A Mandarin-Speaking Prime Minister for Australia
There was no doubt some handwringing, not to say heartburn, in the White House recently when America’s great Australian ally, John Howard, leader of Australia’s conservative coalition government, was defeated in Australia’s general election. Howard had been prime minister since 1996, and was a staunch ally of President George Bush. He had sent his country’s best troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion of 2002, and when the U.S. invaded Iraq in March of 2003, Howard sent troops there also. Howard had a blunt, Anglo-Saxon conservative view of life that was instantly attractive to George Bush. The two men clearly liked each other.
Now that a Labour Party leader has come to power, the first since Paul Keating in 1996, the White House may feel it has reason to be nervous about the attitudes and policies of one of America’s hitherto staunchest allies on the world scene. Rudd has said unequivocally that he will sign the Kyoto Protocol on pollution control, which the Bush Administration has refused to do, and that he will withdraw the estimated 550 Australian troops who are serving in Iraq.
Though many Australians have said that Rudd on economic policies is a younger version of the conservative Howard—both men believe in a vigorous free-market economy for Australia—Rudd has called for a more “compassionate” approach to those who fall through the safety nets of the capitalist economy. “Compassion is not a dirty word,” is a famous Rudd quote. He is known to favor social policies which will expand welfare provisions to the poor and has said that he will publicly apologize to the Aborigenes of Australia for past offenses committed against them by white Australians.
Rudd, who is 50, has been a member of parliament for only nine years. Before that he had served in significant political positions in the government of the state of Queensland, and later was a China consultant for KPMG, a global network of companies in the auditing, tax, and advising business. He openly campaigned for the top Labour Party position by asking support from another powerful Labour politician who was a woman, Julia Gillard, in return for promising her a government position if Labour won. Rudd kept his promise this week and announced that Gillard would be deputy prime minister, the first woman to hold that position in Australian history.
Before becoming leader of the Labour Party, Rudd had a reputation for being bookish, intellectual, and occasionally arrogant in the way he expressed himself. But in a moment of candor he confessed that he had four years ago visited a lap-dancing club in the U.S. The problem of that incident, he said, was that he was so drunk he couldn’t remember what happened. Americans might have been shocked and offended by the confession. Australians, who love their leaders to be “regular blokes” and susceptible to the foibles of “regular blokes” as well, roared with delight at the story. Rudd’s popularity in the polls immediately climbed several points.
The White House of President Bush, however, though ostensibly too pious to enjoy that particular narrative, would be well advised to look much more closely at Kevin Rudd, for he may turn out to be more useful to the U.S. than his support of the Kyoto Protocol suggests, and far more in sympathy with President Bush’s philosophy than currently supposed. First, Kevin Rudd is the first elected leader of any significant Western nation who speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese. He studied it first at university in Australia, and then lived in Beijing as an officer at the Australian embassy for eight years in the 1980’s. (I was also living in Beijing during that time, but I don’t recall having met Rudd). At the recent APEC summit in Australia, Rudd stunned both the Chinese present and foreign reporters by address China’s leader Hu Jintao in fluent Mandarin. He told the Chinese Communist Party leader revealingly that one of his sons had studied at Shanghai’s Fudan University and another, younger son, was studying Chinese in elementary school. It is not just his linguistic ability in Mandarin, however, that is important in Rudd’s background. He has both a deep love for China and a respect for its culture. At a time when the U.S.-China relationship seems sure to have further rocky moments, a leader of a fellow Anglo-Saxon democracy who understands China is likely to be a major asset to the U.S.
The other important feature of Kevin Rudd is that he is a committed, church-going Protestant Christian. Just as Tony Blair, initially as a British Labour Party leader more in tune with President Clinton, was able to establish a remarkable bond with President Bush through their shared Christian faith, it is certainly possible that Rudd will be able to establish, through shared faith, a similar rapport with Bush.
Revealingly, former Prime Minister Blair told a British interviewer that his faith had been “deeply important” to him while prime minister, but he never wanted to speak publicly of it out of fear that he might be considered a “nutter.” Rudd is sure to keep his own faith expressions strictly private because Australian attitudes towards outspoken religious commitment are just as irreverent as British attitudes. Two years ago, however, speaking to a Christian meeting in Sydney, Rudd was not at all inhibited in expressing his views of religion and politics. “Let us take the message of the good news,” he said, to the hungry and the naked in this city, in the nation, and the world beyond.”
Rudd has written and spoken at serious venues of his great Christian hero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a consistent opponent of the Nazis and was executed by them for being associated with a plot to assassinate Hitler. “I think what Bonhoeffer does for people who are Christians in politics in every age and in every culture,” Rudd told an Australian radio interviewer more than a year ago, “is to say this: that Christian ethics are a dead letter unless they are translated into real concrete social action in pursuit of social justice.”
It seems to me that, with that approach to the great issues of the era, America’s friendly relations with Australia are alive and well.
Dr. Aikman, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, was for many years senior correspondent for Time.
Columns, David Aikman, Global Culture, Tue 04 Dec 2007
