Australia's opposition Labor Party elected former diplomat Kevin Rudd as its new leader yesterday in a bold gambit to boost its chances of ousting Prime Minister John Howard in elections next year.
Rudd, 49, is the fifth Labor leader Howard has faced in the decade since his conservative coalition won power and the fourth in four years, as the center-left opposition party has been rent by bitter infighting.
At yesterday's meeting, Australian Labor Party federal politicians voted 49-39 to dump incumbent leader Kim Beazley, who had failed to put a dent in Howard's popularity.
Rudd, 49, pledged to end the rhetoric and "short-termism" of Australian politics, saying the country faced stark choices because of Howard's policies.
"This fork in the road has emerged because John Howard has taken a bridge too far in industrial relations, a bridge too far in Iraq, a bridge too far on climate change," Rudd said.
Rudd, 49, was elected to federal parliament in 1998 after working for the state Labor government in Queensland. He also had a lengthy career as a diplomat, with postings to Stockholm and Beijing.
A fluent Chinese speaker, he also worked as a China consultant to Australian companies between the various stages of his political career.
Slightly-built, impeccably suited and bespectacled, Rudd has been nicknamed "Harry Potter" and "Pixie" in Canberra, where some pundits claim he lacks the common touch the Australian public normally demands in its leaders.
But he has described himself as a "very determined bastard" with the steel needed to unseat Howard.
Rudd endured a tough childhood: he was temporarily forced to sleep in a car at the age of 11 when his family was evicted from their farm following the death of his father in a road accident.
Howard, who beat Rudd's predecessor Beazley in elections in 1998 and 2001, accused the new leader of being more style than substance.
"The Labor Party has reshackled itself to the past today," Howard said. "Kevin Rudd has said that he's taking Australia back to a union-dominated past."
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS