KEY POINTS:
Australia's new Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will start his parliamentary term in two weeks with the nation even more firmly locked behind him than at the November election that ended the 11-year rule of Liberal John Howard.
Early opinion polls revealed an intense political honeymoon that has completely eclipsed Howard's successor, former Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, and cast the Liberals into deep shadow across the nation.
With his party out of office in every state and territory for the first time in its history, and with Rudd's hectic agenda over the holiday period, Nelson has for the time being become the invisible man of Australian politics.
Nelson was not invited to a meeting of state and territory counterparts in Melbourne this week - convened to coordinate strategies to break Labor's stranglehold on power - although he will hold a similar federal conference this year.
His task will become oppressively clear when Parliament opens on February 12, and Rudd leads Labor into the House of Representatives with an 18-seat majority and the weight of public opinion solidly behind him.
The Liberals have begun dumping Howard's legacy with one of the first policies to be hurled overboard being the WorkChoices industrial legislation, a key element of his downfall.
The Liberals will face a vigorous new Government that has spent the two months since the election setting in place an agenda that already includes a federal-state accord on hospital reform, the groundwork for new education and training priorities, plans for a formal apology to indigenous Australians and policies to accelerate their economic and social development, and a new national council to restore and build new roads, ports, rail systems and other key infrastructure.
The scale of Rudd's victory and the high profile his work programme has been given over the slow news days of the holiday break, has deepened the Prime Minister's standing.
A Morgan poll last week showed Labor's popularity rising over the period to give it a commanding 23 per cent lead over the Coalition in a two-party preferred vote. Two-thirds of respondents also said Australia was heading in the right direction.
This was confirmed yesterday by a Newspoll in The Australian, which found that Labor's two-party preferred vote had risen 52.7 per cent on election day to 58 per cent. Rudd was preferred as prime minister by 68 per cent of respondents, compared to just 11 per cent for Nelson, and while two-thirds were satisfied with Rudd's performance, only 36 per cent were pleased with the Opposition Leader.
But a significant percentage of respondents had yet to make their minds up about the leaders, indicating that Rudd will have to work hard to maintain his shine once parliament starts.
He is facing formidable problems, with the economy under threat from fears of recession in the United States, billions of dollars vanishing from the value of Australian stocks, and the likelihood of more interest rate rises. Treasurer Wayne Swan is working on a tight May budget that will haul down Government spending.
But history suggests that early parsimony by a new administration is unlikely to swing voters back to the Coalition at the next election, and the Opposition's chances lie in the states. The most recent state Newspolls give the Liberals a slim 2 per cent lead in WA, while Labor leads by less than 5 per cent in NSW and by 8 per cent in South Australia. But Labor has a huge 20 per cent lead in Victoria, and 18 per cent in Queensland.
