Australian Prime Minister John Howard promised yesterday not to let his Oct. 9 election triumph go to his head as he was formally reappointed leader of his Liberal Party.
Howard, reanointed to lead Australia for his fourth consecutive term, signalled again that reform of industrial relations legislation is a top priority.
PHOTO: EPA
But he promised sober government and vowed to keep his election promises.
"There's been a lot of comment about what we might do if we are fortunate enough to have a majority in our own right in the Senate," he told a meeting of Liberal Party legislators.
"The answer to that is very simple -- we'll do what we promised the Australian people we'll do and that does mean reforming Australia's industrial relations system.
"It does mean implementing other things which we have repeatedly taken to the Australian public. But we won't be allowing that circumstance to go to our head."
The 65-year-old veteran politician won a decisive victory after campaigning on his strong economic track record and tough stance on security.
Apart from an increased majority in the House of Representatives, the government won control of the Senate for the first time in two decades. Many of its key reform objectives were previously blocked in the upper house.
The new Cabinet is expected to be announced in the next few days, although Howard has indicated that several key figures will keep their current posts.
Also, Australia would consider negotiating a new security treaty with neighboring Indonesia to strengthen ties and incorporate counter-terror cooperation, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday.
But Downer said there were no plans for Prime Minister John How-ard and Indonesian president-elect Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to discuss a new treaty when Howard visits Jakarta for the former general's inauguration tomorrow.
"I'm making it clear that it's something that we would be prepared to have a look at," Downer told Australian radio.
"Perhaps we'd look at the police co-operation between us and other areas where we could could enhance co-operation between Australia and Indonesia and make it something of substance."
Australia and Indonesian police have worked closely since the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, and again since a car bomb exploded outside Australia's Jakarta embassy last month, killing nine Indonesians.
Downer said some Indonesians would probably oppose a new security pact with Australia because they did not want a foreign policy too closely associated with the West.
"I always say to the Indonesians: `Well, you don't want to look at it terms of east and west or north and south but want to think of it in terms of neighborhood relations.' We're Indonesia's next-door neighbor," Downer said.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
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