Debauchery May Win Premiership for Australia’s Rudd

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The New York Sun

If, as expected, Prime Minister Howard of Australia loses this week’s general election, he can blame his defeat in large part on a drunken evening that his opponent, Kevin Rudd, spent in a Manhattan lap-dancing club with the editor of the New York Post, Col Allan.

Whereas in most countries a well-publicized night on the tiles by a self-professed “Christian socialist” might bring about a swift end to a political career, in Australia the news that the clean-cut leader of the Labor Party was one of the boys did him no end of good.

As soon as news of his evening of debauchery in New York with Mr. Allan, fellow Australian, reached home, his poll lead began to increase, and with less than a week to go until the polls open on Saturday, he leads Mr. Howard, 68, by between 8 and 10 points.

“Col suggested we go on for a drink … and I had actually by that stage had drunk too much. We ended up not at a bar but a nightclub, and the rest is history,” Mr. Rudd told Australia’s Nine Network on his return from New York where he was on official business visiting the United Nations four years ago.

Until the incident at Scores nightclub on East 60th Street, Mr. Rudd, 50, a Roman Catholic father of three, was nicknamed “Saint Kevin” because of his dullness and sobriety. A night out with Mr. Allan changed all that.

According to Australian newspapers, Mr. Rudd was so poorly behaved at Scores that the club’s bouncers had to ask him repeatedly to stop touching the dancers and warned him that his “inappropriate behavior” would lead to him being thrown out.

Mr. Rudd was too drunk to remember what exactly happened that night. “We can’t actually recall anything that you wouldn’t see in most pubs across Australia,” Mr. Rudd told a reporter from the Sunday Telegraph in Sydney, a paper Mr. Allan used to edit. “But that doesn’t absolve me for going in that door in the first place. That’s where I made the error of judgment, and it’s something I shouldn’t have done.

“If my behavior caused any offense to anybody whatsoever that evening, I of course wholeheartedly apologize,” he said. He said his wife, Therese, whom he described as “a firm woman,” was “very understanding” about the incident.

Mr. Allan quickly came to Mr. Rudd’s defense. “It was a gentleman’s club, and he behaved like a perfect gentleman,” Mr. Allan told Australian reporters. Mr. Rudd said he expected his lapse would result in a dip in his popularity, but quite the reverse happened.

Mr. Howard, leader of the conservative Liberal Party, which is in a coalition with the National Party, has been prime minister for 12 years, governing with a combination of Reaganite domestic policies and a robust foreign policy. He sprang to Mr. Bush’s side after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and became an eager partner in the war on terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2004, he won his third election after wooing first-time homebuyers and blue-collar workers by promising to keep interest rates low, but he has since raised rates six times.

According to yesterday’s edition of the Melbourne Age, the “Howard battlers” who once supported him and his economic policy are set to desert him when they vote on Saturday. Polling for Fairfax newspapers gives Mr. Rudd a 14% lead among mortgage holders.

A new poll yesterday by Galaxy predicted that Mr. Howard would lose 18 of the key marginal seats in the Australian Parliament, including his own constituency, which would oblige him to step away from politics. He would become the first prime minister to lose his seat since 1929.

Mr. Rudd considers Australia’s alliance with America one of the three key “pillars” of his foreign policy, along with support for the United Nations and maintaining close relations with Australia’s neighbors in Asia.

He supports allied efforts in Afghanistan and is prepared to send more Australian troops there. In Iraq, however, Mr. Rudd would like to withdraw Australian troops from the front line by the middle of next year, replacing the current 1,575 combat forces with 1,000 fresh military personnel serving as trainers and border security guards.

Mr. Rudd has also promised tax cuts and that he will ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which Mr. Howard declined to sign.

Unlike his Labour predecessor, Mark Latham, who called President Bush “incompetent and dangerous,” Mr. Rudd has gone out of his way to forge friendly relations with the American president, describing him as “very warm” and an “open” person.

After talks with Mr. Bush in Sydney in September, Mr. Rudd told reporters that he had made clear he would like to withdraw Australian combat troops from Iraq without delay. “I have been very blunt with President Bush … I have a no-surprises policy when it comes to these things,” he said.


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