For Australia, it may be time for a change

He’s been called President Bush’s puppet, and his country has been called the 51st state of America.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s chummy relationship with Washington counts for little in what might be the last big fight of his political life.

When Australians go to the polls Saturday, two obstacles stand in the way of the four-term incumbent: the widespread perception that he’s been in office too long, and a younger and fresher face that’s ready to take his place.

His name is Kevin Rudd, and he’s the new head of the Labor Party, a bookish former diplomat who speaks fluent Chinese and is married to a self-made multimillionaire.

Rudd has such a decisive lead in the polls that many believe his victory is assured.

“We have never seen opinion gaps as big or as persistent,” said Brian Costar, a political scientist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. “People have been wanting for a while to find a reason to vote Howard out. They generally couldn’t do it because of a lackluster Labor leadership. Along comes Rudd, who looks like a safe bet, and they’ve flocked to him.”

For Rudd to take over the government, his party must grab at least 16 more seats in the 150-member lower house of Parliament. Polls show losses by Howard’s coalition government could deliver Labor a comfortable margin, with the added embarrassment that the sitting prime minister could lose in his own seat in the legislature, something that has only happened once in Australian history, in 1929.

What’s surprising is that the 68-year-old Howard, who heads the Liberal Party, might be on his way out despite a booming economy and an approval rating of about 47%.

“It’s basically government fatigue,” said Michael Fullilove, program director for global issues at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, a Sydney think tank. “They’ve been in there nearly 12 years. It’s not really common for governments to last so long these days.”

The Howard administration is also perceived as being out of touch on such issues as global warming, which a recent poll showed was considered by Australians to be the country’s No. 1 external threat.

Until about a year ago, Howard questioned the link between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. When Al Gore visited Australia last year to promote the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” Howard’s industrial minister dismissed it as “entertainment.”

Under Howard, Australia became the only other industrialized country besides the U.S. not to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Rudd has promised to sign the treaty if elected.

Whereas Howard has been an unwavering supporter of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Rudd opposed the 2003 invasion and has said he wants to withdraw Australia’s combat troops there.

But these differences, some observers warn, are more symbolic than substantive, especially when it comes to foreign policy and relations with the United States.

“We are not going from a John Howard to a Jacques Chirac,” said Gerard Henderson, executive director of the Sydney Institute nonprofit forum and a former Howard staffer, referring to France’s former president. “Kevin Rudd is very pro-American.”

In fact, Australia has historically been a reliable ally that has fought on the side of the U.S. in every major conflict of the 20th and 21st centuries, notes Fullilove. Every prime minister since World War II, including the Labor governments, has supported the American alliance, and that is not expected to change.

If anything, observers say, relations with Washington might even improve under Rudd, especially if American voters put a Democrat in the White House next year.

What would be a challenge is how the prime minister, whomever he might be, manages the tricky triangular relationship with Washington and Beijing. China has replaced Japan as Australia’s biggest trading partner, and Australia owes much of its current prosperity to China’s insatiable demand for natural resources such as minerals and gas.

Rudd has an advantage in that he knows China well and impressed Beijing by speaking to the Chinese president in Mandarin during a recent meeting. But analysts say it will take more than language skills to maintain this delicate political balancing act.

“The concern is that we might get squeezed between China and America,” said Fullilove. “If tensions break out, there would be more pressure and scrutiny of countries like Australia that’s stuck in the middle.”

While the unpopularity of the Iraq war helped topple Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, it has not been a potent factor in Australian politics. That makes Howard the last major Western leader standing in Washington’s coalition that went to war on terrorism, and the American president would be disappointed to see him go.

In their September meeting in Australia, Bush gave a plug to Howard by saying the Americans had “no better friend and more steadfast ally” and that Australian voters should “not count the man out.”

That bond has not always endeared Howard to Australians.

“He’s a small Australian who doesn’t see the big picture, and he’s like a puppet in George Bush’s pocket,” said Bill Baker, 49, a deckhand on the ferries in Sydney Harbor. “To be a good friend, sometimes you need to be able to say, ‘No, bloke, not this time.’ ”

Voters like Baker say they are intrigued by Rudd’s differences with the incumbent.

Howard is a straight-talking former suburban lawyer who has spent about 30 years in politics, whereas Rudd is a cerebral policy wonk who worked in the embassies in Stockholm and Beijing. At 50, he is 18 years Howard’s junior.

Also for the first time in Australian history, there may be a first lady who has kept her own name. Janette Howard is a homemaker happy to take a back seat to her husband. But Rudd’s wife, Therese Rein, runs a successful employment services firm and has been likened to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for her professional background and independent opinions.

In a bid to shore up support for his troubled campaign Thursday, Howard warned about the dangers of change for change’s sake.

“If you think Australia is heading in the right direction, don’t put it at risk by changing the government,” Howard said.

His opponent is taking nothing for granted either.

“Whoever wins this election will win by a nose,” Rudd said at his last major campaign address this week. “It’s now time to turn the page on this government.”

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chingching.ni@latimes.com