It’s Rudd Time

Leadership – February 4th, 2008 by Kristen

Barack Obama has vision. That is why I am behind the black man over the woman - because he is a man who has not been jaded by his years in politics and the crazy distorted world of the presidential campaign trail.

What’s more, he can speak it. I had truly come to believe that the era of the great political speaker, that of the Kennedys, the Churchills, the Luther Kings was gone. But Obama conveys hope from the stump, he conveys vision, and he seems to rise above the grubby jostling demanded by such a campaign.

So where are the Obamas of Australia? Where are the visionaries?

Politics in Australia has slowly over the years been faded into the realm of the yes men, whose bland promises sought to fit party ideologies. These in turn themselves have been corrupted to fit the imagined values of the common denominator, the so-called average voter. Vision and strength of ideals have been superseded by the election cycle, the need to create the short term fixes that pleased the masses (or the special interests of those donating to the election funds), rather than the much harder, less voter-appealling, decisions that could lead Australia through the unsure future.

Last election the heart of this born and bred Labor supporter was broken by the continuing convergence of its policies with that of the Liberal party. At times I found myself unable to differentiate between them except for the mud slinging over whose was better.

Kevin Rudd seemed willing to bend whichever way the current was flowing. It seemed he didn’t stand for anything except the rhetorical question and the polite politician’s smile. I voted Labor because they still stood for hope for me, for the right direction for Australia’s future. But mostly, I voted for them because they weren’t the Howard government.

But in my heart was a secret prayer. It manifested in a joke shared between me and my sister, purloined from a favourite blog. We created a sign with it as our hoped catchcry and stuck it in our living room. In this joke we imagined Rudd winning, oh the joy, and the stepping up to the podium, looking straight into the TV cameras, straight into the living rooms of the Australia public, with his polite smile, and saying “It’s Gough Time MotherF***ers”.

He didn’t of course. But I was wrong about Rudd. I should have known. I have great respect for many Queensland Labor politicians, am a big fan of Wayne Swan, and previous premier Peter Beattie. They lived through the Joh era, where the Whitlam reforms barely filtered through the corruption, suffocating conservatism and political oppression. It required vision and drive to fight against the power in those times, but also the ability to survive.

Rudd, although seemingly a bland pollie, is in fact a man of vision who used this apparent blandness to survive, to get elected. And already his vision is manifesting itself. Kyoto has been signed, an apology for the horrors perpetrated against Aboriginal families is forthcoming, and today Rudd has announced that he will be engaging 1000 of the best Australian minds to help plan for Australia’s future.

Rudd is no Obama. And we can never go back to the youthful idealism of the Whitlam era. But it is my great hope, and that of DodgyPress, that he can take his promises for the future and within a taut economic climate, lead Australia to a better future.

It’s Rudd time mofos.

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Australian Future, Australian politics, Barack Obama, Election 2007, Kevin Rudd, Kyoto, Labor Party, Presidential Campaign 2008, Sorry

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