it turns out he's exactly the person we've always known him to be."

Over the past few months, as he's performed his burlesque-like political dance, Costello has been a real tease. At a tribute dinner in Melbourne last month, he quoted the old Woody Allen gag about what he would he would like to hear at his funeral. "I'd like to see them look at my casket and say: 'He's moving still. He's still alive!'" Now journalists can start writing his political obituaries.

Had he stayed, the former treasurer would have had little difficulty in ousting the present Liberal leader, Brendan Nelson. Now, Malcolm Turnbull, the present shadow treasurer, will probably make a move for the leadership, although many in his party deeply distrust the former leader of the Australian Republican Movement because they think he is a liberal (in the American and European sense rather than the Australian).

So far the best stuff from the Costello memoir offers more titillating details about a well-known plot line: the hatred he has for his former leader, Mr Howard - a feeling which is clearly mutual. He takes aim at the former prime minister's wife, Janette, calling her a "counsel of one" who blocked his path to The Lodge.

For what it's worth, I've always thought Mr Costello would have been a much more effective politician if he had been born in 19th-Century Britain rather than 20th-Century Australia. A bruising dispatch-box debater, he's famed for his withering parliamentary put-downs that led one of his political opponents to contemplate suicide. He even looks like he has come from the pages of a novel by Charles Dickens.

But in an age when the present Prime Minister Kevin Rudd rose to the top with the help of a regular spot on breakfast telly, he's not that comfortable on television and his bully-boy menace sometimes scares the viewers. Then there's the famous smirk, and the oft-heard accusation that he is terminally indecisive.

Few would doubt his economic expertise and parliamentary skill, but these days the really successful politicians require a compelling personal narrative to go with it. As his long-awaited memoir might show, Mr Costello never really had one.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

What a weird and wacky week in the wide world of global politics. Sarah Palin goes from Caribou-hunting hockey mom to Obama-baiting vice-president nominee. In Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari goes from prison to the presidency. In New South Wales, some bloke that not many people have ever heard of called Nathan Rees goes from garbo - that's Ozzie-speak for a refuse collector - to the premier of Australia's most populous state.

For me, this offers incontrovertible proof of the "West Wingisation" of Western politics. We have become so very used to watching outlandish plot-developments unfold on our screens, sometimes within the space of a few episodes or even a few scenes, that the lines between fictional politics and factual politics have become completely blurred. The politically impossible or politically implausible is made real because television has helped condition us to allow it.

Under this theory, Americans have become more accepting of the idea of a black man becoming president because David Palmer had already blazed that particular trail on the hit-show 24. Ditto for women, with Geena Davis in Commander in Chief.

It also means, I'd suggest, that we are much more open to fresh plot lines and welcome the appearance of new characters. Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and Nathan Rees in New South Wales, who has been a member of the state parliament for less than two years.

In Australia, this past weekend we've seen more evidence of this trend. After the elections in Western Australia, it looks like the new premier will be Colin Barnett, a Liberal who regained the leadership of his party just a day before the election was called (he'll take over from Alan Carpenter, a former television reporter). This also means that the new treasurer of what is arguably now Australia's most important economic state will be our old friend Troy Buswell, of chair-sniffing fame, who has starred in his very own political soap opera for much of the year.

Soap opera does not even begin to describe what happened in New South Wales politics last week, as the unpopular Premier Morris Iemma stepped down in an orgy of factionalism, blood-letting and tears. It had shades of the The Borgias, The Sopranos, Monty Python, and now, with the elevation of Nathan Rees, the rag and bone of Steptoe and Son.

In New South Wales this weekend, a by-election was won by a telegenic, 30-something politician called Rob Oakeshott, who campaigned as an independent. In South Australia, the Greens almost took the seat that used to be occupied by the Liberal patrician Alexander Downer, the man with arguably the most stellar bloodline in Australian politics.

In parliament the Liberals have been taunting Kevin Rudd for being boring. It is as if he does not meet the cinematic requirements of the age. Perhaps he does not meet the West Wing test? Perhaps, after less than a year in charge, he's lost his most valuable asset: his freshness and novelty value. In the West Wingisation of Western politics, he has become a bit "last season".

UPDATE: After all those Olympian distractions, I didn't get back to you on Still Battling, the blog about the troubled state of the economy. Lukenormanbutler offers a detailed and impressive analysis of why Australian interest rates are much higher than in other OECD countries. Frankjohnston accuses the Reserve Bank of being preoccupied, and thus blinded, with combating inflation. A deft touch from Listohan, who recalled Paul Keating's famous comment, about "recession we had to have". "Political spherical objects"? That sounds like the former Labor Prime Minister, too. Listohan, have you seen Keating?

On the subject of the economy, apparently 17 Rolls Royces were sold in Australia last year. Does not strike me as many.

UPDATE II: Was intrigued by your comments on Aussie women. Many of the Australian women I know are fabulously feisty (including my wife), so I particularly liked qlder12 on the subject: "Australian Women are tough, strong minded and some of the most fiesty in the world." Intrigued by what others had to say about Germaine Greer. She is such a deeply polarising figure.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Is it fair, or even true, to say that Germaine Greer has enjoyed more success in internationalising the ideas expressed in The Female Eunuch than implanting them in her native land?

There's no doubting that a feminist revolution has been underway in Australia for decades, but has it been a little slow, a little stunted and not yet reached its full fruition?

This week Australia will mark a landmark "female first". will become the first female governor-general in the country's history. The deputy leaders of the two main political parties, Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop, are female. Last year, Anna Bligh became the first female premier of Queensland. Kevin Rudd has appointed a record-breaking seven female ministers, four of whom are of Cabinet rank.

Away from politics, Kay Goldsworthy has recently been consecrated as the first Australian female bishop in the Anglican church. Gail Kelly has also broken through another glass ceiling by becoming the CEO of Westpac, one of the country's "Big Four" banks.

For all that, Australia has never had a female prime minister. Neither New South Wales, Tasmania nor South Australia has ever produced a female state premier. Victoria and Western Australia can boast one each, but neither received a popular mandate. No Australian state has elected a female premier (although the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory have).

It was not until 1990 that Australia saw the appointment of its female Federal Court judge. It was not until 1992 that Janet Holmes A'Court joined the male-dominated Reserve Bank Board, the first woman to do so.

Even now, only 6% of the CEOs of Australia's top 200 companies are women. They account for only 13% of the nation's judges. When Kevin Rudd convened the 2020 Summit, where forward-thinking was at a premium, he originally asked only one woman, the Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett, to chair one of the ten, brain-storming panels.

Almost 40 years after the first landmark equal pay case, the latest figures from the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Liz Broderick, revealed that women earn only 84% of what men get paid. Along with America, Australia is the only westernised democracy that does not have a statutory paid maternity leave scheme.

Before you start firing off your comments, I'm not arguing that Australia remains a bastion of beer-swilling, ocker male chauvinism. Neither, for that matter, do I subscribe to the view of the about the "crisis in male identity" and how "Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags".

I'm simply asking whether it is still the case that women struggle to penetrate the upper reaches of Australian politics, business, law and the military. And if so, why?

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?