Rudd, the redeemer, rails at capitalism (News Feature)

By Sid Astbury Apr 2, 2009, 6:52 GMT

   Sydney - Australians watched with amazement this week as their prime minister took to the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral in London to deliver a sermon on the evils of capitalism and the need for fellow Group of 20 (G20) leaders to join him in redeeming the world economy.

   'Unfettered free markets became worshipped as a god, and we now know that that god was false,' Kevin Rudd told the congregation. 'We must act with every resource we can, with every agency of government, with every action of community, to tend the wounds of those who now suffer through no fault of their own.'

   Australians, citizens of a small country usually keenly aware of its lowly place in the world, are not accustomed to one of their own aspiring to world leadership.

   But they seem to like what they see: Rudd, less than two years into the top job, is the second-most popular prime minister ever with three-quarters of voters pleased with his performance.

   The former diplomat, despite having no ministerial experience when he became leader of the Labor Party, announced an enormous foreign policy agenda when he took office in December 2007.

   He set up an international panel to work on nuclear disarmament, sent an emissary out to win support for the creation of a European Union-style grouping for Asian countries and began campaigning for Canberra to get a seat on the UN Security Council.

   Rudd, a Mandarin speaker and China scholar, also began lobbying for Beijing to have a higher standing in the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions.

   'He's engaged in ideas-based diplomacy,' said Michael Fullilove, a fellow with The Lowy Institute, a Sydney think tank. 'He's obviously completely across his brief. I think he takes an expansive view of Australia's interests and Australia's role in the world, and that will be a key debating point in the future of Australian foreign policy.'

   Those who complain that Rudd is overreaching himself are answered by the plaudits he has received from world leaders.

   US President Barack Obama, after talks with Rudd at the White House, was full of praise. 'He's been one of the people who I've called on various occasions,' Obama said. 'I think he's doing a terrific job.'

   British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who took to the St Paul's pulpit Tuesday along with Rudd, described his visitor as 'a prime minister of great courage, a leader of great conscience and a visionary for reform.'

   Much of the respect for Rudd and his powers of diplomacy stem from his facility with the Chinese language and his impressive contacts in China.

   But his campaign for China to be inducted into a higher place in the corridors of power has been criticized at home. 'He's not a roving ambassador for the People's Republic of China - he's the prime minister of Australia, and he has to put our national interest first,' the Liberal Party's Malcolm Turnbull, leader of the opposition in Parliament, harrumphed.

   It has been in the G20, the world's 19 largest economies and the European Union, that Australia, which is not a member of the Group of Eight, has found a chance to punch above its weight. Because Rudd is singing from the same song sheet as Brown and Obama, he has been feted in London as he was in Washington.

   Rudd has used up the foreign reserves he inherited from the conservative government of John Howard and is set to take the country deeply into debt with another stimulus package. Like Brown and Obama, he's a true believer in spending billions of dollars to ward off recession.

   Rudd's self-confidence also knows no bounds. He fervently believes in reshaping the world economic order and that he is the man to help do it.

   'From time to time in human history, there occur events of a truly seismic significance that mark a turning point between one epoch and the next,' he wrote in a 7,700-word essay he published in January. 'There is a sense that we are now living through just such a time.'