Oz elections

It’s election time here in Australia, and there are some reasons why readers Down Under (from our perspective)

might be more interested than usual.

George Bush has no more reliable ally than the Liberal (=conservative) government of John Howard. Howard has backed Bush straight down the line on Iraq and climate change, and (unlike Tony Blair) raised no objection when Australians were held in Guantanamo Bay for years on end. The general assumption among political hardheads until about a year ago was that, although these positions might be unpopular, Australians would not vote against an incumbent government when the economy was going well. Labor was ahead in the polls, but no-one really believed it. But after a change of leaders at the end of 2006, Labor moved to a large lead in the polls, which it has kept ever since.

Under pressure, Howard backed away from some of his most vulnerable positions. He cut a deal with Bush under which Gitmo prisoner David Hicks got to plead guilty and serve a sentence in an Australian prison, just long enough to keep him out of circulation until election day. Then he started shifting position on climate change, trying to hose down the denialists/delusionists in his own ranks, and accepting the need for targets and an emissions trading scheme. The government came close to ratifying Kyoto, but Howard was not up to an overt break with Bush. Finally, the government toned down radical labor market reforms it had introduced after (somewhat surprisingly) gaining control of both houses of Parliament at the last election.

Meanwhile, Labor has also been making for the centre as fast as it can, copying Howard’s policies on tax cuts, aid to private schools and hospitals and so on, and hedging a bit on Iraq. The result has been a mind-numbingly dull campaign in which the government has made at most marginal inroads into Labor’s lead in the polls and betting markets. (You can follow these at Pollbludger, Possum’s Pollytics and Sportsbet if you want).

Despite the pre-election convergence, a Labor win will make a significant difference to some international issues (at least by comparison with Australia’s usual insignificance). Ratifying Kyoto will leave Bush without an ally going into the forthcoming Bali meetings aimed at negotiating a successor agreement. And Australia’s main force in Iraq (currently the fourth-largest in the CoW) will be withdrawn by mid-2008, about the same time as the UK plans to pull out most of its remaining troops.

Of course, with a bit over two weeks to go, it’s not a done deal. But the Reserve Bank just raised interest rates (a hot topic in a country with sky-high housing prices and a sore point because, last time around, Howard promised to keep rates low), and it’s hard to see how the government can make up the gap of 6-10 percentage points shown in recent polls.