Rural voters were key to last weekend's ouster of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and the Daily Yonder's Bill Bishop, right, sees some parallels between Howard's shrunken base of support and those of Republicans in the United States."Howard had built his previous electoral victories in the suburbs and rural communities with a combination of conservative, values-based positions and strong economic performance," Bishop writes. "Howard campaigned against gay marriage and migrants seeking asylum in Australia. He refused to issue an apology for the treatment of Aboriginal Australians. And he refused to sign the Kyoto treaty aimed at stemming global warming. Howard strongly supported the invasion of Iraq and President Bush."
Bishop adds, "Like Bush's strong showing in the rural U.S., Howard had a near monopoly in rural parts of Australia. In the 2004 parliamentary election, Howard's Liberal party won 41 of the 45 seats classified as rural by the Australian Electoral Commission. That rural-based coalition crumbled Saturday, when the Labor Party's Kevin Rudd won what's been described as a landslide election. . . . Rudd won 14 of those 45 rural seats and the Labor party was competitive in the Australian exurbs for the first time in a decade."
Rudd promised to sign the Kyoto treaty, which had a higher profile because of what Bishop calls "an epic drought" that is stressing rural regions. Royce Millar of The Age, a Melbourne newspaper, reports that "A study of the costs of climate change has found rural communities will pay almost twice as much as city dwellers for the effects of environmental degradation." (Read more) Also among Rudd's campaign promises were broadband Internet connections for the whole country, a key issue in rural areas worldwide. Darren Osborne of The Australian, a national newspaper based in Sydney, write before the election that “For many voters in regional and rural Australia, broadband could be the election issue that decides who gets their vote.” (Read more)
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