New Oz PM Julia's education courage bodes well for ALP

The extraordinarily brutal way in which the Australian Labor Party has despatched its leader, former PM Kevin Rudd, as his net popularity dipped from record positives to below zero, may have brought wry smiles closer to home. But his successor, Julia Gillard has a formidable record as Deputy Premier in seeing off the teaching unions as she introduced national testing and published results, courage which should stand her in good stead as PM. The contrast between her readiness to press ahead with important policy in the face of vested interests and Rudd's pusillanimity on carbon trading has been stark, with the latter a turn-off for voters. With Gillard in charge, the ALP now has a fighting chance of keeping power in this year's elections against a very right-wing Liberal challenge. Let's hope she does it.

This post has been picked up by John Rentoul.

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.

Aussie Labor heads for landslide

With a 16-point lead in the latest polls, the Australian Labor Party is on course for a potential landslide on November 24. In a new poll for the Australian, Labor scores 58 per cent to John Howard's liberal-led coalition's 42 per cent. Half of Australians want Labor leader Kevin Rudd (pictured) as PM, against 37% for outgoing MP Howard. Rudd has won televised debates and is now opening up leads on economic credibility, the one area where Howard might have hoped to capitalise on his government's record. Even a massive tax-cutting wheeze seems to have made no difference to Howard's fortunes. Rudd has made education one of his big issues, and now enjoys a 30-point lead on the subject: one of his most important plans in the federal country is a national curriculum covering English, Maths, Science and history. It looks like the formula for victory in Australia in 2007 is not so far off that for New Labour in 1997.