It is no surprise that, except for a pathetic attempt by Charles Mangion in l-orizzont of 1 December (“Żiffa friska mill-Awstralja”), the Labour media in Malta have not made much of the recent impressive electoral win of Australia’s Labour Party led by Kevin Rudd.
Looking at how this election was won and lost, one would have thought otherwise. The decisive defeat of the Howard government was a great victory for the Labour movement in Australia; for the thousands of rank and file trade unionists and members of the Australian Labour Party; and for thousands of rank and file workers.
Earlier this year the Howard coalition government celebrated 11 years in office, the result of four consecutive election wins. Since 2004 the Australian economy has enjoyed an unbroken 16-year period of economic expansion and it is no wonder that Howard’s last electoral victory in 2004 was won in a contest fought on economic issues. With the peak of a housing boom barely passed, Howard and his colleagues played on popular sensitivity to rising mortgage interest rates by promising to keep interest rates low and went on to beat soundly the then “new” Labour leader, Mark Latham.
In the run up to last month’s election, Prime Minister John Howard consistently argued that his party had ensured continuing economic growth that had delivered unprecedented prosperity to Australians. Yet that prosperity was unevenly distributed between different socio-economic groups and different areas of the vast country. While average prosperity across the nation as a whole did increase, many suburban households were feeling the combined pressures of transport costs, rising general prices, and increase in interest on mortgage costs. For these households the much-vaunted prosperity was less apparent than official statistics showed.
In this scenario, Rudd identified the pressures of rising petrol and grocery prices and the cost of housing finance as emerging and growing concerns for suburban households. For example, one of Labour’s television adverts proclaimed: “Despite the big picture on the economy appearing good, under the surface many family budgets are simply stretching to breaking point. Mr Howard says working families have never been better off, but housing is becoming less affordable and taking more and more of the family budget… People are asking ‘if the economy is doing so well, why aren’t we?’”
Incredibly, this is exactly the same stance that is being adopted in Alfred Sant’s present political strategy. Coincidence? Maybe. But that is not the point. The point is that this is strategy has proven to be a winner for Rudd in Australia.
There were, of course, other factors that led to Rudd’s emphatic victory. Howard’s incredible international posture as a George Bush acolyte must also have led to this defeat. Labour’s victory has now put Australia at odds with the US on two crucial policy issues – Iraq and global warming. On the question of climate change, Howard had doggedly followed Bush’s stand on the Kyoto protocol. This issue might not have seemed very important to Australians three years ago, but at this moment Australia is facing a severe crisis of water shortage, with people being fined for using tap water to wash their cars and water their lawn. Inevitably climate change was associated with this shortage and suddenly climate change became an issue that directly hit each and every voter. Climate change, in fact, was probably the crucial issue that led to big swings among traditionally more conservative voters.
One should not, however, refrain from considering the possibility that the nature of Rudd’s electoral endorsement had a very big element of victory by default. A prominent Australian newspaper, in fact, put it this way: “In many respects it was more a vote against Howard than an endorsement of the ALP.” There could be an interesting parallel to this situation, if the MLP were to win the 2008 election in Malta. Conversely, there are those who think that it is the PN that will win by default, thanks to the Alfred Sant factor!
Howard may have won four elections and lost his fifth, but he did this against different Labour leaders. Australian elections are held every three years and this was, practically, the frequency of changes of Labour leaders in these last 11 years! Fifty-year old Rudd who describes himself as ‘“a very determined bastard”, was elected Labour leader only a year ago and truly presented a fresh face to those who felt that after 11 years of government, the era of 68-year old John Howard was over.
As Charles Mangion put it in his article, in what might have been a Freudian slip: “Kevin Rudd took over the Labour party leadership about a year ago and overnight (minn lejl għal nhar) changed the prospects of his party running the country.”
In any comparison between what happened in Australia a few days ago and the situation in Malta, Alfred Sant’s position as Labour leader after two electoral and one referendum defeat must definitely crop up. And as regards the “new for old” argument, the truth is that not only is Lawrence Gonzi younger than Alfred Sant but he has been Prime Minister (four years) much less than Sant has been Leader of the Opposition (15 and a half years, less 22 months).
Any realistic comparisons between the political developments in Australia and in Malta would tend to embarrass the MLP for sticking on to Alfred Sant after the 2003 general election. This is probably the real reason why the Malta Labour’s jubilation at the victory of their Australian “counterparts” has been somewhat muted.