Change of government in Australia

There will be a change of government in Australia after Labor’s big election win over the weekend. It is probably one of the few times in Australia’s history where a government has lost an election while the economy is actually performing well. Perhaps it is performing too well pushing up inflation, interest rates and housing prices. Working people were unhappy with changes in the labor laws benefiting employers.

It is hard to know what impact a change in the government will have in the economy or people’s lives directly, but we will probably see more protection for the environment, emphasis on climate change, more government spending resulting in possibly higher unemployment and higher taxes.

Kevin Rudd will become the new Prime Minister and he is one of the few or only western leader who can speak Chinese. I doubt it matters in the whole scheme of things. At that level you still need translators and interpreters, but at least he will probably place more emphasis on Asia related issues than his predecessor, John Howard. Possibly a shift from emphasis on the US and back to Asia. It is more of a political issue because trade is all about money and supply and demand. China needs all of the resources Australia can supply for all of the new construction going on. The previous government benefited from this regardless of the policies they had in place.

I don’t get the impression that Rudd is much of a technologist after hearing him talk about his internet policies. It is one area which I believe the government shouldn’t be involved in with regards to policing the internet. What they should be doing is trying to build faster, more accessible and cheaper networks to bring Australia up to speed with other countries.