Sweeping into power last weekend, Labor has articulated a convincing long-term view of how Australia can best prosper in the global knowledge economy, writes Colm Kearney.
The huge swing against the Liberal Party looks set to cost former prime minister John Howard his "blue ribbon" Liberal seat at the expense of a first-time Labor candidate, and his treasurer of 11 years, Peter Costello, has announced he will retire from politics rather than become the opposition leader.
This leaves a gaping leadership vacuum in the opposition and the need for generational rebuilding.
Most media attention is now focused on new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, Welsh-born deputy prime minister Julia Gillard, and their mandate to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and withdraw all combat troops from Iraq. Both have implications for US president George Bush and the international community.
How did Labor pull off this resounding win when the economy was doing so well, riding the resources boom and the benefits of relative proximity to powerhouse economies in China and India?
Some say the electorate was tired of the Liberals. This is only part of the answer. The real reason is that Labor articulated a convincing vision of how Australia can best prosper in the new global knowledge economy.
Basing its policies on the best available international research, Labor articulated three fundamental principles.
First, education is key to competitiveness and prosperity in the 21st century.
Second, protecting the environment helps rather than impedes business.
Third, flexibility for working families raises productivity and well-being.
Education under Howard's Liberals was mainly a social issue about workplace equity and helping people reach their full potential.
Labor has placed it at the centre of its economic policy agenda. Referring to the 19th century industrial revolution, the 20th century technology revolution and the 21st century education revolution, Rudd recognises that education is the key to creating a globally competitive economy.
Failure to keep up, he argues, will mean Australia will become China's quarry and Japan's beach. Labor will invest in education at all levels; childhood, primary and secondary school, vocational education, Universities, and the workplace. The initiatives include:
• In early education, all pre-school four-year-olds will have access to 15 hours of quality learning per week for 40 weeks per year.
• In secondary school, every student will have access to computers with broadband internet. There will be multi-annual funding commitments and a new rigorous, consistent and quality curriculum. There will be new programmes in maths, science and languages, especially Japanese, Indonesian, Mandarin and Korean.
• In skills development and training, some 450,000 new places will be funded, two thirds for people in work and the rest for those marginally in or outside the workforce.
• In universities, there will be targeted investment aligned to institutional strengths, AU$111 million to promote maths and science, double the number of postgraduate research masters and PhD scholarships, 1,000 mid-career research fellowships of AU$140,000 a year, and fellowships to induce outstanding Australian researchers based overseas to return.
• All this is backed up by a massive AU$4.7 billion investment to build a national high-speed broadband network 40 times the current speed.
In addition to immediately signing the Kyoto Protocol, the Rudd government has a very extensive environmental agenda with initiatives too numerous to detail here. Apart from those mentioned below, they include coastal protection, saving the Barrier Reef and taking Japan to the International Court of Justice and/or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to end the killing of whales. The main initiatives include:
• An AU$2 billion wind farm scheme to promote alternative energy.
• An AU$500 million green car fund to promote the manufacture of Australian-made alternative fuel cars.
• A 20 per cent renewable energy target by 2020.
• Tax rebates for solar power, solar hot water systems, rainwater tanks, rebates for landlords to install insulation, and low interest green loans for solar systems and water and energy savings measures.
• A clean energy innovation centre and export strategy.
In addition to softening the inherited industrial relations landscape and introducing a raft of social inclusion initiatives as would be expected under Labor, the following initiatives will assist working families to better balance work and family commitments:
• Some 260 new child care centres located on school sites to alleviate the "double drop-off" in getting children to child care and school before work.
• Flexible working arrangements for parents of pre-school children, including part-time, job-sharing, flexible hours and working from home.
• Each parent will be entitled to separate 12-month unpaid parental leave, giving families the choice to have a full-time parental minder for the first two years of their child's life.
Rudd is a conviction leader with a strong mandate to achieve his clearly articulated vision to position Australia as a competitive player in the new global knowledge economy. And he is committed to achieving this with fiscal conservatism.
Colm Kearney is Professor of International Business at Trinity College, Dublin. He served as senior economic adviser to Australia's federal treasurer and finance minister during the Hawke-Keating Labor administrations