Taiwan can Learn from the Elections in Australia

By Bill Chang

As the opposition Australian Labor Party swept to power in the federal election against the incumbent Liberal-National coalition, party leader Kevin Rudd was poised to become the 26th prime minister of Australia, ending 11 years of conservative rule.

This result is a useful reference for Taiwan, as it will hold legislative and presidential elections next year.

First, "striving for economic progress" is a very boring slogan for Australian voters.

After 11 years in power, the ruling party, led by Prime Minister John Howard, has achieved significant economic growth and brought Australia's unemployment rate to its lowest level since the 1960s.

In addition, the Australian government even cut taxes because of a fiscal surplus in 2005 and cut them again last year.

Although this was close to a miracle for a Western welfare state, prosperity didn't help the Howard administration win the election.

The reality, however, is that Australian voters care more about politics that one would think.

Looking at Taiwan, the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) strategy of using a referendum for UN membership constitutes a more innovative idea.

In comparison, the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) call for improving the domestic economy, its focus on previous KMT economic achievements and its criticism of the DPP leaders' character is akin to the Australian Labor Party's criticism of Rudd's occasional rashness and lack of leadership experience.

In other words, although the KMT is the opposition party, its campaign strategies so far have been very similar to those adopted by the Australian ruling coalition.

It will be very interesting to see if the KMT heads down Howard's path in next year's elections.

Based on figures alone, Taiwan's economic performance in recent years has been no worse than Australia's.

However, the KMT has constantly complained that the economy was dragging and has argued that the only remedy would be to open direct links with China, promote investment in China and lift the ban on Chinese tourism.

If a similar situation had occurred in Australia, it would quickly have become a target of media censure.

Aside from the fact that these are groundless exaggerations (Taiwan trade with China has made tremendous progress in recent years), no Australian politician would believe that betting a nation's economic progress solely on one country is a politically viable option -- even if that country happens to be the US, a country with a common language and strong bonds of alliance.

In fact, Howard's attitude of blindly following in the US' footsteps was one of the direct causes of his failure.

Failure was not the result of heavy casualties following Australia's decision to join the US in the invasion of Iraq -- only one soldier was killed -- or depleted national resources -- there were tax reductions -- but purely because certain Australian intellectuals believe that a country must diversify its foreign relations rather than emphasize or boast of specific ties with a single country.

Doing so, they know, impairs a nation's dignity and hurts its reputation, especially when that one ally is authoritarian and hostile toward other countries. Taiwan should learn from this experience as it moves closer to the elections.

By Bill Chang 張國城. He is a doctoral candidate at the University of New South Wales. Translated by Ted Yang.