Editorial comment.

• Position: Editorial
• Pages: 5(2)

AUSTRALIA'S VERSION OF "NEW LABOR"

The more one learns about Mr Kevin Rudd the less recognisable he seems as a Labor leader, While constantly criticising (with some justification, it should be said) the industrial-relations policies of the Howard Government, he goes out of his way to show that in most other respects you can't put a cigarette-paper between his policies and Howard's, a compliment to the outstanding success of the Howard Government in its management of the nation's economy.

But to really comprehend the distance between Rudd and his predecessors as Labor leaders one has only to consider the economics of his private world. The business assets of the Rudd household are edging towards $200 million. True, it's his wife (nicely distanced as "Ms Rein") who controls all that, someone to whom he is obviously deeply...