[NYTr] Australia's New Leader Rudd a "Study in Contradictions"

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[He's bright and educated, so they call him "bookish." Christ. -NYTr]


AP via The Intl Herald Tribune - Nov 24, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/25/asia/AS-POL-Australia-Election-Rudd.php

Australia's bookish new leader a study in contradictions

The Associated Press

BRISBANE, Australia: Australia's Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd comes
to power with some of the best foreign policy credentials around,
including mastery of the Chinese language that stymies so many
foreigners who tackle it.

But the Labor Party leader is a relative novice on other fronts, having
never served in the national government. He has been an elected
politician for nine years, relatively few for an Australian lawmaker.

He is a sum of contradictions — partly because he seems to have made an
effort to be.

After scoring an emphatic victory over longtime Prime Minister John
Howard, Rudd looked excited and slightly embarrassed by the fuss as he
made his first public appearance as the nation's leader.

A crush of rock star proportions confronted him, with 600 campaign
volunteers chanted "Kevin, Kevin" as he took the stage at a a
convention center in his hometown of Brisbane, flanked by his wife,
three children and son-in-law.

Comedians have been scoffing for months at the idea that someone with
such a supposedly "nerdy" name as Kevin could be prime minister.

"OK guys," were his first simple words to the Australian public as
prime minister-elect as he gestured for quiet.

Rudd is known as extraordinarily intelligent and articulate — critics
say arrogant — but he has learned during a brief political life that
sometimes that should be toned down.

He is a left-wing leader from one of Australia's most conservative
states, Queensland, born to a tenant farmer who was a member of the
conservative Country Party.

He pointed out that irony when he paid tribute to his father, Bernie,
whose death in a car accident in 1969 left himself, his mother, and two
siblings homeless and reliant on the charity of relatives and neighbors
— a time that he says shaped his socialist leanings.

The former diplomat, who spent 10 years as a state government
bureaucrat, is a public figure whom Australia is still getting to know
after a meteoric rise from obscurity.

Some observers say he is the best-qualified prime minister Australia
has had to navigate the complex shoals of foreign policy.

"Rudd comes to the prime ministership with more expertise on foreign
affairs and strategic issues than any predecessor since the Second
World War and arguably ... than any predecessor ever," said Hugh White
of the Australian National University.

But his political opponents argue Rudd is the least experienced prime
minister to ever hold the office.

Only a year ago, even his party did not consider him the right man to
lead.

Unable to muster enough personal support to win a leadership ballot of
his lawmaker colleagues in December last year, he struck a deal with
another contender, Julia Gillard.

Gillard agreed to become Rudd's deputy in return for her supporters
backing his leadership bid. The deal paid off, and she will now become
Australia's first female deputy prime minister.

Observers say that in government Rudd will centralize control in his
office — resisting the influence of labor unions, which have
traditionally held sway over his party.

"He's the sort of guy who likes to keep control of things, so it will
be very much a leader-dominated government," said Monash University
political scientist Nick Economou.

"There are (Labor Party) people who are very grateful to him for
bringing them into the promised land — he'll have a great deal of
authority," Economou said.

During the campaign, Rudd differentiated himself from Howard by
promising to sign the Kyoto Protocol, withdraw Australian combat troops
from Iraq and create a foreign policy that is more independent of the
United States, Australia's most important ally.

But on most issues, Rudd's policies are not all that different from
Howard's — especially those linked to Australia's long economic boom —
feeding the perception of 50-year-old Rudd as a younger version of
Howard, 68.

Nicholas Stuart, a journalist and author of a recent Rudd biography,
said few people even within the Labor Party know what the new prime
minister really stands for.

"Rudd is like a glass and we're pouring our hopes and our ideas into
him and because he is empty. We see them reflected back," Stuart said.

Rudd has the air of an intellectual, softened by a sense of humor that
made him a popular guest on daytime television early in his political
career as he built a public profile.

As a senior state bureaucrat, he was loathed by some for pushing a
tough public-sector reform agenda. He is regarded as extraordinarily
work-focused, a trait shared by his wife, Therese Rein, a self-made
multimillionaire and working mother of three who intends to continue
her career as owner of a job-finding business.

Some experts have said Rudd's diplomatic experience means his
government could be expected to be more subtle and sophisticated in his
approach to foreign policy issues, such as the tensions between the
United States and China, Australia's most important trading partner.