KEY POINTS:
This is Kevin Rudd's hour. In less than three months as leader of Australia's Labor Opposition he has overtaken John Howard as the nation's preferred Prime Minister and has pushed his party into a commanding lead ahead of this year's federal elections.
Yesterday afternoon Rudd met Dick Cheney - among the most powerful United States Vice-Presidents in history - and told him that although Australia under Labor would remain a staunch American ally, Iraq was a disaster on the scale of Vietnam and the diggers would be coming home.
Howard, meanwhile, was having a bad day. State Labor premiers were fighting his A$10 billion ($11.2 billion) plan to save the Murray-Darling river system, and today in his meeting with Cheney he will choose the war policies of President George W. Bush over the wishes of most of his constituents.
As Howard prepares to seek a fifth term, the neophyte Labor Leader is riding a wave of popularity that could well end the political life of Australia's second-longest serving Prime Minister. The question is whether this is a honeymoon with voters that will sour as election campaigns gather speed, or a real shift in the mood of the nation.
No one can ever underrate John Howard. He excels as a political gladiator, able to seize any opportunity, any faltering in his opponents' attack, and turn it to his advantage. He knows also that previous Labor leaders have entered the electoral arena armed with large leads in the opinion polls, only to fall: Kim Beazley and Mark Latham, now brief footnotes in Australian political history, both started powerfully.
But Rudd has advantages denied his predecessors. The two great strengths that have protected and propelled Howard - the economy and national security - have weakened and may now work to the Opposition Leader's advantage. And after more than a decade of Coalition Government there is undeniable voter fatigue, a sense that if there is a real alternative, it is time for change.
Polls this week reinforced this argument. A Newspoll in the Australian gave Rudd a 10 percentage-point lead as preferred Prime Minister, and Labor a commanding 54 per cent to 46 per cent lead in the two-party preferred vote that determines elections under Australia's preferential voting system.
The Newspoll followed a trend tilting in Labor's favour and echoed an almost identical finding by ACNeilsen in Fairfax newspapers. Reuters' latest poll trend, analysing the three major opinion polls, showed a clear shift in sentiment that has pushed Howard to a six-year nadir.
The sands are shifting under the Prime Minister even in his own Sydney electorate of Bennelong. The once blue-ribbon Liberal seat has changed with time and an electoral redistribution and, according to a Morgan poll for the Crikey.com.au website, may well dispose of Howard.
Significantly, Morgan found that more than 7 per cent of Bennelong voters who supported Howard at the last election intend to vote Labor this year. As well as a general dissatisfaction with the way Howard is carrying out his job, the poll reported that even voters in the Liberal heartland oppose the Government's policies on such central issues as industrial relations and the war in Iraq.
As the election nears, the comfort zone of the long, prosperous Howard years may pull voters back to the Government. So may the fact that Rudd is still a relatively unknown newcomer: already, Howard is hanging around his neck the L-plate that worked so well against Latham in the last election.
In charisma and values there is little to choose between them. More than ever, this will be an election of policy. But the Opposition Leader will still need to make himself known, and to convince Australians that what they see is what they get, that he is at the front of a united Labor, and that he is not just a respectable face on a dark woodpile of Left-wing radicalism.
Kevin Michael Rudd was born in 1957, the fourth son of a Queensland dairyman share-farming land at Eumundi, behind Noosa, long before the trendy and the wealthy moved in. That life ended at age 11, when his father was killed in a road accident.
Rudd has said he has never been a socialist. But Labor drew him to its fold early - he joined as a 16-year-old schoolboy. Studious, a talented debater, member of a cutting-edge youth acting troupe and a classical pianist, Rudd spent two years as a boarder at Marist Brothers' College in Brisbane then moved back to become dux of Nambour State High School.
Canberra beckoned early, and shaped his life. He gained first-class honours in Chinese language and history at the Australian National University, continued to develop a strong Christianity that still deeply influences his thinking, and met his wife, Therese Rein. The couple had three children - Jessica, Nicholas and Marcus - and Rein went on to establish the international job placement agency Igneus Group, which has made her a multi-millionaire.
From university, Rudd joined the diplomatic corps, spending most of the 1980s in Stockholm and Beijing. In 1988 he switched to politics, becoming chief of staff to then-Queensland Opposition Leader Wayne Goss and staying on after Goss ended the National-Liberal domination of state politics.
In 1992 he helped establish, then led, the State Cabinet Office before unsuccessfully contesting the Brisbane seat of Griffith in 1996.
These years gave Rudd the knowledge and experience to help blunt Howard's L-plate jibes. He became a senior political aide during one of Queensland's most turbulent periods. The long, corrupt rein of Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen was collapsing in scandal and the Fitzgerald inquiry that put four ministers and the state police commissioner behind bars.
In the wake of Labor's 1989 victory, Rudd was deeply involved in a massive wave of legal and bureaucratic reform. He was the man charged with setting up the Cabinet Office to provide the Government with clear and effective advice and, as part of the Goss machine, played an important role in the reform of federal-state relations.
Rudd worked as a senior China consultant for KPMG and was an adjunct professor at Queensland University for two years after losing his bid for Griffith. In 1998 he won the seat, chaired Labor's foreign affairs, defence and trade policy committee, and in 2001 became its foreign affairs spokesman. In December he defeated Beazley to become Labor Leader.
He is seen as ambitious, determined and methodical, blending high policy with hard electorate work, championing local causes and, as leader, making a point of harvesting the views of suburban Australia.
Religion continues to play a central role. He is a member of a weekly parliamentary prayer group and in an article in the Monthly magazine expressed admiration for anti-Hitler activist Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose advocacy of the weak and vulnerable resonates in Rudd's own stance on such issues as Iraq, climate change and industrial laws.
He is a strong supporter of the US alliance, agrees more Australian troops should be sent to Afghanistan as the front line against terrorism, but opposes the war in Iraq and what he regards as Howard's slavish adherence to US policy.
In an article in the Diplomat, he pins Labor's foreign policy on the alliance as a strategically vital agreement between two sovereign nations, on the UN, and a policy of engagement with the Asia-Pacific region.
"Labor does not believe in an alliance which mandates automatic compliance with every aspect of US foreign policy," he wrote. "That's what's gone wrong on Howard's watch. Instead of offering useful counsel, we became an unquestioning cheer squad for a deeply flawed policy on Iraq with ominous consequences for the future stability of the wider Middle East."
Polls show voters support Rudd's view. National security is now no longer Howard's exclusive preserve, and may become a liability for the Government. So may its other great strength - the economy. The golden years continue but rising interest rates have hurt Howard, and this week the Reserve Bank warned of more likely this year.
Nor has Howard been able to take an effective swing at Rudd. Opinion polls and the decisions by Britain and Denmark to pull out troops from Iraq support Rudd's position there. In other areas, Rudd has supported Government policies considers them sensible and in the national interest - most notably, Howard's national water plan.
Whereas Howard has failed to land any real punches yet, Rudd has been hitting hard at the Government's strong points of national security and economic management, and bolstering its own, traditional, bastions.
Major policy initiatives have already been announced in industrial relations, education, and the environment.
It's still a long, brutal road to the elections. But he has made an impressive start.
