UNTIL THIS PAST WEEKEND, John Howard was the great survivor of Australian national politics. In May 1989 he was sacked as leader of the center-right Liberal Party, and quipped that a return to the leadership post would be like “Lazarus with a triple bypass.” A few months earlier, a popular Aussie news magazine had dubbed Howard “Mr. 18 Percent,” referring to his abysmal poll numbers. But “Lazarus” would rise from the dead, and eventually become one of the most successful prime ministers in Australian history. After regaining the party leadership in 1995, he won four straight federal elections (in 1996, 1998, 2001, and 2004). Tom Switzer, opinion page editor of the Australian newspaper, liked to joke that whenever Howard received a kiss of death it “amounted to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

But not this time. In Saturday’s federal election, the center-left Australian Labor Party won a landslide victory, securing majorities in both the House of Representatives (where the government is formed) and the Senate. It even appears that Howard will lose his own Sydney-area parliamentary seat. Supporters of the prime minister-elect, 50-year-old Labor leader Kevin Rudd, claim he has a popular mandate to pursue a host of workplace, environmental, and other reforms. Labor also controls every single one of Australia’s state and territorial governments. The Liberal Party is in shambles.