Rudd and Murdoch: the fashioning of a Blair-style "Labor moderniser"

Each day another stage in the now familiar ritual unfolds. Rudd makes some new right-wing pronouncement and the media, led by the Murdoch press, welcomes it while at the same time pressuring him to go further. The opposition leader then responds, emphasising his ambition to head a “new leadership” and embrace “change”. The next day he announces yet another pro-business “free market” initiative.

Before our very eyes, an extreme right-wing administration, of the kind backed by Murdoch in the United States and around the world, is being fashioned, which will take the Howard government’s assault on the social position of the working class to a qualitatively higher level.

The Australian, Rupert Murdoch’s national broadsheet, published a major editorial last Wednesday, titled “Labor must do more than coast”, which all but endorsed a Rudd victory. “The Australian finds it hard to conjure up a constructive policy-based reason to re-elect the government,” the editorial declared. “The best we can say is the Howard-Costello team, while lacking vision for several years, has not been a disaster by any means.”