If ever there was an opportunity for the ALP to differentiate itself from the Coalition, it came last week. The announcement that the intake of African refugees to Australia would be limited gave Kevin Rudd the chance to take a strong stand contrary to the Government and in favour of a non-discriminatory immigration policy. Instead he squibbed it.
Likewise on the Tasmanian pulp mill. Peter Garrett must be wondering why he joined the Labor Party if his only task is to agree with Malcolm Turnbull.
For years the ALP has complained about the Coalition's non-government schools funding policy. Mark Latham even promised a "hit list" of rich private schools. Yet on Monday Labor announced that if elected it would maintain the current funding formula until 2012.
Yesterday Rudd said that no government he led would ever intervene diplomatically to save the life of a terrorist facing capital punishment. In doing so, Rudd repudiated his own foreign affairs spokesman and followed exactly the established position of the Howard Government.
On the single biggest domestic issue of the past six months -- federal intervention in indigenous communities in the Northern Territory -- the ALP's stance has been indistinguishable from that of the Coalition.
Other than on WorkChoices, it's difficult to find many substantive matters on which Rudd diverges from the Prime Minister. If it were not for WorkChoices, Labor would be hard-pressed to present itself as any sort of alternative.
Every recent federal election has supposedly been the most important since 1975. At the moment it would be difficult to make this claim about the 2007 election. According to this week's Age/Nielsen poll, many Australians don't care who will be running the country after December. Forty-three per cent of voters think that it is irrelevant to the performance of the economy which party is in power.
The last time polls have so consistently indicated a victory for the opposition over the incumbent government was more than a decade ago when John Howard defeated Paul Keating. The difference between 1996 and 2007 is stark.
Eleven years ago, John Howard portrayed himself as everything that Paul Keating was not. The two leaders were at pains to point out how different they were. The style and substance of each was almost the exact opposite of the other. Howard famously talked of combating the all-pervading air of "political correctness" and abandoning the "black-armband view" of history. He stressed that his policies would be "practical", and so he had little time for the symbolism of reconciliation or the republic. Even though he was always going to continue the economic reform agenda of the Hawke and Keating years, Howard never allowed the public to forget the "recession we had to have".
At this election, Rudd has portrayed himself as being as similar to Howard as possible. Rudd would take being labelled "conservative" as a compliment. Labor has pledged to follow the Coalition's budget strategy to ensure continued low unemployment and low inflation.
Meanwhile, on social policy the ALP has followed the Government's lead on everything from the federal takeover of public hospitals to performance pay for teachers. On foreign policy, although Labor has pledged to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq, it says it remains strongly committed to the US alliance and fighting the war on terror.
There's no better proof of Rudd's willingness to be "practical" than his view that fixing federalism is more important than removing the Queen as head of state.
Does all of this mean that the PM has finally won the "culture wars"? Is the testament to his success as prime minister going to be the fact that even if he loses the election his legacy will be continued under Rudd?
If only that were true. But the short answer to these questions is no.
To a large extent Labor is merely pursuing a "small target" strategy. To avoid losing votes, Rudd is either agreeing with the Government or simply saying nothing. This might be intensely frustrating to the party's supporters, but it is a strategy that often works. Those supporters have started muttering publicly about their hopes that a Rudd government in office will be very different from a Rudd opposition.
The question for the future is not about Howard. People know what the Prime Minister stands for. More relevant is the issue of what Rudd and the Labor Party stand for. If at this federal election the ALP is merely the mirror image of the Coalition, it is unclear why the electorate seems so intent on changing government.
The Age/Nielsen poll indicated that nearly half the electorate believe Kevin Rudd has a better vision for Australia than does Howard. Given the similarities between the parties, it's difficult to discern what part of Rudd's vision voters find preferable.
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