Is Kevin Rudd John Howard?
If the subject was the economy or national security and the year was 2007, you'd have to answer an unequivocal yes. If it was terror legislation and the year was 2008, you'd get a resounding affirmative again.
The successful Rudd election pitch and continuing high-polling honeymoon are marketing par excellence.
The substance from which our Prime Minister spins is not that different from what Howard was dishing up.
Ninety-one per cent of the Coalition's tax-cut package continues to be happily embraced. Messages of a "Robin Hood" Budget are more shadow than substance. If Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan were fair dinkum about finding funds for "working families" and sticking it to the rich, they would wipe out both the 50 per cent discount granted on the capital gains tax by Peter Costello and the income-tax deduction for work-related expenses. (If it is really a vital work expense, work will pay.) But don't hold your breath for either of those measures on Tuesday week.
There is one area where Rudd has a golden opportunity to draw a clear distinction from Howard, if he has the nerve.
It comes from the ACT, which continues to have the temerity to insist that Territorians be allowed to govern themselves, just like everyone else in the country.
There are two issues ripe for Rudd to seize:
1. That a properly elected and competent ACT Parliament (it's not just about the local Labor government) be allowed to legislate, within power (a power confirmed by Rudd himself in his very first week in office).
2. That formal recognition of unions (not, even on the ACT Government's formulation, "marriages") be provided for same-sex couples.
This would involve leadership.
The changes that Rudd's first law officer, Robert McClelland, announced this week for the financial security and equity of same-sex couples were universally hailed as significant and long overdue. But they were supported by 71 per cent of the population.Support for recognition of same-sex unions is not so high.
Will McClelland's lofty words about finally equalising rights for "our fellow Australians who have been discriminated against for too long" be repeated for ceremonies recognising civil unions?
While long overdue, the financial changes that Rudd is comfortable with were flagged by Howard, whose lone ACT senator, Gary Humphries, crossed the floor when his government directed the Governor-General to squash the ACT's Civil Unions Bill 2006.
Humphries reminded his constituents this week that Howard had pledged to act in the field, and admitted that his side of politics had not followed up its words.
"The Howard government did actually say before the 2004 election that it would remove discrimination in a range of areas and it didn't get around to doing that," he said. "I think that that's unfortunate. It's to our discredit that we didn't get around to doing that and I'm pleased that that omission appears now to be being corrected."
Humphries backs recognition of same-sex unions (and, as a former chief minister, is adamant on the territory's right to legislate), putting him, for the moment, pretty much on his own on Capital Hill.
So where to now for plans that formally recognise civil-union ceremonies? McClelland and ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell are to resume their infrequent huddles on the subject today.
There were four options on the table as they met yesterday, Corbell emerging hopeful that resolution might be won with "a bit of renewed effort". Maybe that will depend on what McClelland's master tells him when he reports back.
The first option is agreement, whereby the ACT would legislate in an amended form in the sure and certain knowledge that the Rudd Labor Government would not override it like the Howard Coalition government did. This would keep Rudd true to his December pledge, and show him able to get over his other stern utterances against civil unions, which his minister has continued to term "marriages" despite the term appearing nowhere in the ACT legislation. Agreement does seem unlikely.
The worst of the three disagreement options, from an ACT perspective, would be a Rudd replica of the Howard crushing of the will of the people of Canberra.
Disallowance is simple. The Commonwealth's Self-Government Act provides for the Governor-General, prompted by his proper constitutional advisers, his federal ministers, to simply wipe from the statute book a law properly considered by a territory parliament, having been proposed by a territory government that clearly put its proposal before its citizens and won their endorsement for it.
As Corbell said, the mechanism is undemocratic and anachronistic, providing for the Queen's representative to dismiss the will of a section of the Australian people as expressed at the ballot box.
The parallels to the events of November 1975 might appear "passing strange", as Rudd is wont to say, to only the second federal Labor government since Gough Whitlam's.
Another option following disagreement is a move by the Commonwealth to legislate in the area, thereby "covering the field", as the constitutional lawyers put it.
This would most likely take the form of a federal Act instituting a ceremony-free register of civil unions for the ACT along the lines of those operating in Tasmania or Victoria.
It is disallowance by stealth, because all Commonwealth law takes precedence over territory law. It's a similar ploy to the Bill put up by Kevin Andrews through the Federal Parliament to thwart the introduction of voluntary euthanasia in the Northern Territory.
It is possible only in the territories, and fits the description from Rodney Croome, of the Coalition for Equality, for disallowance itself: "bullying" that is done only because the Commonwealth can.
The remaining option is the ACT's preferred course, if there must be disagreement.
It involves the Federal Government asking the Governor-General to recommend amendments to the ACT legislation that would have to be put before the Territory's Parliament.
This would mean that the Rudd Government would have to publicly put forward its preferred course, rather than simply negating whatever the ACT put up.
It has one big advantage, or challenge. It ensures that Rudd cannot be painted as Howard.
Will that be enough for the Prime Minister to act?
Andrew Fraser is political correspondent.