Pushed Before He Can Jump

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Annabel Crabb conjured a cutting ditty to describe the predicament facing Australia's prime minister, John Howard, in tomorrow's elections. "Oh voters: if you really care/Elect a man who won't be there!/Vote for him on Saturday/It's guaranteed he'll go away."

The poem was a reference to Howard's Blair-like pledge to hand over the PM's job to his deputy, the treasurer Peter Costello, some time during his next term. But as opinion polls unanimously indicate, the 68-year-old Liberal leader's descent into oblivion after 11 years at the top may come much sooner.

With the opposition Labor party of Kevin Rudd poised to sweep to power, Howard's wished-for fifth term looks like a dream. He may even lose his own seat of Bennelong, held for 33 years. Like Woodrow Wilson and Margaret Thatcher, he outstayed his welcome, wrote Tom Switzer of the Australian. "Howard's career is ending in failure ... it was not supposed to be like this."

Howard has resorted to the politics of fear, in the same way as the American conservatives who so admire him. He warned this week of the "enormous risks" a change of government might entail, implying security and prosperity would suffer. A clumsy attempt to link Labor to Islamist terrorism appeared to have backfired yesterday.

Right wingers sneer at the 50-year-old Rudd, likening him to a school prefect or class swot, a "Milky Bar Kid" who lacks experience and judgment. "Do we really want a prime minister named Kevin?" they ask snobbily, to which Rudd replies: "Howard's government has gone stale and no longer comprehends the challenges of the future." Like US Democrats in 1992 and now, he says "it's time for a change".

With Australia's resource-based economy benefiting from high commodity prices and most social groups doing relatively well, a Labor government is unlikely to face immediate domestic challenges. Rudd in any case styles himself an "economic conservative", stressing continuity.

But in international affairs a Labor victory may presage significant shifts. Howard's unquestioning support for George Bush and his "war on terror", his dispatch of troops to Iraq, self-appointed "deputy sheriff" security role in the Pacific region and rejection of the Kyoto protocol are all issues that will cost him votes - and on which Labor takes a different line.

Rudd has pledged to withdraw combat troops from Iraq (although he may reinforce those in Afghanistan). He says he will sign up to Kyoto and lead the charge for carbon emission cuts at next month's UN climate summit in Bali. He is also proposing increased foreign aid for unstable regional neighbors such as Fiji, Tonga, the Solomons and East Timor where the Howard government intervened, sometimes militarily, with mixed results.

"Most of the rest of the developing world is improving. In our neighborhood ... practically all the indicators are heading the wrong way," Rudd said recently. "We've got a moral obligation to act, it's in our self-interest." He has also promised to close offshore refugee detention centers set up by Howard on Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

Not unlike Gordon Brown, Rudd suggests Australia under his leadership will maintain a close alliance with the US, while tacitly distancing itself from the current White House incumbent. All the same, Labor's most significant foreign policy recalibration could involve a shift towards Asia, a shift that is already under way and which in time may push the US into the background.

Australia and Japan, already strong trade partners, signed a new security pact this year. Canberra is increasingly involved in regional organizations such as the East Asia summit. Relations with Muslim Indonesia are much improved.

But it is the pull of China, its growing international clout and enormous markets that are most affecting thinking. According to foreign ministry figures, China will become Australia's largest trading partner this year, buoyed by uranium sales to the Chinese nuclear industry. While exports to China are rising fast, those to the US are falling.

Rudd, a fluent Mandarin speaker who studied Chinese history and served as a diplomat in Beijing, is well-placed to build up this key bilateral relationship. Nobody in Canberra is talking about a break with the US and the "west". But as the Asian century gathers pace, Howard's end could mark a new beginning for an old dominion.