A new brand of Labor leadership

THE Kevin Rudd era has begun. It is expected to last a long time. Rudd offers a new brand of leadership for Australia.

THE Kevin Rudd era has begun. It is expected to last a long time. Rudd offers a new brand of leadership for Australia that breaks not just from John Howard but from Labor's past.

Rudd enjoys a big majority, an unqualified mandate, a growth economy, a Labor Party invigorated by a surge of fresh talent and a demoralised Liberal Party that will take many years to recover.

It is a watershed election. On the numbers, it is Labor's greatest victory, excelling Gough Whitlam's 1972 win, with the swing shading even Bob Hawke's 1983 victory.

Rudd will govern Australia in a new fashion. He is a practical modernist pledged to move the agenda beyond the old ideological battles of the Howard period. Rudd is a centrist who will pitch to the mainstream and an aspiring agent of consensus seeking a more united nation. He has no time for Labor's true-believer romance or its rich mythology rooted in the past.

From today, Rudd will aim at securing Labor's 2010 re-election. He presents as a long-haul leader, an incrementalist, the technocrat as PM, short on emotion and strong on practicality. How long Labor tribalism tolerates his style and authority defies prediction.

In office, Rudd will obsess about his economic credentials, opting for caution, responsibility and anti-inflation structures. Whether his government has the mettle to be more reformist than Howard and take the tough decisions in its first budget remains to be seen.

The Howard era has ended in a shuddering collapse. Howard has lost his government and probably his seat. Rudd has liquidated Howard and Peter Costello, at one stroke casting the Liberals into the well of uncertainty. Howard's local tormentor, Maxine McKew, provided the unique candidate profile that made possible his defeat in Bennelong.

This is probably the worst election result in the Liberal Party's history. Having smashed Labor at four elections, Howard stayed too long and has presided over his party's collapse.

The Liberals, having lost power and patronage across the nation, face a protracted reinvention of their party. They have no obvious leader, though Malcolm Turnbull must come into real contention. Their weakness generates more opportunity for Labor. Rudd will know the main risks to him come from Labor's performance in office, rather than the Liberal Party.

The central issue of the election was leadership - Rudd versus Howard. While Work Choices, climate change and the "education revolution" were vital issues, they were subsumed via leadership. Rudd's success was to depict himself as the leader of the future, thereby defining Howard as the leader of the past.

Howard could never combat this perception. Having branded the Liberals as yesterday's party, Rudd will intensify this campaign from office.

In his election night and Sunday remarks, Rudd's relish for office is visceral. He talks like a school teacher about to set his ministers their homework. The message is that Rudd will set the tone, style and priorities of his government. His authority will be unmatched as a Labor PM as Rudd selects his own ministry, sweeping away decades of Labor tradition. His key ministers will be deputy PM Julia Gillard and treasurer Wayne Swan, both of whom had excellent campaigns.

Rudd has already spoken to US President George W. Bush, Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He signals that the phoney debates of the past are dead - Rudd wants close ties with the US and Britain along with our Asian neighbours. There is no choice or trade-off.

On election night he was explicit about burying the old ideological divides, naming those divides of public/private, unions/business, economics/environment and federal/state. Rudd has no interest, now that Howard has gone, in winning the old battles with Howard (unlike most of the progressive side). He seeks, instead, to build upon the logic of his campaign to entrench Labor as the party of the future in the minds of the Australian people.

Rudd will be effective in orchestrating Kyoto ratification and taking early action on hospitals and education. His greatest challenge will lie in taking the tough decisions in the first budget. So, how tough is Kevin Rudd?