Lost in transit

Election Day II

As mentioned in my earlier post, a few weeks ago was the federal election here in Australia. By now you've probably heard that Kevin Rudd and the Australian Labor Party swept into victory on what the press popularly termed a "Ruddslide". I went to an election party that evening, all of us left-leaning types who couldn't wait to say goodbye to John Howard, and the mood was running high throughout the night. Whoops and hollers greeted the returns as each Labor-winning seat was announced, and they got louder and louder as it looked more and more certain that John Howard's 11.5 years in power was finally coming to a close – and with the coup de grace of having lost his own seat in Parliament as well as the prime-ministership: when it was announced that Bennelong had almost certainly gone to Labor challenger Maxine McKew, a former telejournalist, the room went wild.

After Howard conceded and Kevin Rudd gave his acceptance speech, the mood in the room was palpable. At least one person was, I kid not you, moved to a few tears. After more than a decade, their long national nightmare was finally over, and finally they had some hope for the future of their country. One of Rudd's first acts was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (Howard's Australia had been one of the notable holdouts besides Bush's US), and he has also stated that the Australian government will offer a formal apology to Australia's Aboriginal people for the Stolen Generations. Also in the works are a repeal of the hugely unpopular new workplace reforms that Howard forced into effect (and which are credited with his downfall). All of these were alluded to in Rudd's acceptance speech, and afterwards we went outside to bat down the plaster pinata heads of John Howard (filled with gold chocolate coins) and his health minister, Tony Abbott, a right-winger and staunch Catholic notoriously against things like birth control, accessible abortion, RU486 and stem-cell research – when the Abbott head broke open, a rain of wrapped condoms fell onto the porch.

My feelings of being a political bystander notwithstanding, it was an amazing experience to watch such a significant moment in another country's history, to see such a watershed even take place in person. I may not have been able to cast my vote as a citizen, but as a resident I celebrated the results as heartily as anyone. And it made me realize something: I should really try to plan to get back to the US for Election Day, because if Howard's loss of power is anything to go by, the parties in the US next November are going to be phenomenal.