| Coordinates | 64 |latm=10 |latNS=N |longd=51 |longm=44 |longEW=W°′″N°06′″N |
|---|---|
| Honorific-prefix | The Honourable |
| Name | Kevin Rudd |
| Honorific-suffix | MP |
| Office | Minister for Foreign Affairs |
| Primeminister | Julia Gillard |
| Term start | 14 September 2010 |
| Predecessor | Stephen Smith |
| Office2 | 26th Prime Minister of AustraliaElections: 2007 |
| Deputy2 | Julia Gillard |
| Term start2 | 3 December 2007 |
| Term end2 | 24 June 2010 |
| Predecessor2 | John Howard |
| Successor2 | Julia Gillard |
| Office3 | Leader of the Australian Labor Party |
| Deputy3 | Julia Gillard |
| Term start3 | 4 December 2006 |
| Term end3 | 24 June 2010 |
| Predecessor3 | Kim Beazley |
| Successor3 | Julia Gillard |
| Constituency mp4 | Griffith |
| Parliament4 | Australian |
| Term start4 | 3 October 1998 |
| Predecessor4 | Graeme McDougall |
| Birth date | September 21, 1957 |
| Birth place | Nambour, Australia |
| Party | Labor Party |
| Spouse | Thérèse Rein |
| Alma mater | Australian National University |
| Profession | DiplomatPublic servant |
| Religion | Anglicanism |
| Signature | Kevin Rudd Signature 2.svg |
Kevin Michael Rudd (born 21 September 1957) is an Australian politician, the current Minister for Foreign Affairs and a former Prime Minister of Australia. He has been an Australian Labor Party member of the House of Representatives since the 1998 federal election, representing Griffith, Queensland. He was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia, from December 2007 until June 2010.
Rudd was born in Queensland and grew up on a dairy farm. He joined the Australian Labor Party at the age of 15 and was dux of Nambour State High School in 1974. He studied an arts degree in Asian studies at the Australian National University, majoring in Chinese language and Chinese history. In 1981, he married Thérèse Rein and they have three children. He worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs from 1981 and from 1988 he was Chief of Staff to the Queensland Labor Opposition Leader and later Premier, Wayne Goss. After the Goss government lost office in 1995, Rudd was hired as a Senior China Consultant by the accounting firm KPMG Australia.
Rudd was elected to Parliament in 1998 and was promoted to the Labor frontbench in 2001 as Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs. In December 2006 he had become Labor Leader and Leader of the Opposition, and the party overtook the incumbent Liberal/National coalition government led by John Howard, in both party and leadership polling. Rudd made policy announcements on areas such as industrial relations, climate change, an "education revolution", a National Broadband Network, and health. Labor won the November 2007 federal election, with a 23-seat swing. The Rudd government's first acts included signing the Kyoto Protocol and delivering an apology to Indigenous Australians for the stolen generations. The previous government's industrial relations legislation, WorkChoices, was largely dismantled, Australia's remaining Iraq War combat personnel were withdrawn, the healthcare system was reformed, and the "Australia 2020 Summit" was held. In response to the Global Financial Crisis, the government provided economic stimulus packages, and Australia was one of the few western countries to avoid the late-2000s recession.
Beginning with Rudd's election to the Labor leadership, the party enjoyed a long period of high popularity in the opinion polls. However, a significant fall in Rudd's personal electoral standing was blamed on a proposed Resource Super Profits Tax and the deferral of the Senate-rejected Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The decline in his government's support in opinion polls and growing dissatisfaction of his leadership within the Labor Party led his deputy, Julia Gillard, to announce on 23 June 2010 that she would contest the leadership in a caucus ballot the following day. Knowing he would be defeated if he contested the leadership, Rudd stepped down as party leader and Prime Minister on the morning of the ballot. He successfully recontested his parliamentary seat at the federal election held on 21 August 2010, and was subsequently promoted back to cabinet as Minister for Foreign Affairs in Gillard's Labor minority government.
Rudd was born in Nambour, Queensland to parents Albert Rudd and Margaret née DeVere, and grew up on a dairy farm in nearby Eumundi. At an early age (5–7) he contracted rheumatic fever and spent a considerable time at home convalescing. It damaged his heart, but this was only discovered some 12 years later. Farm life, which required the use of horses and guns, is where he developed his life-long love of horse riding and shooting clay targets. When Rudd was 11, his father, a share farmer and Country Party member, died from septicaemia after six weeks in hospital due to a car accident. Rudd states that the family was required to leave the farm amidst financial difficulty between two to three weeks after the death, though the family of the landowner states that the Rudds didn't have to leave for almost six months. Rudd joined the Australian Labor Party in 1972 at the age of 15. He boarded at Marist College Ashgrove in Brisbane although these years were not happy due to the indignity of poverty and reliance on charity – he was known to be a "charity case" due to his father's sudden death; and, he has since described the school as "... tough, harsh, unforgiving, institutional Catholicism of the old school." In that year he was also the Queensland winner of the Rotary 'Youth Speaks for Australia' public speaking contest.
Rudd is of English and Irish descent. His paternal 4th great-grandparents were English and of convict heritage: Thomas Rudd and Mary Cable (she was from Essex). Thomas arrived from London, England in 1801, Mary in 1804. Thomas Rudd, a convict, arrived in NSW on board the Earl Cornwallis in 1801. He was convicted of stealing a bag of sugar.
Rudd studied at the Australian National University in Canberra where he resided at Burgmann College and graduated with First Class Honours in Arts (Asian Studies). He majored in Chinese language and Chinese history, became proficient in Mandarin and acquired a Chinese name, Lù Kèwén ( or in ).
Rudd's thesis on Chinese democracy activist Wei Jingsheng was supervised by Pierre Ryckmans, the eminent Belgian-Australian sinologist. During his studies Rudd cleaned the house of political commentator Laurie Oakes to earn money. In 1980 he continued his Chinese studies at the Mandarin Training Center of National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China. Delivering the annual Gough Whitlam Lecture at Sydney University on "The Reforming Centre of Australian Politics" in 2008, Rudd praised the former Labor Prime Minister for implementing educational reforms, saying he was:
... a kid who lived Gough Whitlam's dream that every child should have a desk with a lamp on it where he or she could study. A kid whose mum told him after the 1972 election that it might just now be possible for the likes of him to go to university. A kid from the country of no particular means and of no political pedigree who could therefore dream that one day he could make a contribution to our national political life.
In 1981, Rudd married Thérèse Rein whom he had met at a gathering of the Australian Student Christian Movement during his university years. They have three children: Jessica (born 1984), Nicholas (born 1986) and Marcus (born 1993). Rudd's nephew, Van Thanh Rudd is a Melbourne-based artist and activist.
Returning to Australia in 1988, he was appointed Chief of Staff to the Labor Opposition Leader in Queensland, Wayne Goss. He became Chief of Staff to the Premier when the Labor Party won office in 1989, a position he held until 1992, when Goss appointed him Director-General of the Office of Cabinet. In this position Rudd was arguably Queensland's most powerful bureaucrat. In this role he presided over a number of reforms including development of a national program for teaching foreign languages in schools. Rudd was influential in both promoting a policy of developing an Asian languages and cultures program which was unanimously accepted by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in 1992 and later chaired a high level Working Group which provided the foundation of the strategy in its report, which is frequently cited as "the Rudd Report".
During this time he underwent a cardiac valve transplant operation (Ross procedure), receiving a cadaveric aortic valve replacement for rheumatic heart disease.
After the Goss government lost office in 1995, Rudd was hired as a Senior China Consultant by the accounting firm KPMG Australia. While in this position, he won the Labor preselection for the Brisbane-area seat of Griffith at the 1996 federal election. Despite being endorsed by the retiring Labor MP, Ben Humphreys, Rudd was defeated by Liberal Graeme McDougall on the eighth count, largely due to a massive swing against Labor in Queensland. Rudd sought a rematch against McDougall in the 1998 election and won on the fifth count.
There is no debate or dispute as to whether Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. He does. There's no dispute as whether he's in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. He is.
After the fall of Saddam he would criticise the Howard Government over its support for the United States, while maintaining Labor's position of support for the Australian-American alliance.
Well, what Secretary Powell and the US seems to have said is that he now has grave doubts about the accuracy of the case he put to the United Nations about the claim that Iraq possessed biological weapons laboratories – the so-called mobile trailers. And here in Australia, that formed also part of the government's argument on the war. I think what it does is it adds to the fabric of how the Australian people were misled about the reasons for going to war.
Rudd's policy experience and parliamentary performances during the Iraq war made him one of the better known members of the Labor front bench. When Opposition Leader Simon Crean was challenged by his predecessor Kim Beazley in June, Rudd did not publicly commit himself to either candidate. When Crean finally resigned in late November, Rudd was considered a possible candidate for the Labor leadership, however, he announced that he would not run in the leadership ballot, and would instead vote for Kim Beazley.
Rudd was predicted by some commentators to be demoted or moved as a result of his support for Beazley following the election of Mark Latham as Leader, but he retained his portfolio. Relations between Latham and Rudd deteriorated during 2004, especially after Latham made his pledge to withdraw all Australian forces from Iraq by Christmas 2004 without consulting Rudd. After Latham failed to win the October 2004 federal election, Rudd was again spoken of as a possible alternative leader. He retained his foreign affairs portfolio and disavowed any intention of challenging Latham.
When Latham suddenly resigned in January 2005, Rudd was visiting Indonesia and refused to say whether he would be a candidate for the Labor leadership. Such a candidacy would have required him to run against Beazley, his factional colleague. "The important thing for me to do is to consult with my colleagues in the party", he said. After returning from Indonesia, Rudd consulted with Labor MPs in Sydney and Melbourne and announced that he would not contest the leadership. Kim Beazley was subsequently elected leader.
In June 2005 Rudd was given expanded responsibilities as the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Security and, also, the Shadow Minister for Trade.
polling during the last term of the Howard government; Rudd became Labor leader in December 2006.]]
At his first press conference as leader, having thanked Beazley and former deputy leader Jenny Macklin, Rudd said he would offer a "new style of leadership" and would be an "alternative, not just an echo" of the Howard government. He outlined the areas of industrial relations, the war in Iraq, climate change, Australian federalism, social justice and the future of Australia's manufacturing industry as major policy concerns. Rudd also stressed his long experience in state government and also as a diplomat and in business before entering federal politics.
2007. From left to right: Anna Bligh (then Deputy Premier of Queensland), Rudd's son Nicholas, Kevin Rudd and Grace Grace (then General Secretary of the Queensland Council of Unions).]] Rudd and the Labor Party soon overtook the government in both party and leadership polling. The new leader maintained a high media profile with major announcements on an "education revolution", federalism, climate change, a National Broadband Network, and the domestic car industry. In March 2007 the government raised questions over a series of meetings Rudd had had with former West Australian Labor Premier Brian Burke during 2005, alleging that Rudd had been attempting to use Burke's influence to become Labor leader (after losing office, Burke had spent time in prison before returning to politics as a lobbyist). Rudd said that this had not been the purpose of the three meetings and said that they had been arranged by his colleague Graham Edwards, the Member for Cowan.
From 2002, Rudd appeared regularly in interviews and topical discussions on the popular breakfast television program Sunrise, along with federal Liberal MP Joe Hockey. This was credited with helping raise Rudd's public profile. Rudd and Hockey ended these appearances in April 2007 citing the increasing political pressures of an election year.
On 19 August 2007, it was revealed that Rudd, while on a visit to New York as opposition foreign affairs spokesman, had visited a strip club, in September 2003, with New York Post editor Col Allan and Labor backbencher Warren Snowdon. By way of explanation, Rudd said: "I had had too much to drink, I have no recollection (nor does Mr Snowdon) of any incident occurring at the nightclub – or of being asked to leave". "It is our recollection that we left within about an hour". The incident generated a lot of media coverage, but made no impact on Rudd's popularity in the polls. Indeed, some people believe that the incident may have enabled Rudd to appear "more human" and lifted his popularity.
Electoral writs were issued for an Australian federal election on 17 October 2007.
On 21 October 2007, Rudd presented strongly in a televised debate against incumbent prime minister John Howard.
On 14 November 2007, Kevin Rudd officially launched the Labor Party's election campaign with a policy of fiscal restraint, usually considered the electoral strength of the opposing Liberal party. Rudd proposed Labor spending measures totalling $2.3 billion, contrasting them to $9.4 billion Rudd claimed the Liberals had promised, declaring: "Today, I am saying loud and clear that this sort of reckless spending must stop."
The election was held on 24 November 2007. Labor's win was coined a 'Ruddslide' by the media and was underpinned by the considerable support from Rudd's home state of Queensland, with the state result recording a two party preferred swing of 7.53 percent. The nationwide swing was 5.44 percent to Labor, the 3rd largest swing at a federal election since two party estimates began in 1949.
As foreshadowed during the election campaign, on 29 November Rudd directly chose his frontbench, breaking with more than a century of Labor tradition whereby the frontbench was elected by the Labor caucus, with the leader then given the right to allocate portfolios.
polling during the term of the Rudd government. See also: Australian federal election, 2010#Polling.]]
Kevin Rudd was the second Queenslander to lead his party to a federal election victory, the first being Andrew Fisher in 1910. Rudd was the first Prime Minister since World War II not to come from either New South Wales or Victoria and the fourth prime minister from Queensland.
Early initiatives of the Rudd Government included the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, a Parliamentary Apology to the Stolen Generations and the 2020 Summit.
During their first two years in office, Rudd and his government set records for popularity in Newspoll polling.
By 2010, the Prime Minister's approval ratings had dropped significantly and controversies had arisen over management of economic stimulus following the Global Financial Crisis; the delay of the government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme; asylum seeker policies; and debate over a proposed "super profits" tax on the mining industry.
The United States diplomatic cables leaks reveal that Robert McCallum, the former US ambassador to Australia, described Rudd as a ‘control freak’ and ‘a micro-manager’ obsessed with managing the media cycle rather than engaging in collaborative decision making". Diplomats also criticized Rudd's foreign policy record and considered Rudd's ‘missteps’ largely arose from his propensity to make ‘snap announcements without consulting other countries or within the Australian government’.
On 23 June 2010, following significant media speculation and after it became apparent Rudd had lost the support of key factional heads within the Labor Party, deputy prime minister Julia Gillard requested a leadership ballot for the following day, which Rudd announced he would himself contest.
:It's time to recognise once and for all that terrorism central is Afghanistan. You see, a lot of Jemaah Islamiah's terrorist operations in South East Asia are financed by the reconstitution of the opium crop in Afghanistan – $2.3 billion a year worth of narco-finance flowing out of Afghanistan into terrorist groups here in our region, our neighbourhood, our backyard.
As Prime Minister, Rudd has continued to support Australian military involvement in Afghanistan, despite the growing number of Australian casualties. On 29 April 2009, Rudd committed 450 extra troops to the region bringing the total to 1550. Explaining the deployment he said:
:A measured increase in Australian forces in Afghanistan will enhance the security of Australian citizens, given that so many terrorists attacking Australians in the past have been trained in Afghanistan.
On a November 2009 visit to Afghanistan, Rudd told Australian troops: "We from Australia will remain for the long haul." In April 2010, the Australian Government decided not to commit further troops to Uruzgan province to replace Dutch forces when they withdraw, but increased the numbers of diplomatic, development aid, and police personnel to around 50 with military effort and civilian work focussed on Uruzgan.
As the parliament's first order of business, on 13 February 2008, Rudd read an apology directed to Indigenous Australians for the stolen generations. The apology, for the policies of successive parliaments and governments, passed unanimously as a motion by both houses of parliament, and was publicly well received; most criticisms were of Labor for refusing to provide victims with monetary compensation as recommended in the Bringing them Home report, and that the apology would not alleviate disadvantage amongst Indigenous Australians. Rudd pledged the government to bridging the gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australian health, education and living conditions, and in a way that respects their rights to self-determination.
Some unions claim it to be "WorkChoices Lite", although the most fundamental elements will be reversed and since then, changes have been made to the legislation which accommodate some union demands. This has led to employer concern over the legislation, as more rigid and expensive wage and other outcomes with employees will be particularly difficult for many businesses to afford during an economic downturn. Business groups have argued that this will contribute to job losses and negative growth in the near future.
:See also: 2008 Australian federal budget, 2009 Australian federal budget
Upon election to office, the Rudd government announced a five point plan to combat inflation. The first budget of the Rudd government was delivered by Treasurer Wayne Swan in May 2008 and a projected surplus of $21.7 billion was announced. As the global recession began to take hold, the Government guaranteed bank deposits and announced two stimulatory spending packages. The first was worth $10.4 billion and announced in late 2008, and the second worth $42 billion was announced in February 2009 and included $900 dollar cash payments to resident taxpayers who paid net tax in the 2007–08 financial year. After initially raising interest rates to combat inflation, The Reserve Bank cut official interest rates several times in increments of up to 1 percent, and fell to 3 percent in May 2009, the lowest since 1960. The second budget, released in May 2009, projected a $57.6 billion deficit for 2009–10. The majority of the deficit was created by a loss of taxation revenue as a result of the recession, with the rest made up in stimulus and other spending. The downturn was expected to remove $210 billion in taxation revenue from the budget over the next four years.
Following the start of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, increased exports and consumer spending helped the Australian economy avoid recession in 2009. Australia was the only western economy to do so.
As part of its economic stimulus program, the government offered householders a rebate for ceiling insulation. Rudd demoted Peter Garrett, the minister responsible for the program, before abandoning the program altogether in 2010 after the scheme was blamed for housefires and 4 deaths. The Building the Education Revolution program sought to stimulate the nationwide economy by employing construction workers in school building developments, but came under media scrutiny following allegations of overpricing and bad value for money.
The Rudd Government's third budget in 2010 projected a $40.8 billion deficit for 2010–11 but forecast that Australia would return to surplus by 2012–13. The government proposed a "super profits" tax on the mining industry and included $12 billion in revenue from the proposal in the forecast, although the tax had not been passed by the Senate.
Findings released in April 2009 reported that nine out of the 1000 submitted ideas were to be immediately enacted and that the government was deliberating on other ideas proposed. By mid-2010, among the key reform ideas suggested, Prime Minister Rudd had sought to introduce an ETS, but postponed it after failing to secure passage through the senate; formed a consultative committee on a Bill of Rights then rejected its recommendation for implementation; established the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples in 2010; commissioned the Henry Review of taxation (on the basis of which the Rudd Government proposed a new "super-profits" tax on mining); and Rudd had described the issue of a vote on a republic as not being "a priority".
In 2008, the government adjusted the Mandatory detention policies established by the Howard and Keating governments and declared an end to the Pacific Solution. Boat arrivals increased considerably during 2009 and the Opposition said this was due to the government's policy adjustments, the Government said it was due to "push factors". After a fatal explosion on an asylum seeker boat in April 2009, Rudd said: "People smugglers are the vilest form of human life." Opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott said that Kevin Rudd was inept and hypocritical in his handling of the issue during the Oceanic Viking affair of October 2009. In April 2010, the Rudd government suspended processing new claims by Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers, who comprised 80 per cent of all boat arrivals, for three and six months respectively.
Competitive markets are massive and generally efficient generators of economic wealth. They must therefore have a central place in the management of the economy. But markets sometimes fail, requiring direct government intervention through instruments such as industry policy. There are also areas where the public good dictates that there should be no market at all. We are not afraid of a vision in the Labor Party, but nor are we afraid of doing the hard policy yards necessary to turn that vision into reality. Parties of the Centre Left around the world are wrestling with a similar challenge – the creation of a competitive economy while advancing the overriding imperative of a just society. Some call this the 'third way'. The nomenclature is unimportant. What is important is that it is a repudiation of Thatcherism and its Australian derivatives represented opposite. It is in fact a new formulation of the nation's economic and social imperatives.Rudd is critical of free market economists such as Friedrich Hayek, although Rudd describes himself as "basically a conservative when it comes to questions of public financial management", pointing to his slashing of public service jobs as a Queensland governmental advisor.
In The Longest Decade by George Megalogenis, Rudd reflected on his views of economic reform undertaken in the past couple of decades:
The Hawke and Keating governments delivered a massive program of economic reform, and they didn't shy away from taking on their own political base when they knew it was in the national interest. Think tariffs. Think cuts to the marginal tax rate. Think enterprise bargaining. Think how unpopular all of those were with the trade union movement of Australia. Mr Howard, on the other hand, never took on his own political base in the prosecution of any significant economic reform. His reform agenda never moved out of the ideological straitjacket of the 1970s and 1980s. Think industrial relations. Think consumption tax. And think also of the explosion in untargeted welfare... When the economic circumstances change, and the demands of a competitive economy change, Mr Howard never adjusted and never took the lead when it came to new ideas. Look at climate change. Look at infrastructure policy. Look at education policy. Look at early childhood education. There's a mountain of economic evidence about the importance of those policy domains to Australia's future.
In early 2009, in the wake of the global financial crisis, Rudd stated "that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed", and that "Neo-liberalism and the free-market fundamentalism it has produced has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy. And, ironically, it now falls to social democracy to prevent liberal capitalism from cannibalising itself." Rudd called for a new era of "social capitalism" from social democrats such as himself and U.S. President Barack Obama to "support a global financial system that properly balances private incentive with public responsibility".
Although disagreeing with the original commitment to the Iraq War, Rudd supports the continued deployment of Australian troops in Iraq, but not the continued deployment of combat troops. Rudd was also in favour of Australia's military presence in Afghanistan.
Rudd backs the road map for peace plan and defended Israel's actions during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, condemning Hezbollah and Hamas for violating Israeli territory.
The Prime Minister also pledged support for East Timor stating that Australian troops will remain in East Timor for as long as East Timor's government wants them to.
Rudd also gave his support for the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, before Australia officially recognised the republic. This decision sparked protests of the Serbian Australian community against Rudd.
The question of Republicanism in Australia was raised following the failed 1999 referendum, and although Rudd is a republican, he indicated that no referendum would take place in the near future. In 2008 Rudd recommended the appointment of Quentin Bryce as the first female Governor-General of Australia to Queen Elizabeth II.
I have a pretty basic view on this, as reflected in the position adopted by our party, and that is, that marriage is between a man and a woman.In another 2006 Parliamentary conscience vote, Mr Rudd voted against legislation to expand embryonic stem cell research
Rudd and his family attend the Anglican church of St John the Baptist in Bulimba in his electorate. Although raised a Roman Catholic, Rudd began attending Anglican services in the 1980s with his wife. A report by The Australian quoted that Rudd embraced Anglicanism but at the same time did not formally renounce his Catholic faith.
Rudd is the mainstay of the parliamentary prayer group in Parliament House, Canberra. He is vocal about his Christianity and has given a number of prominent interviews to the Australian religious press on the topic. Rudd has defended church representatives engaging with policy debates, particularly with respect to WorkChoices legislation, climate change, global poverty, therapeutic cloning and asylum seekers. In an essay in The Monthly,
In May 2008, Rudd was drawn into the controversy over photographic artist Bill Henson and his work depicting naked adolescents as part of a show due to open at an inner-city gallery in Sydney. In a televised interview, Rudd stated that he found the images "absolutely revolting" and that they had "no artistic merit". These views swiftly drew censure from members of the 'creative stream' who attended the recent 2020 Summit convened by Rudd, led by actor Cate Blanchett.
When in Canberra, Rudd and Rein worship at St John the Baptist Church, Reid, where they were married.
Resignation as Prime Minister
Leadership challenge and resignation
at the Ballarat Botanical Gardens.]] On 23 June 2010, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Rudd's chief of staff, Alister Jordan, had talked to over half the Labor caucus to gauge the level of Rudd's support within the party. This followed significant media speculation that his deputy, Julia Gillard, would attempt a leadership challenge. Late that evening, after it became clear he had lost the support of key factional leaders, Rudd announced that a leadership ballot would take place between himself and Gillard on 24 June, which he would be contesting. At the meeting, it was clear that Gillard had the numbers to win and Rudd opted not to contest, stepping down as both party leader and Prime Minister. Rudd was not included in Gillard's reshuffled ministry, though she committed to appoint him to a senior cabinet position if the Labor Party was re-elected.Following the leadership challenge, Bill Shorten, the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children's Services and key Parliamentary member of the Labor Party's Right faction, nominated the government's handling of the insulation program; the sudden announcement of change of policy on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme; and the way in which they had "introduced the debate" about the Resource Super Profits Tax as the key considerations which had led to a collapse in support for Rudd's leadership of the party.
Barry Cohen, a former minister in the Hawke government, said that many in the Labor party caucus felt ignored by Rudd's centralist leadership style, and his at times insulting and rude treatment of staff and other ministers. Many were willing to overlook this due to his immense popularity, but when Rudd's poll numbers began to drop in late 2009 and 2010, they wanted to install a leader more able to establish consensus and involve the party caucus as a whole. Rudd is the first Australian Prime Minister to be removed from office by his own party during his first term. His first public statements after the operation were in an interview with ABC Radio National's Phillip Adams for Late Night Live, receiving wide national coverage; in it, he denied being the source of the political leaks concerning Julia Gillard. Upon a request from Prime Minister Gillard, Rudd later agreed to join the 2010 national campaign in order to boost the Labor government's chances of re-election.
Foreign Minister
in September 2010]] Rudd was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Gillard government and was sworn into this position on 14 September 2010. He represented Gillard at a UN General Assembly meeting in September 2010.Material relating to Kevin Rudd's term as prime minister was included in the United States diplomatic cables leaks released en masse by Wikileaks in 2010. As foreign minister, Rudd denounced the publication of classified documents by wikileaks. The Australian media extensively reported purported references to Rudd in the cables - including frank discussions between Rudd and US officials regarding China and Afghanistan; and negative assessments of some of Rudd's foreign policy initiatives and leadership style, written in confidence for the US government by the US Ambassador to Australia. See main article: Contents of the diplomatic cables leak - Australia
See also
Rudd Ministry List of Prime Ministers of Queen Elizabeth II
References
Bibliography
Crabb, Annabel. Rise of the Ruddbot:Observations from the Gallery. Melbourne : Black Inc., 2010. ISBN 978-1-86395-483-9 Hartcher, Peter. To the Bitter End : The Dramatic Story of the Fall of John Howard and the Rise of Kevin Rudd. Crows Nest, NSW:Allen & Unwin, 2009. ISBN 978-1-74175-623-4 Macklin, Robert. Kevin Rudd : The Biography, Camberwell, Vic.: Penguin Books Australia, 2007. ISBN 978-0-670-07135-7 Marr, David. Power Trip : The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd, Melbourne : Black Inc., 2010. [Quarterly Essay, Issue 38] ISBN 978-1-86395-477-8 Stuart, Nicholas, Kevin Rudd : An Unauthorised Political Biography, Melbourne:Scribe, 2007. ISBN 978-1-921215-58-2 Weller, Patrick, Kevin Rudd:The Making of a Prime Minister, Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-522-85748-1
External links
Official Parliamentary homepage for Kevin Rudd BBC Profile – Kevin Rudd "Kevin Rudd: The early years | Daily Telegraph" – Images |- |- |- |-
Category:1957 births Category:Australian Anglicans Category:Australian diplomats Category:Australian Labor Party politicians Category:Australian Leaders of the Opposition Category:Australian National University alumni Category:Australian people of English descent Category:Australian people of Irish descent Category:Australian republicans Category:Converts to Anglicanism Category:Government ministers of Australia Category:Living people Category:Members of the Australian House of Representatives Category:Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Griffith Category:Members of the Cabinet of Australia Category:People from Nambour, Queensland Category:Prime Ministers of Australia
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Coordinates | 64 |latm=10 |latNS=N |longd=51 |longm=44 |longEW=W°′″N°06′″N |
|---|---|
| Name | Julian Assange |
| Caption | Assange in 2010 |
| Birth date | July 03, 1971 |
| Birth place | Townsville, Queensland, Australia |
| Alma mater | University of Melbourne |
| Occupation | Editor-in-chief and spokesperson for WikiLeaks |
| Awards | Economist Freedom of Expression Award (2008)Amnesty International UK Media Award (2009)Sam Adams Award (2010) |
| Death date | |
| Nationality | Australian |
For his work with WikiLeaks Assange has received glowing praise and accolades, along with public condemnation and calls for his execution. He received a number of awards and nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award for publishing material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya and Readers' Choice for Time magazine's 2010 Person of the Year. He is currently on bail and under house arrest in England pending an extradition hearing. Assange has denied the allegations and claimed that they are politically motivated.
When he was one year old, his mother Christine married theatre director Brett Assange, who gave him his surname. Brett and Christine Assange ran a touring theatre company. His stepfather, Julian's first "real dad", described Julian as "a very sharp kid" with "a keen sense of right and wrong". "He always stood up for the underdog... he was always very angry about people ganging up on other people." and other organisations, via modem. After they split up, they engaged in a lengthy custody struggle, and did not agree on a custody arrangement until 1999. The entire process prompted Assange and his mother to form Parent Inquiry Into Child Protection, an activist group centered on creating a "central databank" for otherwise inaccessible legal records related to child custody issues in Australia. Starting in 1994, he lived in Melbourne as a programmer and a developer of free software. He helped to write the book (1997), which credits him as a researcher and reports his history with International Subversives. On his personal web page, he described having represented his university at the Australian National Physics Competition around 2005. In his blog he wrote, "the more secretive or unjust an organisation is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie.... Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance."
Assange sits on Wikileaks's nine-member advisory board, and has stated that he has the final decision in the process of vetting documents submitted to the site. In 2006, CounterPunch called him "Australia's most infamous former computer hacker." The Age has called him "one of the most intriguing people in the world" and "internet's freedom fighter."
WikiLeaks has been involved in the publication of material documenting extrajudicial killings in Kenya, a report of toxic waste dumping on the coast of Côte d'Ivoire, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike video, and material involving large banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer among other documents.
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that Assange "is serving our [American] democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country." On the issue of national security considerations for the US, Ellsberg added that "He's obviously a very competent guy in many ways. I think his instincts are that most of this material deserves to be out. We are arguing over a very small fragment that doesn’t. He has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody's national security". Assange told London reporters that the leaked cables showed US ambassadors around the world were ordered "to engage in espionage behavior" which he said seemed to be "representative of a gradual shift to a lack of rule of law in US institutions that needs to be exposed and that we have been exposing."
On 29 November 2010, in the aftermath of WikiLeaks release of more classified American documents Sarah Palin wrote of Assange on her Facebook page, "He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?" she added, "Assange is not a 'journalist', any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist'."
A number of political and media commentators, as well as current and former US government officials, have accused Assange of terrorism. US Vice President Joe Biden argued that Assange was "closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon papers." In May 2010 Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had used the phrase, calling Assange "a high-tech terrorist", and saying "he has done enormous damage to our country. I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law".
Also in May 2010, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said: "Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed, is terrorism, and Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant." In December 2010 former Nixon aide and talk radio host G. Gordon Liddy told WorldNetDaily, "Julian Assange is a severe national security threat to the U.S., and that then leads to what to do about it. This fellow Anwar al-Awlaki – a joint U.S. citizen hiding out in Yemen – is on a 'kill list' [for inciting terrorism against the U.S.]. Mr. Assange should be put on the same list."
Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin condemned Assange’s detention as "undemocratic". A source within the office of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested that Assange be nominated for a Nobel Prize, and said that "Public and non-governmental organisations should think of how to help him."
In December 2010, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank LaRue, said Assange or other WikiLeaks staff should not face legal accountability for any information they disseminated, noting that "if there is a responsibility by leaking information it is of, exclusively of the person that made the leak and not of the media that publish it. And this is the way that transparency works and that corruption has been confronted in many cases."
Daniel Ellsberg, who was working in the U.S. Department of Defense when he leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, was a signatory to a statement by an international group of former intelligence officers and ex-government officials in support of Assange’s work, which was released in late December 2010. Other signatories included David MacMichael, Ray McGovern, and five recipients of annual Sam Adams Award: Frank Grevil, Katharine Gun, Craig Murray, Coleen Rowley and Larry Wilkerson. Ellsberg has said, "If I released the Pentagon Papers today, the same rhetoric and the same calls would be made about me ... I would be called not only a traitor — which I was [called] then, which was false and slanderous — but I would be called a terrorist... Assange and Bradley Manning are no more terrorists than I am."
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has come under widespread condemnation and a backlash within her own party for failing to support Assange after calling the leaks "an illegal act" and suggesting that his Australian passport should be cancelled. Hundreds of lawyers, academics and journalists came forward in his support with Attorney-General Robert McClelland, unable to explain how Assange had broken Australian law. Opposition Legal Affairs spokesman, Senator George Brandis, a Queen's Counsel, accused Gillard of being "clumsy" with her language, stating, "As far as I can see, he (Assange) hasn't broken any Australian law, nor does it appear he has broken any American laws." Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, who supports Assange, stated that any decision to cancel the passport would be his, not Gillard's. Queen's Counsel Peter Faris, who acted for Assange in a hacking case 15 years ago, said that the motives of Swedish authorities in seeking Assange's extradition for alleged sex offences are suspect: "You have to say: why are they [Sweden] pursuing it? It's pretty obvious that if it was Bill Bloggs, they wouldn't be going to the trouble." Following the Swedish Embassy issuing of a "prepared and unconvincing reply" in response to letters of protest, Gillard was called on to send a message to Sweden "querying the way charges were laid, investigated and dropped, only to be picked up again by a different prosecutor."
On 10 December 2010 over five hundred people rallied outside Sydney Town Hall and about three hundred and fifty people gathered in Brisbane where Assange's lawyer, Rob Stary, criticised Julia Gillard's position, telling the rally that the Australian government was a "sycophant" of the US. A petition circulated by GetUp!, who have placed full page ads in support of Assange in The New York Times and The Washington Times, received more than signatures. Accepting the award, Assange said, "It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented." Readers' Choice in Time magazine's Person of the Year poll, and runner-up for Person of the Year., and an informal poll of editors at Postmedia Network named him the top newsmaker for the year after six out of 10 felt Assange had "affected profoundly how information is seen and delivered".
Le Monde named him person of the year with fifty six percent of the votes in their online poll. Le Monde is one of the five publications to cooperate with Wikileaks' publication of the recent document leaking.
Claes Borgström, who represents the two women, appealed against the decision to drop the rape investigation. The Swedish Director of Public Prosecution then reopened and expanded the investigation on 1 September. Swedish investigators reinterviewed the two women, wanting to clarify their allegations before talking to Assange but he left Sweden on 27 September, according to statements in UK court, and refused to return to Stockholm for questioning in October, according to Borgström. According to Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, Assange made repeated attempts to contact the prosecution, spending over a month in Stockholm before obtaining permission to leave the country, with the Swedish prosecution stating an interview would not be required.
On 18 November 2010 the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny asked the local district court for a warrant for Assange in order for him to be heard by the prosecutor. The court ordered detention as a suspect with probable cause for rape, sexual assault, and coercion. An appeal from the legal representatives of Assange was turned down by the Svea Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Sweden declined to hear the case. On 6 December 2010, Scotland Yard notified Assange that a valid European arrest warrant had been received. He presented himself to the Metropolitan Police the next morning and was remanded to London's Wandsworth Prison. On 16 December he was granted bail and placed under house arrest at Ellingham Hall, Norfolk, the High Court Judge rejected the prosecution's argument that he was a flight risk. Bail was set at £240,000 surety with £200,000 ($312,700) required to be actually deposited in the courts account.
On release Assange said "I hope to continue my work and continue to protest my innocence in this matter," Assange claimed that the extradition proceedings to Sweden were "actually an attempt to get me into a jurisdiction which will then make it easier to extradite me to the US." Swedish prosecutors have denied the case has anything to do with WikiLeaks. His defence team outlined seven strands of their argument, including a challenge for abuse of process as well as the potential risks to Assange's person were he "rendered" to the US.
In late November 2010, Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas of Ecuador spoke about giving Assange residency with "no conditions... so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the Internet but in a variety of public forums". Lucas believed that Ecuador may benefit from initiating a dialogue with Assange. Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino stated on 30 November that the residency application would "have to be studied from the legal and diplomatic perspective". A few hours later, President Rafael Correa stated that WikiLeaks "committed an error by breaking the laws of the United States and leaking this type of information... no official offer was [ever] made." Correa noted that Lucas was speaking "on his own behalf"; additionally, he will launch an investigation into possible ramifications Ecuador would suffer from the release of the cables. He was ultimately released, in part because journalist Vaughan Smith offered to provide Assange with an address for bail during the extradition proceedings, Smith's Norfolk mansion, Ellingham Hall.
Category:1971 births Category:Australian Internet personalities Category:Australian activists Category:Australian computer programmers Category:Australian journalists Category:Australian whistleblowers Category:Internet activists Category:Living people Category:People from Townsville, Queensland Category:University of Melbourne alumni Category:WikiLeaks
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Coordinates | 64 |latm=10 |latNS=N |longd=51 |longm=44 |longEW=W°′″N°06′″N |
|---|---|
| Honorific-prefix | The Honourable |
| Name | John Howard |
| Honorific-suffix | AC, SSI |
| Order | 25th Prime Minister of Australia |
| Term start | 11 March 1996 |
| Term end | 3 December 2007 |
| Monarch | Elizabeth II |
| Deputy | Tim Fischer (1996–99)John Anderson (1999–05)Mark Vaile (2005–07) |
| Predecessor | Paul Keating |
| Successor | Kevin Rudd |
| Order2 | 29th |
| Office2 | Treasurer of Australia |
| Primeminister2 | Malcolm Fraser |
| Term start2 | 19 November 1977 |
| Term end2 | 11 March 1983 |
| Predecessor2 | Phillip Lynch |
| Successor2 | Paul Keating |
| Office3 | 22nd Leader of the Opposition |
| Term start3 | 5 September 1985 |
| Term end3 | 9 May 1989 |
| Deputy3 | Neil Brown (1985–87) Andrew Peacock (1987–89) |
| Predecessor3 | Andrew Peacock |
| Successor3 | Andrew Peacock |
| Term start4 | 30 January 1995 |
| Term end4 | 11 March 1996 |
| Deputy4 | Peter Costello |
| Predecessor4 | Alexander Downer |
| Successor4 | Kim Beazley |
| Constituency mp5 | Bennelong |
| Parliament5 | Australian |
| Term start5 | 18 May 1974 |
| Term end5 | 24 November 2007 |
| Predecessor5 | John Cramer |
| Successor5 | Maxine McKew |
| Birth date | July 26, 1939 |
| Birth place | Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Party | Liberal Party of Australia |
| Spouse | Janette Howard |
| Alma mater | University of Sydney |
| Profession | Solicitor |
| Religion | Anglican |
| Signature | John Howard Signature.svg |
John Winston Howard AC, SSI, (born 26 July 1939) was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies.
Howard was a member of the House of Representatives from 1974 to 2007, representing the Division of Bennelong, New South Wales. He served as Treasurer in the Fraser government of from 1977 to 1983. He was Leader of the Liberal Party and Coalition Opposition from 1985 to 1989, which included the 1987 federal election against Bob Hawke. He was re-elected as Leader of the Opposition in 1995.
Howard led the Liberal-National Coalition to victory at the 1996 federal election, defeating Paul Keating's Labor government and ending a record 13 years of Coalition opposition. The Howard Government was re-elected at the 1998, 2001 and 2004 elections, presiding over a period of strong economic growth and prosperity. Major issues for the Howard Government included taxation, industrial relations, immigration, the Iraq war, and Aboriginal relations. Howard's coalition government was defeated at the 2007 election by the Labor Party led by Kevin Rudd. Howard also lost his own parliamentary seat at the election; he was the second Australian Prime Minister, after Stanley Bruce in 1929, to do so.
Howard grew up in the Sydney suburb of Earlwood in a Methodist family. His mother had been an office worker until her marriage. His father and his paternal grandfather, Walter Howard, were both veterans of the First AIF in World War I. They also ran two Dulwich Hill petrol stations where John Howard worked as a boy. Lyall Howard died in 1955 when John was sixteen, leaving his mother to take care of John (or "Jack" as he was also known).
Howard suffered a hearing impairment in his youth, leaving him with a slight speech impediment, and he continues to wear a hearing aid. It also influenced him in subtle ways, limiting his early academic performance; encouraging a reliance on an excellent memory; and in his mind ruling out becoming a barrister as a likely career.
Howard attended the publicly funded state schools Earlwood Primary School and Canterbury Boys' High School. Cricket remained a life-long hobby. After gaining his Leaving Certificate, he studied law at the University of Sydney, graduating in 1961,
At the 1963 federal election, Howard acted as campaign manager in his local seat of Parkes for the successful candidacy of Tom Hughes who defeated the 20 year Labor incumbent.
In 1967 with the support of party power brokers, John Carrick and Eric Willis, he was endorsed as candidate for the marginal suburban state seat of Drummoyne, held by ALP member Reg Coady. Howard's mother sold the family home in Earlwood and rented a house with him at Five Dock, a suburb within the electorate. At the election in February 1968, in which the incumbent state Liberal government was returned to office, Howard narrowly lost to Coady, despite campaigning vigorously. Howard and his mother subsequently returned to Earlwood, moving to a house on the same street where he grew up.
At the 1974 federal election, Howard successfully contested the Sydney suburban seat of Bennelong and became a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives during the Gough Whitlam-led Labor Government. Howard backed Malcolm Fraser for the leadership of the Liberal Party against Billy Snedden following the 1974 election. When Fraser won office in December 1975, Howard was appointed Minister for Business and Consumer Affairs, a position in which he served until 1977.
Fraser's negotiations with the ACTU saw him lose control of a wages explosion in 1982 just as the mining boom had ended. The economic crises of the early 1980s brought Howard into conflict with the economically conservative Fraser. As the economy headed towards the worst recession since the 1930s, Keynesian Fraser pushed an expansionary fiscal position much to Howard's and Treasury's horror. With his authority as treasurer being flouted, Howard considered resigning in July 1982, but, after discussions with his wife and senior advisor John Hewson (Liberal Party leader himself from 1990 to 1994), he decided to "tough it out".
The Fraser Government with Howard as Treasurer lost the 1983 election to the Labor Party led by Bob Hawke. Over the course of the 1980s, the Liberal party came to accept the free-market policies that Fraser had resisted and Howard had espoused; namely low protection, decentralisation of wage fixation, financial deregulation, a broadly-based indirect tax, and the rejection of counter-cyclical fiscal policy.
;Leader of the opposition and new economic policy Howard was in effect the Liberal party's first pro-market leader in the conservative coalition and spent the next two years working to revise Liberal policy away from that of Fraser's. In his own words he was an "economic radical" and a social conservative. Referring to the pro-market liberalism of the 1980s, Howard, famously said in July 1986 that "The times will suit me". That year the economy was seen to be in crisis with a 40% devaluation of the Australian dollar, a marked increase in the current account deficit and the loss of the Federal Government's triple A rating.
To capitalise on Coalition disunity, Hawke called the 1987 election six months early. In addition to the Howard–Peacock rivalry, Queensland National Party criticism of the federal Liberal and National leadership led to a split in the Coalition whereby Nationals ran against Liberals, and culminated in the "Joh for Canberra" campaign. Keating successfully campaigned against John Howard's proposed tax changes forcing Howard to admit a double-counting in the proposal, and emphasising to the electorate that the package would mean at that stage undisclosed cuts to government services. The Hawke Government was re-elected with an increased majority.
;Howard's social agenda In his social agenda, Howard promoted the traditional family and was antipathetic to the promotion of multiculturalism at the expense of a shared Australian identity. The immigration policy, One Australia, outlined a vision of "one nation and one future" and opposed multiculturalism. The comments divided opinion within the Coalition, and undermined Howard's standing amongst Liberal party figures including federal and state Ministers, intellectual opinion makers, business leaders, and within the Asia Pacific. Prime Minister Hawke moved a motion to affirm that race or ethnicity would not be used as immigrant selection criteria to which three Liberal MPs crossed the floor and two abstained. Many Liberals later nominated the issue as instrumental in Howard subsequently losing the leadership in 1989.
In line with "One Australia's" rejection of Aboriginal land rights, Howard said the idea of an Aboriginal treaty was "repugnant to the ideals of One Australia"
;Loss of the leadership As the country's economic position worsened in 1989, public opinion moved away from Labor, but Howard was unable to translate this into a firm opinion poll lead for himself and the Coalition. In February, Liberal Party president and prominent businessman, John Elliott, said confidentially to Andrew Peacock that he would support him in a leadership challenge against Howard. The loss of the Liberal Party leadership to Peacock deeply affected Howard, who admitted he would occasionally drink too much. Declining Peacock's offer of Shadow Education, Howard went to the backbench and a new period of party disunity ensued. Howard served as Shadow Minister for Industry, Technology and Communications, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader on the Public Service, Chairman of the Manpower and Labour Market Reform Group, Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations and Manager of Opposition Business in the House.
Following the Coalition's 1990 election loss, Peacock was replaced with former Howard staffer Dr. John Hewson. Howard was a supporter of Hewson's economic program, with a Goods and Services Tax (GST) as its centrepiece. After Hewson lost the "unloseable" 1993 election to Paul Keating, Howard unsuccessfully challenged Hewson for the leadership. In 1994, he was again passed over for the leadership, which went to Alexander Downer. In a 7 January 1995 newspaper article (and in 2002 as Prime Minister), Howard recanted his 1988 remarks on curbing Asian immigration.
;Opposition leader again In January 1995, leaked internal Liberal Party polling showed that with gaffe-prone Downer as leader, the Coalition had slim chance of holding its marginal seats in the next election, let alone of winning government. Media speculation of a leadership spill ended when, on 26 January 1995, Downer resigned as Liberal Leader and Howard was elected unopposed to replace him. At the age of 56, he was sworn in as Prime Minister on 11 March 1996, ending a record 13 years of Coalition opposition. Howard departed with tradition and made his primary residence Kirribilli House rather than The Lodge.
Early in the term Howard had championed significant new restrictions on gun ownership following the Port Arthur massacre in which 35 people had been shot dead. Achieving agreement in the face of immense opposition from within the Coalition and some State governments, was credited with significantly elevating John Howard’s stature as Prime Minister despite a backlash from core Coalition rural constituents.
Howard's initial silence on the views of Pauline Hanson—a disendorsed Liberal Party candidate and later independent MP—was criticised in the press as an endorsement of her views. Howard said that she was entitled to express her opinion, that many others would share it, and that to denounce her would "elevate it". Howard repudiated her views seven months after Hanson's controversial maiden parliamentary speech. A long held conviction of Howard’s, his tax reform package was credited with "breaking the circuit" of party morale—boosting his confidence and direction, which had appeared to wane early in the Government’s second term. The 1998 election was dubbed a "referendum on the GST", and the tax changes—including the GST—were implemented in the government's second term after amendments to the legislation were negotiated with the Australian Democrats to ensure its passage through the Senate.
Through much of its first term, opinion polling was disappointing for the government and its members at times feared being a "one-term wonder". The popularity of Pauline Hanson, and the new restrictions on gun ownership drew many traditionally Coalition voters away from the Howard government. Also unpopular with voters were large spending cuts aimed at eliminating the budget deficit (and Howard's distinction between "core" and "non-core" election promises when cutting spending commitments), industrial changes and the 1998 waterfront dispute, the partial sale of government telecommunications company Telstra, and the Government's commitment to a GST.
Howard called a snap election for October 1998, three months sooner than required. The Coalition actually lost the national two-party preferred vote to Labor, suffering a 14-seat swing. However, the uneven nature of the swing allowed Howard to win a second term in government, with a considerably reduced majority (from 45 seats to 12). Howard himself finished just short of a majority on the first count in his own seat. He ultimately finished with a fairly comfortable 56 percent of the two-party preferred vote.
Although new Indonesian President B.J. Habibie had some months earlier agreed to grant special autonomy to Indonesian-occupied East Timor, his subsequent snap decision for a referendum on the territory's independence was triggered by a Howard and Downer orchestrated shift in Australian policy. In September 1999, Howard organised an Australian-led international peace-keeping force to East Timor (INTERFET), after pro-Indonesia militia launched a violent "scorched-earth" campaign in retaliation to the referendum's overwhelming vote in favour of independence. The successful mission was widely supported by Australian voters, but the government was criticised for "foreign policy failure" following the violence and collapse of diplomatic relations with Indonesia. By Howard's fourth term, relations with Indonesia had recovered to include counter-terrorism cooperation and Australia's $1bn Boxing Day Tsunami relief efforts, and were assisted by good relations between Howard and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Throughout his prime-ministership, Howard was resolute in his refusal to provide a parliamentary "apology" to Indigenous Australians as recommended by the 1997 “Bringing Them Home” Report. Howard argued this was inappropriate, because "Australians of this generation should not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies." Howard did offer this personal apology before the release of the Report: "I feel deep sorrow for those of my fellow Australians who suffered injustices under the practices of past generations towards indigenous people. Equally, I am sorry for the hurt and trauma many here today may continue to feel, as a consequence of these practices”.
In 1999 Howard negotiated a "Motion of Reconciliation" with Aboriginal Senator Aden Ridgeway. Eschewing use of the word "sorry", the motion recognised mistreatment of Aborigines as the "most blemished chapter" in Australia's history; offered "deep and sincere regret" for past injustices. Following his 2007 loss of the Prime Ministership, Howard was the only living former Prime Minister who declined to attend the February 2008 apology made by Kevin Rudd with bi-partisan support.
Howard did not commit to serving a full term if he won the next election; on his 61st birthday in July 2000 he said he would consider the question of retirement when he turned 64. This was interpreted as boosting Costello’s leadership aspirations, and the enmity over leadership and succession resurfaced publicly when Howard did not retire at the age of 64. In the first half of 2001, rising petrol prices, voter enmity over the implementation of the GST, a spike in inflation and economic slowdown led to bad opinion polls and predictions the Government would lose office in the election later that year. With Howard telling Cabinet he would not be "sacrificed on the pyre of ideological purity", the government announced a series of policy reversals and softenings which boosted the government's fortunes, as did news that the economy had avoided recession. Following the Liberal Party win at the Aston by-election, Howard said that the Coalition was "back in the game". Howard led the government to victory in the 2001 federal election with an increased majority.
Howard responded to the 2002 Bali bombing, in which 88 Australian citizens were killed, by calling on Australians to "wrap their arms around the people of Indonesia" and said that, while affected, Australia remained "strong and free and open and tolerant". Howard re-dedicated his government to the "War on Terror", saying the Bali bombing was proof that no country was "immune" to the effects of terrorism.
In March 2003, Australia joined the US-led "Multinational force in Iraq" in sending 2,000 troops and naval units to support in the invasion of Iraq. Howard said that the invasion to "disarm Iraq...is right, it is lawful, and it is in Australia’s national interest." He later said that the decision to go into Iraq was the most difficult he made as Prime Minister. In response to the Australian participation in the invasion, there were large protests in Australian cities during March 2003, and Prime Minister Howard was heckled from the public gallery of Parliament House. While opinion polls showed that opposition to the war without UN backing was between 48 and 92 per cent, Howard remained preferred prime-minister over opposition leader, Simon Crean, and his approval dropped compared to before the war.
Throughout 2002 and 2003 Howard had increased his opinion poll lead over Labor leader, Simon Crean. In December 2003, Crean resigned after losing party support and Mark Latham was elected leader. Howard called an election for 9 October 2004. While the government was behind Labor in the opinion polls, Howard himself had a large lead over Latham as preferred Prime Minister. In the lead up to the election, Howard again did not commit to serving a full term. Howard campaigned on the theme of trust, asking: "Who do you trust to keep the economy strong, and protect family living standards? Who do you trust to keep interest rates low?" Howard attacked Latham's economic record as Mayor of Liverpool City Council and attacked Labor's economic history saying: "It is an historic fact that interest rates have always gone up under Labor governments over the last 30 years, because Labor governments spend more than they collect and drive budgets into deficit ... So it will be with a Latham Labor government... I will guarantee that interest rates are always going to be lower under a Coalition government." The election resulted in an increased Coalition majority in the House of Representatives and the first, albeit slim, government majority in the Senate since 1981. For the second time since becoming Prime Minister, Howard had to go to preferences in order to win another term in his own seat winning 53.3 percent of the two-party preferred vote. On 21 December 2004, Howard became the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies.
In April 2006, the government announced it had completely paid off the last of $96 billion of Commonwealth net debt inherited when it came to power in 1996. By 2007, Howard had been in office for 11 of the 15 years of consecutive annual growth enjoyed by the Australian economy. Unemployment had fallen from 8.1% at the start of his term to 4.1% in 2007, and average weekly earnings grew 24.4% in real terms.
In 2006, Ian McLachlan and Peter Costello said that under a 1994 deal between Howard and Costello, Howard would serve one and half terms as Prime Minister if the Coalition won the next election before stepping aside to allow Costello to take over. Howard denied that this constituted a deal; and there were calls for Costello to either challenge or quit. Citing strong party room support for him as leader, Howard stated later that month that he would remain to contest the 2007 election. Six weeks before the election, Howard said that, if elected, he would stand down during the next term, and anointed Costello as his successor. Peter Costello commented, in 2007 whilst still in government, that "The Howard treasurership was not a success in terms of interest rates and inflation... he had not been a great reformer," and questioned Howard's account of his conflicts with the Prime Minister Fraser.
The Coalition trailed Labor in opinion polls from mid-2006 onward, but Howard still consistently led Labor leader Kim Beazley on the question of preferred Prime Minister – and was even described as a "revolutionary" in his opposition to unionism. In December 2006, after Kevin Rudd became Labor leader, the two-party preferred deficit widened even further and Rudd swiftly overtook Howard as preferred Prime Minister. Howard chaired APEC Australia 2007, culminating in the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in Sydney during September. The meeting was at times overshadowed by further leadership speculation following continued poor poll results.
In the election, Howard and his government were soundly defeated, suffering a 23-seat swing to Labor—almost as large as the 29-seat swing that propelled him to power in 1996. Howard lost his seat of Bennelong to former journalist Maxine McKew by 44,685 votes (51.4 percent) to Howard's 42,251 (48.6 percent). The final tally indicated that McKew defeated Howard on the 14th count due to a large flow of Green preferences to her; 3,793 (78.84 percent) of Green voters listed McKew as their second preference.
Howard told a former colleague that losing Bennelong was a "silver lining in the thunder cloud of defeat" as it spared him the ignominy of opposition. He remained in office as caretaker Prime Minister until the formal swearing in of Rudd's government on 3 December. Howard is the second Australian Prime Minister, after Stanley Bruce, to lose his seat in an election.
After the election loss, Costello declined to accept the role of leader of the opposition, and Brendan Nelson was elected as leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party.
Federal Liberal Party director Brian Loughnane said "it was the failure of Kim Beazley's leadership that had masked voter concerns about Howard". Media analysis of The Australian Election Study, a postal survey of 1873 voters during the 2007 poll, found that although respondents respected Howard and thought he had won the 6-week election campaign, Howard was considered "at odds with public opinion on cut-through issues", his opponent had achieved the highest "likeability" rating in the survey's 20-year history, and a majority had decided their voting intention prior to the election campaign.
The Australian and New Zealand cricket boards jointly nominated Howard as their candidate for president of the International Cricket Council. However, his nomination was rejected by the ICC's executive board in Singapore after members from six countries signaled their intention to block the appointment. Howard is currently the chairman of the International Democrat Union, a body of international conservative political parties.
Howard's autobiography Lazarus Rising: A Personal and Political Autobiography was released on 26 October 2010. While promoting his autobiography on ABC's Q&A;, an audience member threw his shoes at Howard while appearing to shout "That is for the Iraqi dead," much in the same way Iraqi journalist, Muntazer al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush in 2008, also in protest over the Iraq War.
2007}} 1977}} 1983}} 1989}} 1996}} 2007}} 1985}} 1989}} 2007}} 2003}}
Category:1939 births Category:Living people Category:Prime Ministers of Australia Category:Treasurers of Australia Category:Members of the Cabinet of Australia Category:Australian Leaders of the Opposition Category:Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Bennelong Category:Members of the Australian House of Representatives Category:Liberal Party of Australia politicians Category:Commonwealth Chairpersons-in-Office Category:Australian monarchists Category:Old Cantabrians Category:People from Sydney Category:Australian Anglicans Category:Recipients of the Centenary Medal Category:Companions of the Order of Australia Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:University of Sydney alumni
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Coordinates | 64 |latm=10 |latNS=N |longd=51 |longm=44 |longEW=W°′″N°06′″N |
|---|---|
| Name | Anthony Ackroyd |
| Birthdate | 30 June 1958 |
| Occupation | comedian, speaker and writer |
He began performing stand up comedy at the Sydney Comedy Store in the 1980s. Television exposure quickly followed with frequent appearances on popular TV shows such as "The Video Comedy Store", "Hey, Hey, It's Saturday" and "The Midday Show". From 1989–1991 he was a cast member on ABC TV's pioneering live comedy show "The Big Gig". During the 1990s he appeared on TV shows including "Good News Week", "Tonight Live", "Mornings with Kerri-Anne", and "Pizza". He performed the critically acclaimed comedy monologue "Karma Comedian" on ABC's "The Smallest Room In The House" which detailed many aspects of his life to that point with great honesty.
Ackroyd's one man shows have included "Anthony Ackroyd in His Own Little World", "Ecstasy and How To Get It", "At Last The Truth About Everything", and "The Fruit Of My Lions".
Both the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian newspapers acknowledged Ackroyd as one of the best comedians of his generation. Cosmopolitan Magazine dubbed him "The Man Of The Moment". "Beat Magazine" declared him "one of the ultimate comedy legends".
He has written for TV and film including the highly successful Australian sketch show "The Comedy Company" and two years writing for an internet sitcom spin off for Jim Carrey's Ace Ventura character. Ackroyd's articles have appeared in publications such as Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Vogue, Life Etc, Studio, Eco Magazine, Parenting, Men's Stuff, and Good Taste.
Ackroyd's film work includes roles in the movies "Reckless Kelly", Geno", and "Willful". He provided the voice of Dragon on the award winning children's TV show "Magic Mountain".
Seeking meaning beyond fame Ackroyd became a clowndoctor and spent years creating laughter in children's hospitals. He became an official Laughter Group Leader with Laughter Group International and has taught thousands of people techniques for creating their own laughter. During this period he married and devoted much of his energy to hands on fathering. He turned this experience into comic material for his show "The Fruit Of My Lions".
Ackroyd re-emerged into the public eye as an international speaker and workshop leader lecturing on the power of laughter and positive energy to transform all aspects of life.
Ackroyd wrote a series of articles in 2007 and 2008 for the Sydney Morning Herald which focused on comedy as a social force and looked at the impact of comedians such as Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, the Monty Python team, and Australia's leading satirical ensemble "The Chaser". He wrote the obituary for George Carlin, published in the Sydney Morning Herald.
This examination of comedy's power in society led Ackroyd to declare that "comedy is the correct response to life". He now devotes himself to writing and performing comedy for stage, print media, TV, and feature films. Due to an uncanny resemblance, Ackroyd became the world's leading impersonator of Australian ex-Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd and now is a renowned impersonator of political figures.
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