Sigma’s Simulacrum of Reality

Since Kevin Rudd assumed the Labor leadership early this year, his presumed honeymoon period has steadily morphed into a full fledged resilient lead over John Howard.

Which notwithstanding my Labor-biased delight, is actually a very strange phenomenon.

Even though I’m aware that unlike my Malaysian experience ala one-party state politics Western democracies change governments regularly, Howard’s case is different.

Why?

Because Australia’s not experiencing an economic recession right now. No government ministers slept with some young boys. Or girls for that matter. The Coalition government right now is competent, albeit boring one. The key word here being boring I think.

My personal take on this is that Australia’s democratic maturity has reached a certain stage where voters can be complacent and just try something new just for the sake of it. They don’t need a national crisis to do so anymore.

But all the blame can’t just be put on the voters. In my opinion, although a competent economic manager, John Howard’s government lacked much of a vision for the country. Ok, there was that ’60’s picket fences society’ thing of his, but it’s exactly those sort of things that make people criticise him as being stuck in the past. He doesn’t have any ‘big picture’ ideas like what Paul Keating used to have.

Contrast that with Kevin Rudd. Speaks Mandarin (first Western leader to be able to do so so far). Wants to restructure the education system. Wants to restructure health care. Wants a multiracial Australia, unlike Howard.

Some of Rudd’s policies atm are admittedly nebulous, but that’s not the point. He has a fresh new vision for the country. Howard doesn’t.

Which brings us to the present strange situation where a competent government is about to lose the coming election.

Lol, incidentally, if that does eventuate as planned, it would mark the first time I’ve lived through a change of government so far. Can’t wait.

Video here. Choose the clip ‘APEC 06.09 Kevin Rudd’s Comments in Mandarin‘.

The Labor leader and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd put his Mandarin-speaking abilities on show a few days ago when he addressed the visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao in Mandarin at this year’s APEC. He spoke about his family and how Australia is a beautiful place to visit. He even promoted the fact that his son-in-law is a Chinese-Australian! A bit bordering on pandering now, I would think but heck, I’ll accept anything as long as it manages to beat Howard at the next election.

With my street-level command of my mother-tongue, I would rate him 3 1/2 out of 5. Quite a good accent for a non-Chinese person, with the exception of a few words where his ‘white’ accent creeps in. But then again, what’s accents right? Every non-British English speaking person has a different accent, including Australians and Malaysians alike. So the fact that he could speak Mandarin is great enough.

If Rudd wins the elections that are coming soon, he would be the first ‘Western’ as well as Australian leader who speaks an Asian language. Cool.

I read George Megalogenis’s article on it in which he thinks the secondary motive for Rudd to launch into Mandarin was to try and help Maxine McKew win Howard’s seat. Howard’s seat has a 10% Chinese and a 3% Korean population, and the only reason the Liberals are still holding on to it is because Howard’s the PM. After recent redistributions, it is essentially a Labor seat and therefore ripe for the taking.

As of this week, Rudd’s ascendancy continues with Labor having 57% to 43% poll lead on the Coalition government. Labor needs to win 16 seats in order to form a majority government.