With a similar speed, home-owners were subsidised so that they could instal ceiling insulation that would reduce demand for electricity. Soon the ceilings of suburban homes were shaking under the weight of untrained and cowboy contractors. About 200 houses were accidentally set on fire and four tradesmen killed by electrical errors. Speed was the killer. The federal government insisted that everything had to be done quickly during the global downturn. The economic stimulus was partly effective. The debris were all too visible. By Easter 2010, Rudd's and his party's popularity were sagging. A new leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, a former Rhodes Scholar and minister in the previous Howard coalition government, had confronted Rudd with a forthrightness which rejuvenated his party. 

Rudd faced more critics when he decided to abandon part of the moral ground that he ceaselessly claimed for himself. For three years, he had proclaimed climate change as the great "moral challenge" of our time. He had been a banner carrier in Copenhagen. He had tormented his political opponents in Canberra for not crusading for climate change. Electoral obliteration awaited them, he promised. Now, suddenly, he himself abandoned the bills designed to help Australia to combat the effects of climate change. His U-turn shocked many of his own supporters. Some moved to the Greens.

Rudd's earlier successes were forgotten. Suddenly, a victory for Abbott's Liberal-National coalition in the federal election seemed on the cards. On June 23, Rudd was deposed by powerbrokers in his own parliamentary party. In the history of Australia's prime ministers, such a dramatic fall, especially of one who began with a large majority, had not been seen. He was replaced by his deputy Julia Gillard.

Election day was August 21. The swing was strong against Labor. In primary or first preference votes, Labor was almost half a million votes behind the Liberal-led coalition. After the distribution of preferences, especially those of the Greens, Labor recovered to win 50.12 per cent of the final vote and the Liberal-National coalition 49.88 per cent. The seats were just as evenly divided between the two main parties. In the new parliament, the coalition has 73 seats, Labor has 72 and the support of one Green. The other four are held by Independents. 

At the time of writing, Labor is governing. Through various deals and promises, it has the support of 76 of the 150 members. Curiously, its slim majority depends partly on the promised support of two unusual Independents, sometimes nicknamed the Grandstands, who represent rural seats in northern New South Wales. Those seats are traditionally anti-Labor. If one Independent changes his mind, the new government will lose its majority. Whether Gillard will last three years is a question for the gambling industry. She faces further uncertainty in the senate or upper house. Senators are elected in state-wide electorates by a version of proportional representation that favours minor parties.

I see the election result as the mirror of a seismic shift in economic geography. As in the gold rushes of the 1850s and 1860s, mining is again the dynamic industry. It is one of the most diverse, highly-mechanised mineral industries the world has known, with a major output of gold, silver, diamonds, uranium, bauxite, alumina and aluminium, copper, lead, zinc, tin, manganese, nickel, titanium and other mineral sands, iron ore, metallurgical and steaming black coal, brown coal, oil, natural gas and other minerals. Far and away the nation's top export industry, its heartland is in Western Australia and to a lesser degree in Queensland.