Aussie election bash turns into Kevin heaven

The beer was flowing freely, the pub was packed to the point where revelers were sitting on the pool table and the cheering was making it difficult to conduct conversations. Welcome to Australian election night in Beijing.

In an Irish-themed establishment just across the road from the Australian embassy near Sanlitun, a contingent of diplomats, politically-minded expats and at least one China Daily employee watched cable TV to find out who would be the last man standing in a two-horse race. In the right corner was the socially conservative, long-serving prime minister John Howard. In the left, his younger counterpart, former diplomat and leader of the opposition Kevin Rudd.

Mr Howard had been in power for over 11 years, long enough for many young Australian voters to recall no one else but him in the top job. Having governed the nation through an unprecedented period of economic growth, Mr Howard is regarded by some as a fiscal manager par excellence.

However, others insist that what the county has gained in riches it has lost in terms of social policy advancement. The challenger, Mr Rudd, pledged to take a different stance on issues such as indigenous reconciliation, workplace relations and climate change - now it was up to the people to decide between maintaining the status quo or giving the other mob a chance.

When I turned up to the embassy to vote, I noticed that only one party had representatives handing out "how to vote" slips - Kevin Rudd's Labor. And large posters of Mr Rudd adorned a car parked in front of the compound. When I asked why there was no one from the Liberal party there to spruik Mr Howard, an official told me that only Labor volunteers had bothered to contact the embassy about pamphleteering.

Later at the bar, blind Freddy's vision-impaired dog could see which side the crowd was barracking for. News that Labor had taken the ascendancy in the ballot count was met with roars and even small outbreaks of jumping on the spot.

If an impartial observer had stepped into the place they may have been convinced they'd stumbled into an organized partisan function. I pitied anyone in the room who had sympathies for the government and was surprised when a chap I'd just met told me that he voted for Mr Howard. Mind you, he did reveal this sheepishly, through clinched teeth as if he was waiting for me to disapprove of his choice. For admirers of Australia's second-longest serving federal leader, this was not the watering hole to drown their sorrows.

Another young Aussie I met on the night said that she rarely watched elections unfold and usually only tuned in once the final results were known. "They're too boring," she said.

But in this bar on the other side of the world the atmosphere was that of a rugby match. Tellingly, the biggest boo of the night came when one of the staff tried to adjust the volume on the television and accidentally switched channels to a live tennis match. Never before had I heard a room full of inebriates scream for the channel to be changed from a major sporting event to political coverage.

(China Daily 11/29/2007 page20)