NO one should be under any illusion about the implications of Australia‘s change of government: sharp deviations from the country’s political or economic trajectory are an unlikely consequence of the Labor Party’s return to power at the federal level after nearly a dozen years in the wilderness. All the same, the long overdue comeuppance of John Howard’s government at the hands of voters was delightful to witness.

For almost a year, opinion polls had pointed towards a defeat for Howard’s Liberal Party and its coalition partner, the Australian Nationals. A week or so before polling day, however, some pollsters began to suggest that the gap was narrowing. Back in 1998, just two years after Howard became prime minister, the coalition had managed to retain power with less than 50 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. It suddenly no longer seemed impossible that the feat could be repeated.

In the end, the fears proved to be unfounded. Although the swing towards Labor was by no means uniform across the nation, it more than sufficed to deliver victory. What’s more, Howard’s end came with an extra-sweet bonus: electors in the seat he had represented for 33 years decided enough was enough and, by a small margin, appear to have handed victory to his Labor rival, former television journalist Maxine McKew. This particular result, too, wasn’t exactly unanticipated, but until most of the votes had been counted, it seemed too good to be true.

Consequently, Howard now can now lay claim to two second-rate records: as Australia‘s second longest ruling PM, after Robert Menzies; and as the second PM – after Stanley Bruce in 1929 – to lose his own seat in an election. Unlike Howard, Bruce hadn’t led his party to four successive electoral triumphs. It’s instructive to note, however, that Bruce’s government fell over its uncompromisingly reactionary stance on industrial relations. Nearly 80 years later, a remarkably similar attitude was instrumental in provoking the voter backlash that felled Howard.

Although popular disillusionment with the Howard-led coalition can be attributed to a number of causes, arguably the biggest factor was an insidious piece of legislation dubbed WorkChoices. Its purported aim was to enhance workplace “flexibility” – which is neoliberal code for further empowering employers at the expense of employees. The Howard government, despite its best efforts, was unable to disguise the fact that this was an attempt to snatch away more of the basic rights that workers had won through long and arduous struggles during the 19th and 20th centuries.

This has been a common trend through much of the West for the past couple of decades, and it is unlikely to be reversed as a consequence of relatively minor setbacks such as the repudiation of an unequivocally pro-business government in Australia or the current wave of strikes in France. But each instance of resistance does at least provide an opportunity to reflect on the priorities of global capitalism.

Howard was also wrong-footed by his failure to anticipate growing popular concern over global warming: until some months ago he was an outspoken sceptic, insisting in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that the jury was still out on the likelihood as well as the causes of climate change. He eventually switched his tune, but remained adamantly opposed to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, which reinforced the impression that the primary motivation for his unconvincing conversion lay in political realities rather than a change of heart.

The nagging suspicion has also lingered that his blockheadedness on Kyoto is not so much a matter of conviction as a measure of Howard’s obsequiousness towards the Bush administration. This embarrassing relationship is epitomized by Australia‘s involvement in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. A vast majority of the Australian public has consistently opposed this role, but this factor didn’t seriously hurt Howard electorally in the past, partly because the country’s small contingent suffered no combat casualties.

Iraq did not figure prominently in the election campaign, although the new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, has promised to pull out most Australian troops from that particular theatre of war. At the same time, he has hinted at increasing Australia‘s presence in Afghanistan, based on the still widespread misperception that the conflict in that country is, in contrast to Iraq, somehow a “good war”. He has also gone out of his way to stress that he won’t do anything to undermine the US alliance.

In fact, Rudd’s main strategy throughout the campaign was to reassure all and sundry that in key areas of policy a Labor government would not be remarkably different from its predecessor. This was largely intended as a gesture towards voters who had grown sick and tired of Howard and his ministers, but saw no particular reason to take issue with the Liberal administration’s social or economic policies. Rudd did, however, vow to repeal WorkChoices and to sign up to Kyoto, and living up to these promises will be the first test for the new prime minister.

It certainly won’t be the only one, though. For more than a decade, Howard has got away with appealing repeatedly to people’s worst instincts: selfishness and greed, racism and intolerance. The biggest challenge for the Rudd government lies in rolling back such tendencies. There is a great deal of ground to cover. Reconciliation with indigenous Australians must be a priority; the vast majority of Aborigines live in conditions worse than one would encounter in a Third World slum, and Howard was too meanspirited to so much as offer them an apology for the injustices and abuse they have suffered since European settlement.

Rudd must do better. He would also be well-advised to take steps towards turning Australia into a republic: it is simply absurd for any self-respecting nation, in this day and age, to continue to accept the British monarch as its constitutional head of state.  If that would be mainly of symbolic significance, there is also much to be done in concrete terms. The state-run education and health systems, for instance, require considerably more investment and far better management. And Australia‘s changing demographic, as the result of increasing immigration and an ageing population, calls for an imaginative response. The country’s appalling attitude towards refugees also needs to be redressed.

Since becoming the leader of the Labor Party almost a year ago, Rudd has often come across as a younger version of Howard, and his personal convictions remain a grey area. Unlike Howard, however, he is by no means an intellectual mediocrity. Besides, chances are that Australia’s first female deputy prime minister, the astute and articulate Julia Gillard, won’t be the only cabinet member with her heart in the right place, even if Rudd should turn out to closely resemble Tony Blair as an ideologue with a largely Tory agenda.

The desperate scare campaign mounted by the Howard government focused on the ascendancy of trade unions and the threat supposedly posed by the prospect of “wall-to-wall Labor governments”, given that every state and territory government is already in Labor hands. There is more than an element of poetic justice in the fact that Howard’s legacy is a Liberal Party in disarray, and that the senior-most Liberal office-holder he leaves behind is the mayor of Brisbane.

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