Mr Argy makes an important point. It's also strange that when the Liberals won and kept winning power, those on the left weren't endlessly telling us how Australia had spoken and given a clear mandate for labour reform and the liberation of Iraq. He could have added that Australia, thanks to high immigration rates, has a lot of new voters in every election. Differential voting patterns in new voters can swing elections without anyone who has voted before changing their minds. The labour party also campaigned with a 'me too' approach, accepting that the right has won the economic argument. There's no plans for huge tax increases, widespread nationalisation or other shibboleths of the old left. Just as the Labour Party in Britain, or Bill Clinton in the United States could only win power by adopting the policies of their political opponants on the right, so Kevin Rudd has ridden the inevitable 'time for a change' wave by promising very little real change at all.

The Australian system is strange in that it makes voting compulsary, something which would be unthinkable in the vast majority of democracies. It is argued that this means a more representative parliament, but doesn't it really mean that perhaps 30% of the population who have no interest or knowledge of the issues are forced to vote, on pain of financial penalty, and are really deciding elections? If people were free to choose not to vote, as they are in pretty much every other free society, would the result always be the same? I'd be amazed if turnouts here would be automatically higher than they are anywhere else in the developed world.

In reality it's all about events, dear boy, events. Few governments promise much in their manifestos and fewer still achieve those goals in reality. Who knows what issues and problems will crop up over the next three years and how Rudd and his team will deal with them? One thing which might get everyone's support is a change to four year parliaments after the next election, three years is just too short a time.

Howard's mistake was not in losing but in not retiring before he lost. If he'd left the stage with a year to run, or even just after the APEC summit he'd have let Costello take the fall and strolled into history as a three time winner, not a loser in the end. Every fighter thinks they have one more fight left in them, and they are always proved wrong in the end - apart from Rocky Marciano of course. There's an arrogance to power in any walk of life and the hardest decision is knowing when to go. You want people asking 'why did you retire' not 'why didn't you' after the event. Bradman got it right. Howard didn't. As for Rudd, I would doubt that one person in a hundred in America, Britain or Europe even knows his name.