ill-informed comment on Australian politics, mostly because it's been so long since I posted...

I'm less and less enamoured with Kevin Rudd as a potential PM (not that I was ever all that enamoured with him in the first place) -- he really does seem to be eerily similar to Howard on way too many fronts. At best, I guess this is purely an election strategy: he has a good chance of taking votes from Howard and, even if he does alienate the "progressives", their votes are still extremely unlikely to end up going to the Libs. The problem is, if it is the "at-best option" of just doing whatever's necessary to get elected (implying he really is different to Howard), what happens if it works? Does he then renege on things he said during the election campaign? Or are we stuck with Howard-lite?