The ideological contest

Abstract

Despite claims that Kevin Rudd’s campaign against John Howard was based around ‘me-tooism’, there was an ideological contest underlying both the Labor and Liberal electoral strategy. Indeed, Howard’s ideological hubris helps to explain why the Liberals’ previous election strategies no longer worked. WorkChoices reflected Howard’s neoliberal ideological influences and undermined his previously electoral strategy of wedging conservative workers and ‘battlers’ away from Labor. Rudd presented as a safe, economically conservative, ‘small target’ candidate. Nonetheless, his own policies were influenced by social democratic ideology, particularly in regard to his critique of extreme neoliberalism. That critique underlay Rudd’s policies on working families, climate change and broadband. Furthermore, while being cautious in his statements on contentious social issues, Rudd cleverly used the politics of signs to indicate that he had more progressive policies than Howard on issues ranging from race to gender.