The New Nation - Internet Edition

THE election defeat of Australian Prime Minister John Howard was greeted with what AFP news agency called 'savage glee' by his enemies and even homage to the 68-year-old leader was often with criticism. 'We have our country back', wrote Sydney Morning Herald columnist Alan Ramsey celebrating the end of nearly 12 years of conservative Liberal Party's rule. 'John Howard's Australia died with his government on Saturday night,' Ramsey said, describing the government as 'the nastiest, meanest, most miserable self-absorbed' in living memory. Similar sentiments were expressed by Paul Keating of Australia's centre-left Labour Party at the election defeat of Howard who had succeeded him as prime minister in 1996. 'When it was clear the Howard government had been defeated, many Labour supporters around me said 'you must be so happy'. But my emotion was not happiness, rather, it was relief-relief that … feeling of alienation in your own country was over.'

The Australian paper said in an editorial that Howard who faces the humiliation of losing his own parliamentary seat in the Sydney electorate he has held for 33 years, had been 'wrong to stay on'. 'But sympathy for the end of a 33-year parliamentary career including 11 years as prime minister cannot disguise the brutal truth that the outgoing leader has sabotaged both his own political legacy and his party's future for the foreseeable future.' It was pointed out that by trying to hang on to power he had left his party 'in probably the most dangerous position in its history'. New leader Kevin Rudd, 50, a day after sweeping veteran Prime Minister Howard from power in a stunning election landslide, said he would immediately begin work on fulfilling campaign pledges which included tackling global warming and withdrawing combat troops as 'a new era dawned for Australia' after polls ended the rule of President Bush's closest remaining ally in the Iraq War.

'I would say to those people that we will be a government for all Australians and that I will always govern in the national interest,' the new leader said at his first press conference. His party scored its biggest victory since Second World War achieving an estimated six per cent swing in the vote that should give it 88 seats compared to 60 for Howard's Liberal coalition in the 150-seat parliament, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Prime Minister-elect Rudd will be hailed for pledging to reverse Australia's policy as pursued by Howard and ratify the Kyoto Protocol on curbing emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Australia's ratification will leave the US President Bush isolated as the only remaining major world leader to have refused to sign up to the UN treaty. Howard, as a staunch Bush ally, had refused to sign, making Australia a fellow 'pariah state' in the global climate change debate. Global warming became a top worry with Australians as the driest continent on earth suffered its worst drought in 100 years.