Rudd has lurched from indecision to phoney war

Matthew Castray looks back on the Australian Prime Minister’s first year in office and audits an administration which has reviewed much and done very little

Federal elections come around quickly in Australia. With a maximum term of three years, the average since 1975 has been about two years and nine months. So new Australian governments have an incentive to implement reforms in their first year — or do they? The one-year anniversary of the Rudd Labor government this week gives pause to consider another incentive — one probably familiar in the United Kingdom: to do very little for fear of jeopardising a second term, but maintain the mirage of reform.

In the November 2007 election, the Australian Labor party was elected after almost 12 years of Liberal/National Howard government. In truth, Australians were tired of the previous government, irritated by its surprise liberalisation of the nation’s labour laws, and were willing to elect anyone who appeared competent. Mr Rudd’s steady and conservative, if sanctimonious, demeanour fit the bill, and his party’s proposals — ‘fresh ideas’, ‘forward with fairness’ and ‘taking the pressure off’ — were hardly menacing.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, real outcomes in the first year turned out to be as shallow as the slogans.

Before the global financial turmoil intensified in September, the headline achievements of the Rudd government included ratifying the Kyoto agreement, offering a strictly compensation-free government apology to Aborigines for the ‘stolen generation’, withdrawing Australia’s troops from Iraq, dispatching the Ocean Viking to monitor Japanese whalers, establishing the publicly funded www.grocerywatch.com.au, supporting unit-pricing in supermarkets and announcing Australia’s intention to seek a temporary place on the United Nations Security Council in 2015.

Instead, over 100 separate committees, reviews and papers of various colours were created to give the impression of action.