 |
Support for Howard
flounders
John Howard should be basking in the
glory of the reasonably successful Apec summit in Sydney, the
biggest gathering ever of world leader in Australia.
Instead the Australian prime minister’s popularity is dropping
in national polls at a time he is anticipated to call an
election.
Reports were circulation on suggestions that Howard should
resign to allow another leader to take the Liberal Party to the
polls, but Howard has said he intends to lead his government to
the polls.
US president George Bush on several occasions expressed support
for Howard, but Opposition leader Kevin Rudd nevertheless
managed to steal a significant share of the limelight.
One headline in The Australian yesterday captured this: “Rudd
speaks right language to steal PM’s thunder”.
This was a reference to Rudd’s ability to address Chinese
president Hu Jintao in Mandarin, eliciting an unexpected
invitation for the Rudd family to attend the Beijing Olympics.
No such invitation was extended to Howard.
Rudd was also only scheduled to have a 10-minute chat with Bush,
but managed a 40-minute exchange where they chose to disagree on
the issue of military involvement in Iraq.
The Australian news story yesterday said Rudd had come across
“as a statesman-like prime minister in waiting”.
Meanwhile, national polls have shown the Australian Labor Party
with a commanding 57% lead against the Liberal National Party’s
43%.
It had widened its gap enough to suggest a landslide victory,
according to some commentators.
Rudd’s personal leadership rating shot up by 8% to 67%, well
ahead of other pre-election ratings of opposition leaders in the
past, while Howard’s approval rating stayed at 50%.
Any change in government is likely to have little change on
Australia’s foreign policy front, although a Labor government is
likely to significantly improve Australia’s current poor
relations with several Pacific island nations.
But dramatic changes cannot be anticipated. Labor spokesmen have
indicated the party remains firm in its resolve to bring Solomon
Islands attorney-general Julian Moti to trial over alleged sex
offences in Vanuatu, making this somewhat of a bipartisan issue.
However, quiet diplomacy at a government-to-government level
could end the current impasse involving those two countries as
well as Papua New Guinea.
Improved government-to-government relations is likely to come as
a significant bonus for the steady economic gains that have been
made in PNG in recent years, with a likelihood this could
translate into improved investment flows. The constant
criticisms from the Howard government and foreign minister
Alexander Downer has possibly also adversely affected the flow
of tourists to PNG, although there has been a big pick-up in the
numbers of Australians walking the Kokoda Track.
Rudd has expressed a commitment to pull Australian troops out of
Iraq, a move that is likely to help Australia’s bilateral
relations with Malaysia and Indonesia, both of which have large
Muslim populations.
Malaysian prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told Australian
journalists during the Apec meeting that Australia’s military
presence in Iraq would continue to damage its relations with
moderate Muslim countries.
He said when Howard announced the Australian troop deployment to
Iraq, the view in Malaysia was that “it should not have
happened”.
Howard had gone into the Apec meeting hoping to upstage the
Kyoto protocols on climate change but this did not eventuate.
The 21 leaders did agree to reduce energy intensity throughout
the region by 25% from 2005 to 2030 and to increase forest cover
throughout the region by 20 million hectares by 2020. The
agreement on improved energy efficiency may not translate into
reduced carbon dioxide emissions, depending on the extent of
increased emissions caused by economic growth especially from
China’s booming economy.
Australian commentators felt that the Sydney Apec summit had
lost much of its usual focus because of the US president’s
overriding desire to talk about the Iraq situation and the war
on terror.
Sensing the lost ground, Bush ended the conference by inviting
the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) to
hold a special summit at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, early
next year.
However, the Australian public saw some long-term benefits flow
their way with a decision by China to sign up for A$35 billion
worth of LNG from a yet-to-be-developed project owned by
Woodside Petroleum in Western Australian and a number of Russian
resource deals.
 
|
