Rudd Takes Wind Out Of Abbott's Sails, May Even Stop Boats

If posed as a logic puzzle, Kevin Rudd's solution to Australia's problem of boat people is brilliant. Under this scheme, no asylum seeker who comes to Australia by boat without a visa will ever be able to settle in Australia. They will instead be sent to Papua New Guinea (PNG) for processing, and resettled there. That's that.

Why is this solution at least theoretically brilliant?

There are two groups of people scrambling onto rickety boats to come to Australia, putting their own lives at risk and creating feelings of guilt among humanitarian Australians.

There are the people persecuted in their home countries and whose lives are in danger, who desperately need to flee their countries just to stay alive. They're generally acknowledged to be genuine refugees. There are international laws to safeguard their rights, and as a signatory to those international laws, Australia is duty-bound to accept a certain proportion of them. It would be unconscionable to turn them away.

Then there are the people who are in no danger of persecution or death in their home countries, but who perceive a chance of a better life abroad. These people are commonly called "economic migrants". There is no international law that recognises their aspirations as a fundamental human right, and no obligation on any country's part to indulge their dreams. Any migration arrangement has to be transactional and mutually beneficial, such as Australia's Skilled Migration program.

The whole problem is trying to weed out economic migrants from the hordes of people turning up in boats at Australian shores, so that genuine refugees may be considered. The problem is popularly termed "queue-jumping", but it's more basic than that. It's not that some deserving people are being served out of turn, ahead of other deserving people. It's that undeserving people are being served in the first place.

What Kevin Rudd's solution has done is change the rules of the game so genuine asylum seekers select themselves, and mere economic migrants select themselves out. As a shibboleth, it's brilliant.

What do refugees want? Safety, wherever they can find it.

What do economic migrants want? The opportunity to live in a developed country (not in a less developed one).

Let's face it, out of the world's 7 billion people, at least 6 billion would jump at the chance to live in Australia, including many from the so-called First World. Australia is far and away the best place in the world to live, bar none. And so Australia's international commitment to accept refugees has become "sugar on the table" that attracts hordes of others who face no danger or persecution in their home countries, but who simply think it would be a great idea to resettle in this paradise and don't mind the risks of a boat journey. The number of Sinhalese (not Tamil) asylum seekers is an example of this, because Sinhalese are the dominant group in Sri Lanka and face no persecution there.

As long as an Australian visa was seen as the only way to grant safety to refugees, there was no way to distinguish between the two groups of asylum seekers. But by offering safety in a third country and simultaneously ruling out the possibility of living in Australia, a wedge has been neatly driven between these two groups. The genuine refugees will still arrive, and will receive the safety from persecution that they crave and deserve. The economic migrants will have to turn away from the boats and explore other options, because their objectives will no longer be met.

While the scheme is brilliant as an abstract logical problem, I have some concerns about it in practice.

1. From Australia's point of view, the deal with PNG should have been locked in for at least 5 years. Making it renewable every year not only gives PNG too much negotiating advantage, the uncertainty it generates will keep the people-smugglers in business by letting them play on the hopes of economic migrants.

2. From PNG's point of view, this scheme sows the seeds of future ethnic strife. Australia is doing to PNG what the British did to Fiji by importing Indian labour into the island. The tensions between ethnic Fijians and Indians continues to this day, and it doesn't take too much imagination to see what would happen when PNG natives interact more frequently with, and compete with, people from Afghanistan, Iran and elsewhere. I don't know if PNG has really thought this through.

3. Getting other countries in the region to "share Australia's burden" is a great idea, but while Indonesia is a good candidate as a destination country, New Zealand is not. NZ is like Australia in its attractiveness to economic migrants. Adding New Zealand to the list of countries that agree to resettle boat people "puts the sugar back on the table".

Whether Rudd's scheme will succeed in stopping the boats remains to be seen. But I'm fairly certain it has torpedoed Abbott's election campaign. And that is unbridled goodness.

Will The Bull Turn?

After almost 3 years to the day that he was deposed by his deputy Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd had the satisfaction of deposing her back (if that's a phrase) to reclaim his crown. That was the Aussie soap opera's latest twist before the coming high drama that is the 2013 federal election.

"Damn, that felt good!"

Like any good soap opera, this one too has been a roller-coaster experience for its audience.

I started off preferring Kevin Rudd to John Howard in the 2007 election. (I mean, who wouldn't?)

But after the election, and through the early part of 2010, I developed an even better opinion of his very capable deputy, Julia Gillard.

But in 2010, I was sorry to see Rudd betrayed by that same deputy, and I was more than a little angry with Gillard.

The twists continued. As revelations gradually emerged of Rudd's impossible nature and his general flakiness, I began to see that she had had little choice. The party had to replace Rudd before his shenanigans became public knowledge and he became a liability for Labor.

And now that Gillard has been deposed by Rudd, I once again feel sorry for the one who lost.

Throughout the entire drama, Abbott the try-hard, Abbott the consistently negative, Abbott the guy without a single positive idea of his own, has been hyperactive, desperately trying to convince the electorate that he stands for something other than his own irrelevant ambition. Whatever I might feel about Labor, Abbott's constant scum-like behaviour has ensured that they never get my absolute contempt. That prize belongs to him alone.

A charitable view of Tony Abbott's brain

I feel sorry for Julia Gillard. I believe she didn't get a fair shake of the sauce bottle after all. With Rudd on the inside and Abbott on the outside constantly keeping her off-balance, she never really got a chance to govern.

Stymied by the unholy alliance of Lex Luthor and Mr Mxyzsptlk

It'll be interesting to see what comes next. The pollsters have been predicting a walk-over for Abbott in September with Gillard leading Labor. But with Rudd back in charge, the odds have been evened. Is it the Coalition's turn to panic? I'm sure internal polling shows Malcolm Turnbull far more popular than Tony Abbott. When facing Gillard and the prospect of a certain victory, there was no incentive for the Liberals to change horses midstream. All they had to do was stay the course. But Rudd's return should have changed all those calculations. Now they really have to consider Malcolm Turnbull again. Abbott deposed Turnbull in 2009, but if it looks like he can't deliver the goods, perhaps the Liberals need a similar counter-coup.

He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, Malcolm!

(With apologies to James Joyce)

My preferences for PM:

1. Malcolm Turnbull (Liberal)
2. Julia Gillard (Labor)
3. Kevin Rudd (Labor)
...
98. Any of the giraffes from Taronga zoo (Independent)
99. Tony Abbott (Liberal)

Does Turnbull have the intestinal fortitude to challenge Abbott to a rematch for the leadership of the Liberals? This will be a crucial test of his character. Turnbull, unlike Rudd, has lain low and licked his wounds in silence, making no effort to challenge his leader. He faces the danger that if he fails to grasp this opportunity, he may well go into oblivion the way that other promising but hesitant Liberal star went (Peter Costello).

Why John Howard never had to fear being stabbed in his backbone

Will the worm turn?

Update 02/07/2013: Malcolm Turnbull fires a shot across the bow of Tony Abbott. And man, what a shot! Dare I hope he's preparing for a challenge?

Rudd vs Gillard - Round Two

[Update 27/02/2012: The vote is over, and Gillard won, as expected. Good.]

Australians have to wait until Monday to know who will be leading their country. With the Labor party voting to decide between Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the man she deposed in 2010, Kevin Rudd, there are at least three possibilities:

1. Gillard can inflict a humiliating defeat on Rudd such that he retreats to the back benches or resigns from politics altogether, and she continues to be PM until the next elections in 2013. I think this is most likely.

2. Rudd can pull off an upset victory and retake the crown. I think this is least likely.

3. The victory of either may be so slender that it wrecks the Labor government and brings on a mid-term poll, which then goes in favour of the Liberals. I think the odds are even on this.

Two very nice pieces of commentary among all the feverish reporting going on are this op-ed by Michelle Grattan of The Age on House leader Anthony Albanese's decision to support Rudd, and a somewhat last-minute kiss-and-tell by former Rudd speechwriter James Button. I have always had a lot of respect for Anthony Albanese, a man who habitually kept a low profile and quietly delivered results. Grattan's write-up makes clear that Albanese's support for what she considers to be the losing side (i.e., Rudd) is a sign of conscience and courage. His unhappiness with the way Rudd was deposed in 2010, together with opinion polls showing greater support for Labor under Rudd, have combined to swing his vote towards the former Prime Minister.

At the same time, James Button's lengthy exposé paints a rather unflattering, although by no means unbelievable, picture of Kevin Rudd. We've all heard the stories, and Button now brings them into graphic relief on the eve of the spill. He has to be congratulated on his timing.

Albanese's effort could blunt the tide against Rudd within the Labor caucus, just as Button's article could dampen public enthusiasm for Rudd a tiny fraction. However, it's the caucus vote that counts, and it's far from clear that Kevin Rudd is going to win. The other curious fact about the opinion polls is that while people prefer Rudd to Gillard by a significant margin, they're evenly split about a change in leadership. "What happened in 2010 was wrong, but two wrongs don't make a right, so just keep going" seems to sum up the popular mood.

[The Australian public is a bit strange that way. There was widespread outrage at the sacking of the Gough Whitlam government by governor-general John Kerr and the installation of Malcolm Fraser in power in 1975. Yet, when elections were held soon after, Malcolm Fraser was returned to power comfortably and Whitlam did not benefit from the popular outrage at his ouster.]

My take on all this:

- Kevin Rudd did some things right when he started, but he suffers from some serious and incorrigible personality defects. These traits of his severely damaged the government and Labor's prospects, and so he had to go. In retrospect, I agree with Gillard's decision to oust him in the interests of the party and the government.

- However, the way he was disposed of was unseemly, and contributed in no small measure to Gillard's subsequent unpopularity. I liked her a lot when she was Rudd's deputy, and would have supported her wholeheartedly for PM had she moved up to that role in due course, but the sudden coup put me off her, big time. I think Labor's PR around that was a disaster. It was a bit like Brutus having a strong case for doing Caesar in until Marc Antony came along and ruined everything.

- I would still like Gillard to keep her job, however she got it. All things considered, she's probably the best of the three (herself, Rudd and Tony Abbott).

- I like and respect Anthony Albanese even more than I did before. I would go so far as to say he's the only Labor party MP and minister I respect without reservations. I hope he stays in office regardless of who wins.

- I hope Tony Abbott doesn't end up becoming Prime Minister because of all this Labor infighting. That would be a disaster of unprecedented proportions for Australia.

Oh well, Monday isn't too far away.

Labor's Leadership Woes

Will he, won't he? Australian media is full of speculation about whether Kevin Rudd will challenge Julia Gillard for the leadership of the Labor party (and the Prime Ministership).

My thoughts in brief:

1. I don't like Labor's habit of switching horses midstream every time an opinion poll shows them slipping. For goodness sake, grow a spine, people! As a voter, I want politicians to be sensitive to my opinions and all that, but I also respect a party that doesn't quiver every time I frown. [That's in the spirit of Groucho Marx ("I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member.")]

2. Greens Leader Bob Brown may have a point that Gillard is copping it extra hard because she's a woman. I've independently discovered, to my surprise, that there is a fair amount of sexism in Australia in spite of the country's superficial egalitarianism. I think Gillard needs a bit more time and bit more space simply because she deserves a fair go, quite apart from the need to avoid switching horses midstream.

3. On the other hand, maybe it's good for Gillard to learn that what goes around comes around. Poor opinion polls helped her oust Rudd in June 2010. Now we're back in a similar situation. So what's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, isn't it? How do you like your irony served, Madame Prime Minister?

4. Meanwhile, on the despicable side of the fence (on second thoughts, make that "utterly despicable"), Tony Abbott is crowing about Labor's leadership crisis. Now where is the Liberal leadership challenge when we need one? If Abbott is sent packing into the political wilderness, it won't be too soon for me. Malcolm Turnbull, step up please.

Australian Election 2010, and What It Means

I must say I expected something like this. In fact, a hung parliament with Labor slightly ahead of the Liberals reflects my feelings exactly. It's nice to know the entire country feels the way I do :-).

I daresay we wouldn't be in this situation if we had Peter Costello leading the Liberals. It would have been a slam dunk. Instead, we have the aptly named religious nut Tony Abbott in charge. Call me what you will but I refuse to vote for a politician whose policy manual is religious scripture (and it doesn't matter what religion we're talking about). Abbott has been considered unelectable for a reason, and that is now clear in these results.

At the same time, there's tremendous anger against Labor, and Julia Gillard by extension, for what was done to Kevin Rudd. They were punished for their backstabbery by the loss of 17 seats. I hope the back room boys like Mark Arbib and Bill Shorten are pulled back into the same back room and given a wedgie. (I can't be sure, of course, that other voters have had qualms about Labor for the same reasons. There are some troglodytes even in an advanced Western democracy who oppose Gillard's leadership because of her gender, those who believe that an unmarried person without children cannot understand the problems of Australian families, and the religious right who oppose her for being an atheist and/or for "living in sin".) Still, I like to believe the Rudd factor was the most important.

At the time of Kevin Rudd's victory in 2007, the swing in Labor's favour was so great that psephologists called it a "two-election swing", which meant that the next election was Labor's to lose. And true enough, they lost it. I guess they could still crawl back into government by bribing two independents, but then it'd be official: Julia Gillard as Australia's first female lame-duck Prime Minister.

[See this hilarious Taiwanese spoof on the Australian election.]

Australia now follows the UK into the new era of hung parliaments and coalition governments. India moved into this era in 1989. 1984 was the last time the Indian electorate delivered an outright majority to a single political party. European democracies have seen coalition governments for decades. I think messy as they are, coalition governments more truly represent the views of a diverse society. They're complex and unwieldy, but ultimately fairer.

The Americans seem to have sidestepped the need for coalition governments by splitting the power of the State three ways - into an independently elected executive (the President), independently elected legislative bodies (the House of Representatives and the Senate) and a judiciary that although subject to appointments by the administration of the day, acts like a capacitor in an electrical circuit by slowly absorbing and discharging right- and left-wing constituents over the course of many administrations. Westminster-style democracies like Australia, the UK and India, in contrast, have the executive and legislative arms joined at the hip. The government is formed by the majority party in parliament. Hence the only way for the State to reflect the diversity of its polity is to elect a hung parliament with no single party gaining an outright majority. Coalition governments are then inevitable.

From a historical context, I think the world is therefore progressing. There is greater accommodation of diversity, and our democratic institutions are changing to reflect this.

Julia's Caesar

Et tu, Julia? Then fall, Kevin.

It must have been the most unkindest cut of all to have one's hitherto loyal deputy turn so savagely against them.

Today's coup had all the hallmarks of that classic Shakespearean tragedy.

The out-of-touch autocrat, the shadowy conspirators, the honourable front-person recruited to the cause, the treacherous assassination, and so on right down to the "Not that I loved Kevin less" speech.

[...] It’s these beliefs that have been my compass during the three and half years of the most loyal service I could offer to my colleague, Kevin Rudd. I asked my colleagues to make a leadership change. A change because I believed that a good Government was losing its way. [...] I love this country and I was not going to sit idly by and watch an incoming Opposition cut education, cut health and smash rights at work.

She may as well have said her former boss was "as dear to me as are the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart" (Act II, Scene I). One has to appreciate the genius of the bard...

And in the other unremarked tragedy (for Australia at least), Lindsay Tanner, perhaps the most competent minister in the Rudd cabinet, has resigned. Of course it was all for "family reasons", but it seems a bit of a coincidence that Tanner (along with Anthony Albanese - Marc Anthony?) was one of the very few people to support Rudd in the face of the backstabbery hatched by these fine public figures.

I voted for the Labor party in 2007 believing that Kevin Rudd would be PM for the full term of the government. Now some people I don't know have replaced him with someone else for reasons I don't understand, and I haven't been consulted. This voter is angry (and is not alone by the looks of it). If it had been Peter Costello heading the Liberals instead of that clown Abbott, I would have switched loyalties in a heartbeat. [Who knows, it could now very well be the turn of the Liberals' backroom boys to develop cold feet and do a Caesar on Abbot.]

I used to like Julia Gillard and wanted her to be PM someday. Now I'm not so sure. It's hard to like someone who's holding a bloodstained knife.

Even if they are honourable.

Is the War on Greed as misdirected as the War on Terror?

George W Bush had a response to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US. He declared a "War on Terror". We all know how well that's going.

I'm not advocating that the US should have done nothing in response to the September 11 attacks. I'm saying that when you suspend clear thinking and honest debate in favour of blind belief and misguided loyalty, you get the totally misdirected Iraq war rather than the focus on Afghanistan (the home base), Pakistan (the training ground) and Saudi Arabia (the financier) that the response should have comprised. A proper response would have been messy and complicated, to be sure. It would have involved embarrassing investigations into two nominal US "allies" and brought out into the open the obvious failures in US foreign policy over the years. I believe that the longstanding US policy of cozying up to dictators instead of strengthening ties with democracies led ultimately and inexorably to 9/11. Yet nobody who knew better could talk sense to President Bush, because those who weren't with him were against him, remember? The world is in a fine mess thanks to expediency and moral certainty, combined with a knee-jerk reaction to crises.

Are we in danger now of reacting to the recent financial crisis with similarly misdirected populism? Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today essentially announced a "War on Greed", by attacking the excessive pay packets of corporate executives as one of the negative aspects of what he called "extreme capitalism". And sure, he's got a point, a very valid point. But he's also in danger of being way off the mark, to the detriment of all of us.

Attacking excessive remuneration appeals to everyone (everyone, that is, except those in the top levels of the corporate world). Last year, Macquarie Bank's CEO Alan Moss took home 33 million big ones. This year, Macquarie caused quite a few jitters among investors. CEOs take home the big bucks, and when their enterprises threaten to fall over, governments have to rush in and prop them up with taxpayers' money, because the economy will suffer otherwise. It's like the fat cats have a gun to everyone's head.

So attacking executive remuneration understandably attracts animal howls of approval from the gallery. (Mind you, many of those in the gallery don't even pay taxes! They've nothing at stake, and it's probably just petty jealousy at work.)

Let me make my position clear. I'm a taxpayer, and my money is being used in these bailouts, so I have a legitimate right to voice my opinion about the way the system is run. But perhaps surprisingly, I'm against placing limits on executive remuneration. It indicates a mercantile mindset that believes in rationing out scarce resources. What we need is a capitalistic mindset that recognises wealth to be potentially limitless. The capitalist worldview recognises the need for appropriate systems that incentivise us to apply our ingenuity and industry to continue to create wealth out of nothing, exactly as we have been doing since we left our caves thousands of years ago.

Having said that, there are clearly limits to executive compensation that exist, not absolute dollar limits, but limits that are dictated by the ability of the enterprise in question to pay those salaries and bonuses. If an enterprise pays its top executive $466 million and then collapses, then in hindsight, it clearly couldn't afford the payout.

Many people may miss a crucial portion of Rudd's statement: "Regulators should set higher capital requirements for financial firms with executive remuneration packages that reward short-term returns or excessive risk-taking." (emphasis mine) I agree with the way Rudd is proposing to tackle the problem, which is to impose higher standards of capital adequacy on firms that show short-termism or risky behaviour in pursuit of profits, but there is a deeper aspect to the problem, which I'll come to in a moment.

I do believe that one of the fundamental things wrong with the brand of capitalism practised today (apart from its hostility to competition) is that it rewards companies for showing short-term profits. It encourages CEOs (who serve relatively short tenures) to under-invest in the future and show unnatural returns in the short term, then depart with huge payouts as a reward for such stellar performance. Every new CEO announces that things have been left in very bad shape by their predecessor (true), and then proceeds to write off huge losses at the start of their tenure. Not only does this clear the decks of all past losses, it also takes the share price to a comfortably low level, so that the new CEO can demonstrate impressive share price gains from this low point. Repeat ad nauseam. The enterprise and its shareholders bear the brunt of this short-term and self-serving behaviour. The technical term for this is "agency risk". The goals of the agent (the management) are not aligned with the goals of the principal (the shareholders).

To my mind, the problem of "extreme capitalism" (as Rudd would call it) is the tendency to reward short-termism. So it's not executive salaries per se. If a way can be found to link executive remuneration to an enterprise's long-term performance, then by all means, shower your executives with gold. For example, go ahead and give your CEOs generous stock options, but ensure that they vest only after 5 years or later. That'll make them more careful about the long-term effects of their decisions.

So I've no real argument with Rudd's proposal, as far as that goes.

Is this the root of the problem, though? Perhaps there's really no agency risk here! Perhaps the agents' goals are in fact perfectly aligned with their principals' goals.

We need to look within ourselves as shareholders. What kind of shareholders are we? Are we true investors, who buy stock and hold on to it, wanting a share of the profits of the enterprise in the form of dividends? Or are we just speculators, who buy shares in the hope that we can sell them at a higher price? Speculators don't care what happens to an enterprise after they sell their shares.

I think short-term performance benchmarks rule the market because the market is dominated by speculators.

If we want enterprises to be healthy, we need to encourage long-term behaviour from all concerned. The goals of the principals (the shareholders) must themselves be aligned with the long-term health of the enterprise rather than its short-term performance. Then the goals of the agents (the management) of these enterprises will automatically be tuned to the long term.

Executive remuneration is the Iraq of the War on Greed. It's an expedient target, but likely to prove a costly diversion. The real problem is more messy to target. It's short-termism, and we're all guilty of it as speculative shareholders. To quote Walt Kelly, we have met the enemy, and he is us.

Testing Times for the Clever Country

I guess not many people knew that bank deposits in Australia have hitherto not been guaranteed, until the government announced that they would now be. The other marvel, of course, is that when a guarantee exists, it will probably not be resorted to. The government's statement is purely to shore up confidence in the financial system and prevent a run on the banks.

Of course, there's the fine print. The Australian government will only guarantee deposits in Australian-incorporated banks, so we could still see a run on foreign-owned banks like Citi and HSBC. Still, it's a much-needed affirmation from the government, and will do much to keep the financial system on its feet.

I guess we're entering a phase when the "Australian model" is going to be put to the test like never before. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has said he doesn't consider the budget surplus as something to defend in its own right. He's willing to use up the surplus if that's what it takes to stimulate the economy and prevent a deep recession.

Quotable quote: "How long have you all heard me say it is good to have a surplus ... as a buffer for the future? Well, the future is here."

The biggest fears now are a slowdown in growth and a rise in unemployment. The Reserve Bank has done its bit to stimulate growth by slashing interest rates by a full percent, something normally unheard of. The upside of having had high interest rates in the recent past is that there's sufficient leeway to move rates down, a luxury that the US doesn't have. If the PM and his Treasurer Wayne Swan play their cards right by operating the right fiscal levers (and they can spend a fair bit without running up a budget deficit, unlike the US government, which has dug itself into a deeper deficit hole), they can keep the Australian miracle going, and in the process, ensure their own places in history.

It's a difficult time in world history and no time to be partisan, but if Australia comes out of this crisis in better shape than other nations, it will be a powerful lesson in the benefits of good economic governance. I.e., avoid a budget deficit at all costs and tweak interest rates constantly to encourage growth without provoking inflation higher than 2-3%. (And let me add my Liquidism mantra like a broken record: maintain high levels of market liquidity through aggressive antitrust if need be. A thousand blades of grass will weather a storm better than a few oak trees.)

The Australian financial sector has also been prudently regulated and the "toxic assets" of other economies haven't been ingested to any significant degree here. To some extent, this hides the problem of oligopolistic conditions in the market. I wonder if we will have to wait for a different crisis before we learn that lesson...

Australia says Sorry

I saw the 11:30 am replay of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's speech to parliament today, on a big screen at Martin Place. It was a really moving and inspiring speech, and Rudd was absolutely impressive, with his strong, clear voice and sincere tone.

Speaking of sincerity, I'm now glad that John Howard refused to say Sorry during his four terms. The man has been long outed as a cynical politician. If he had made today's speech, he would have cheapened it with his pained expression of fake sincerity. (I can't resist putting the boot into Howard. He inspires loathing.) Kevin Rudd is still fresh and unspoiled. He came across as sincere and committed to making a difference.

I won't dwell on the actual Stolen Generations issue. I think that's covered well enough elsewhere. I just had a couple of observations. There was a point in the prime minister's speech where what was left unsaid weighed more heavily than what was said.

Describing the hurt and brutality in the way children were separated from their mothers, Rudd said, "These stories are crying out to be heard. These stories are crying out for an apology."

He left the logical third sentence unspoken.

These stories are crying out for compensation.

I don't believe reconciliation will be complete until some form of compensation is made to the many thousands of Aboriginal people affected by the government's policy. The Stolen Generations have a cast-iron case for a class-action lawsuit against the Australian government.

My second observation is that in all the backslapping over the Labor government's laudable achievement, it is possible to overlook the many valid points made by opposition leader Brendan Nelson in his speech. I can agree with his statement that in many cases, good was sought to be done, that "removal from squalor led to better lives with children fed, housed and educated".

But I can also readily believe that the establishment of the day was complex and many-faced. Some of those responsible for taking away Aboriginal children from their parents may genuinely have believed that they were giving the children a better life. But there were undoubtedly others of a more "final solution" bent of mind, who apparently wrote about the "Aboriginal problem" and how, with the policy of forced removal, the indigenous races would soon perish and the "half-breeds" would be reabsorbed into white society. A chilling thought.

More than Rudd, it was Nelson who pointed out in detail the problems of contemporary Aboriginal people - "lower life expectancy, alcohol abuse, welfare without responsibilities, corrupt management of resources, nepotism, political buckpassing, lack of home ownership, under-policing and tolerance by authorities of neglect and abuse of children." He called this, evocatively, "existential aimlessness". Nelson also pointed out the endemic sexual abuse of children in Aboriginal societies.

But it was Rudd who set out hard targets:

1. to halve the gap in literacy, numeracy and employment opportunities for indigenous Australians within a decade
2. to halve the gap in infant mortality rates between indigenous and non-indigenous children within a decade
3. to close the 17-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous people within a generation
4. to have every indigenous four-year-old in a remote Aboriginal community enrolled in and attending a proper early childhood education centre and engaged in proper pre-literacy and pre-numeracy programs within 5 years
5. to build new educational opportunities for these children, year by year, following the completion of their pre-school year

It's a mammoth task, but it was reassuring to observe the bipartisan support for this in parliament. The leaders of both the government and the opposition have pledged to work together to achieve these outcomes. I believe these targets will be reached, because I believe, from what I have seen of him, that Kevin Rudd is a good manager and a no-nonsense taskmaster. I just know he will make all of this happen.

Now, all we need is a more humane (although not naive) immigration policy. Then we can hold our heads up as Australians and also get Amnesty International off our backs.

The End of the Howard Era

Like a guest who has shamelessly overstayed his dinner invitation, John Howard has finally been shown the door. Embarrassing, to say the least. He could have left with grace and dignity had he voluntarily stepped down last year, and he would have departed with an abundance of public goodwill and nostalgia. Now while his electoral defeat today is being hailed as the end of an era, the sentiment is being accompanied by rejoicing.

I feel an enormous sense of relief. I feel as if something has finally happened that was long overdue.

I migrated to Australia in 1998, at the height of the xenophobic hysteria whipped up by Pauline Hanson. Well-meaning friends even asked at the time if I felt safe going to Australia, when it didn't seem to be very welcoming to migrants. Thanks to reassurances from Indian friends already in Australia at the time, my wife and I decided to press ahead.

Sure enough, the Pauline Hanson phenomenon died out soon after, and her party even went bankrupt (financially as well), but what disturbed me was how Prime Minister John Howard seemed to take the wind out of her sails by quietly adopting many of the policies she espoused. She didn't want to acknowledge aboriginal land rights or admit that any wrong was done to aboriginal people. Howard echoed that by publicly refusing to say "Sorry" to the indigenous Australians on behalf of white Australia. (While I have a strong personal distaste for political handouts and believe that communities must lift themselves up by the bootstraps, I can see that John Howard was playing to a certain gallery that was beginning to look Hanson's way).

He took a stronger line on immigration and refugees. The shameful incident when he turned back the MV Tampa carrying 439 Afghan refugees rescued in a shipwreck off Australian waters (and even alleged (untruthfully) that the asylum seekers were heartlessly throwing their children overboard) revealed to me the unsavoury side of his character.

I learnt the term that described his behaviour much later - he was "dog whistling" Pauline Hanson's policy. Without seeming to be the racist that Hanson clearly was, he succeeded in attracting back the redneck voters who threatened to desert his party. He attacked multiculturalism as political correctness. Under Howard, attacking political correctness became politically correct, and it became acceptable to roll back (in word at least) the multiculturalism that was so strikingly in evidence on the ground.

He showed the opportunistic side of his nature once again in the November 2001 elections when he cynically manipulated the fear that September 11 generated to win his third term.

He won his fourth term having wrapped himself in the national flag by going to war in Iraq alongside the US. In those days, when Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were a theoretical possibility and Western civilisation seemed under threat from the Islamic world, it must have seemed unpatriotic to white Australians to oppose Howard's policy. (In Western countries, who knows the difference between Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, or between Arabic, Farsi, Pushtu and Urdu?)

In the latest election too, he tried the same tricks of fear and xenophobia (of which a bit more in a moment), but it didn't work this time. His opponent Kevin Rudd was every bit as smooth and unruffled as himself, and played his game with the same degree of skill. I like to think that the Australian people ultimately saw through Howard's lies and showed him the door.

If I had two words to say to John Howard today, they would be "Mohammed Haneef." What angered me the most in the current election campaign was the character assassination of this doctor of Indian origin who was practising in a hospital in Queensland. In the run-up to the 2007 election, the government needed a bogeyman, and what better one than a Muslim who was related to one of the Glasgow bombers? The immigration minister, Kevin Andrews, has a lot to answer for regarding the utterly shameful treatment of Dr. Haneef, and if I were a religious man, I would say there is a special place in hell for cynical men who think nothing of destroying others' reputations and lives for their own political survival. Even after the charges against Dr. Haneef were proved baseless and he was released, Howard's immigration minister had his visa revoked "on character grounds", and the poor man had to leave Australia. I don't believe Kevin Andrews was acting on his own on such an important and explosive issue. John Howard was "dog whistling" again in the background. Getting Dr. Haneef out of Australia was a PR coup, because once the scandal dropped out of the headlines, the problem was over.

Ah, but not quite. In many people (myself included), the Haneef incident evoked deep and lasting anger. Mohammed Haneef is a Muslim and I am nominally Hindu, but I can recognise unfair treatment when I see it. I choose my words carefully here, but even if John Howard is not a racist, he is certainly anglocentric in his attitudes. And one of the real reasons why he has lost touch with Australia is that this country, at the grassroots level, is no longer anglocentric. Anyone can see the sheer ethnic and cultural diversity in Australia today by just walking down a Sydney or Melbourne street. No politician will cut ice with the contemporary Australian electorate by demonising minorities. The system of compulsory voting in Australia means that you cannot even count on minority alienation to keep hostile voters away from the polling booths. John Howard angered me, a voter. He's now history.

The election of Kevin Rudd is a fundamental generational shift in Australian politics. Whether it's merely symbolic or not, Kevin Rudd can speak Mandarin. How many anglophones can speak another language, much less a non-European one? When Rudd's family took the stage in Brisbane today during his victory speech, his Chinese son-in-law was on stage with him, dramatically illustrating the changing face of Australia.

I have no idea whether Kevin Rudd will make a good prime minister, but I do know that this country's future has no place for John Howard in a leadership role.

The end of an era? Thank goodness.