KEY POINTS:
Australia is poised for a dramatic change in direction under its new Labor Government.
It will join world climate change negotiations, withdraw combat troops from Iraq and take its economy beyond the mining boom.
In an immediate flow-on effect from the Labor landslide in Saturday's election, Indonesia has said Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd will be welcome at climate change meetings from which Australia had been barred.
Mr Rudd yesterday met the head of his department, Dr Peter Shergold, for briefings that included next month's climate talks in Bali.
He will decide within days who will be in his Cabinet, and intends having ministers sworn in and at work by the end of the week.
Mr Rudd also plans to fly his MPs to Canberra for a caucus meeting on Thursday.
The only part of his job he is not in a hurry to complete is the eviction of deposed Prime Minister John Howard from the official prime ministerial residences of the Lodge in Canberra and Kirribilli House on Sydney Harbour.
He said yesterday that during Mr Howard's call conceding defeat on Saturday night, he had assured his predecessor that he could take as long as he needed to move out.
Within hours of his talk with Mr Howard, Mr Rudd received congratulatory calls from American President and staunch Howard fan George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Mr Rudd now has the sensitive job of negotiating with Washington the withdrawal of the more than 500 combat troops from southern Iraq.
A former diplomat, he is a strong supporter of the US alliance, the war on terror and operations in Afghanistan, where three soldiers of Australia's force of almost 1000 have died recently.
Although he would not give details of their conversation, he said he had told Mr Bush that the US alliance was central to Australia's foreign policy.
Mr Rudd will visit Washington next year.
In his call, President Yudhoyono invited Mr Rudd to next month's UN-sponsored climate change talks in Bali, reversing Australia's exclusion because of Mr Howard's refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
Australia and the US were the only two major developed nations to refuse to ratify Kyoto.
If Mr Howard had been returned, Australia would have been barred from the negotiations of the "meetings of parties" to the protocol, and the "ad hoc working group", which will shape climate change action beyond Kyoto.
But Indonesia, which will preside over the conference, had said that if Mr Rudd won and carried out his promise to ratify Kyoto, all doors would open.
Yesterday, he said President Yudhoyono had extended the invitation to Bali, and also invited him to visit Jakarta next year.
The new Australia leader said he also discussed climate change co-operation with Britain during his conversation with Prime Minister Brown.
At home, Mr Rudd will quickly introduce new policies and measures in education, healthcare, high-speed broadband and school computers and move to help families under financial pressure in areas such as child care.
But he conceded that his election campaign agenda could not solve all the nation's problems.
"None of those agenda items is a silver bullet for every problem," he said. "But they are a pathway to the future and we're determined to implement it."
