It certainly feels as though it has been a long time coming. Over five years since Australia’s original commitment of combat troops to Iraq, helplessly in lockstep with the Bush Administration, our troops are finally coming home. It is perhaps a relatively small achievement for the Rudd Government, a decision that once made, become more of an operational matter for the armed forces than anything particularly difficult in political terms. On the other hand, in the withdrawal we have right in front of us another example of Federal Labor’s modern approach to governance. In a word, it is managerialism.

In its first six months in office in Canberra, Labor has set about ticking off several of the boxes that it had neatly outlined on a crisp white page prior to the election campaign. This is an approach that has numerous obvious advantages over the ad hoc, politically motivated operational agenda that the Howard Government ran with, particularly in its final years. One gets the palpable sense that this is a government that is planning for the future and acting on its plans, not just a government that plans for its future and acts accordingly. Perhaps as a consequence of this intensive emphasis on “planning, and then doing”, the Rudd Government does feel to me to be a little constrained by the goals it is setting; by the bullet-points on its page. While there are a few big ticket, “big picture” items on its to-do list (e.g. the national broadband network), the majority of the government’s first term agenda probably feels like well-meaning ephemera for many.

One of the core challenges that the government will face in the latter half of its first term is defining a provocative but winnable political narrative for its next term in office. The Opposition is well and truly down under Brendan Nelson, of course, but hardly out. In contrast, the Rudd Government still holds much of the political capital that it gained during its victorious election campaign, boosted as it has been since then by Kevin Rudd’s swift move to ratify Kyoto and his bonafide apology to the stolen generations. The scope exists for a somewhat aggressive political agenda to be laid out for the government’s next term. Clearly issues relating to climate change and energy management are going to be high on the agenda, particularly once the Garnaut Review delivers its final report at the end of September 2008. The funding issues that currently plague the nation’s schools look set to be addressed at least in part by some groundwork during the government’s second term. Additionally, the government’s lifting of the Medicare surcharge threshold in this year’s Budget offer some hope that more reform of the nation’s disjointed and two-tier health system is on the way.

There are clearly a large number of potential reform avenues that many would like to see this new government explore. After a decade of oft neglect, I think it is fair to say that many of us have perhaps unrealistically high expectations of what the Rudd Government should be doing. Six months really is a drop in the ocean when it comes to the processes of government and the implementation of lasting reform agendas. Still, it will only get harder, particularly as the Opposition slowly becomes more competitive, and the government inevitably trips itself up a few times. Indeed, despite the fairly odd stories suggesting otherwise (what hard-nosed voter ever thought the public sector didn’t need to be pushed a bit harder?), Kevin Rudd and his team need to do the proverbial and make reform hay while the sun shines. It sure won’t last forever.