October 2, 2007
In the Sydney Morning Herald Tim Colebatch asks 'And assuming Labor wins, how much will it be a Labor government, drawing on the strengths of the many, and how much a Rudd government, reliant on the skills of The Leader?'

Spooner
Colebatch's answer?
Rudd's reform....would only increase his own power. And putting more power in the hands of rulers is not modernisation....But the power he seeks is power Howard already has. Does anyone seriously think the PM has used it "to select the best, most talented team available"? He has rewarded mediocrities who caught his fancy, while keeping out talented nonconformists such as former Victorian Liberal Party director Petro Georgiou. That's how all leaders operate when given total power. Rudd would do the same...Ask yourselves: do you think the risk is that Rudd as PM will have too little power, or that he will have too much? The answer is obvious.
I concur. Rudd is a centralizer and he will build on Howard's centralization of power in Prime Minister and Cabinet. All the signs indicate that.
That means executive dominance in the House of Representatives is controlled by Rudd. That only leaves the Senate standing against executive dominance as a form of countervailing power.
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Gary
David Burchell in the Australian says that the ALP has learnt from its past mistakes and that Labor’s learning process is not yet complete.
He says that Labor has cleared away its unloved policies and sidelined its more unattractive elements. It looks and sounds courteous, disciplined and positive, as the electorate has clearly observed. Yet it still has to put meat on some of those fine-sounding but frustratingly general policy proposals. Nor has it yet linked them up convincingly into some kind of vision of an Australia that is both aspirational and committed to the ethos of the fair go.
We know some of that meat already.
If a Rudd government is unlikely to place children in detention, then it is likely to maintain a tough-minded border protection policy along with mandatory detention. Labor is likely to continue the Coalition's policies in such areas as national security, the citizenship test and indigenous policy.Similarily with the Gunn's pulp mill and Tasmanian forests.