Kevin's victory

The exit polls in Australia place Kevin Rudd on course for a significant victory, and suggest that Prime Minister John Howard may even lose his own seat to a former breakfast TV presenter, Maxine McKew. Rudd's campaign was in many ways a carbon copy of the Blair campaign here in 1997, even to the extent of outflanking Howard from the right on economic policy. On education, the Australian Labor Party emphasises not only computers for all and better early childhood education, it also proposes a national curriculum and has placed a lot of emphasis on literacy and numeracy.