IN 10 months, Kevin Rudd has gone from being Kevin 07 to Kevin 24/7 and now, Kevin 747.

Kevin 07 was the genial face that last November swept Labor back into government after 111/2 years in opposition.

Kevin 24/7 was the new broom prime minister whom sceptics worried was stretching himself, his personal staff and public servants too thin in wanting everything done yesterday.

Cynics wonder if it isn't all busyness with no action.

Kevin 747was coined for the number of trips Rudd has made overseas and the time he has spent abroad. Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull wonders whether Rudd should be described as a "prime tourist".
The latest object of ridicule of Rudd was his trip to New York, during which he made his maiden speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

Australia's interest had been the initial goal. That was quickly overtaken by the nightmare on Wall Street.

Global financial crisis overnight became the reason for Rudd's purpose in New York, and his answer to his detractors on his tour itinerary.

Finance capitalism -- government and private -- filled Rudd's working week in New York as much as the more than 100 heads of state and government at the General Assembly. Financial crisis overshadowed Rudd's set piece: on climate change, nuclear disarmament, world poverty.

In the event, Australia's claim to moral authority in financial regulation fell on Rudd's lap in Australia's ultimate goal: its bid for one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council in the next round of change.

A seat at the council will be at once culmination and ongoing vehicle to carry Rudd's aspirations for Australia of a resurgent activist middle power participation in international affairs.

It would be a next step in the "three pillars" of Rudd foreign policy he has advanced since from the time he was shadow foreign minister.

Three pillars commit Australia to its alliance with the United States, engagement with Asia and the Pacific, and active participation in the UN and the multilateral order.

The approach stems from a Labor tradition that goes back to the beginning of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945.

As Rudd recalled in his maiden address last week, Australia was a founding member of the UN.

"Our foreign minister at the time, Dr (Herbert) Evatt, made a significant contribution at the San Francisco Conference, particularly on the part of small and medium countries," he said.

"And 60 years ago this week, he was elected president of the Third General Assembly."

As international relations specialist Allan Gyngell tells it, Evatt was to start a long line of internationalists from the time of the UN multilateral order that has marked Labor from the conservative side of Australian politics.

Noted among them have been former prime ministers Gough Whitlam (1972-75), Bob Hawke (1983-91) and Paul Keating (1991-96), and foreign minister Gareth Evans (1988-96).

Economically, Australia is no minnow. Going by the Groningen Growth and Development Centre ( http:// tinyurl.com/3rstoa) at the University of Groningen, Australia ranked fifth in the world in 1950.

Today, it has remained not far off at seventh.

Historically, wealth and geography has defined how Australians view themselves in the world.

"The central dilemma from the time of first (European) settlement (1788) has been how a small population occupying a continent far removed from its markets and security alliances can protect itself," Gyngell, executive director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, tells the New Sunday Times.

The conservatives (Liberals in coalition with National) have traditionally turned to what its most famous son Robert Menzies (prime minister 1949-66) prescribed as close relations with Australia's "great and powerful friends".

Labor, on the other hand, from the time of Evatt, has preferred engagement in the multilateral system. Australians, it would appear, go along with this approach, going by the annual poll that Lowy conducts on public attitudes to foreign policy.

The latest poll, (http://tinyurl.com/ 4qpsy5) which Gyngell launched on Monday, shows that 86 per cent of Australians think the UN is very important or fairly important to Australian interest.

On that score, Rudd has cause to step forward in confidence that tradition has converged with the world as it now stands to commend the Labor approach -- at home, and abroad, with the decline of US standing.

By a quirk, Australia has been at the heart of the two biggest assaults on the prestige of America and the Americans.

Rudd's predecessor, John Howard, was in Washington the day the terrorists struck New York on Sept 11, 2001.

On Sept 25, Rudd was in New York as the financial markets crumbled on Wall Street, putting a big question mark on America's capitalist model as we know it.

The first led Howard to follow President George Bush into war in Iraq. At the General Assembly on Sept 25, Rudd was counselling the Americans on financial regulation, on the authority of the Australian model, which has left the Australian economy relatively unscathed.

Rudd's original script was necessarily reshaped, but he left in no doubt that high on Australia's international agenda would be climate change, nuclear disarmament and world poverty.

Wall Street subsumed Main Street in the event. Review of the mid-term goals of the Millennium Development Goals to halve extreme poverty by 2015 was to have been the main purpose of the 63rd General Assembly of the UN. It was all but sidelined.

Rudd's 15 minutes at the podium was no less brief on the MDG. But in the corridors, and in forums supported by Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, the message was that Australia was earnest in its commitment.

It has committed to raise its contribution to overseas aid to 0.5 per cent of gross national income. Just short of the MDG goal of 0.7 per cent for advanced economies.

Australia's focus would be on Africa. It was another neat convergence of ideal and the pragmatic. Africa would be critical to Australia when it comes to a vote for a place on the Security Council.

The convergence of foreign policy imperatives and poverty alleviation would sit with younger voters in Australia.

Academic John Langmore has the pulse on this group on his rounds as president of the United Nations Association of Australia.

Langmore, professorial fellow at the Centre of Public Policy at the University of Melbourne, takes a dim view of criticism of Rudd's engagement with the world, simplistically directed at his travels.

"(Rudd's) travels have been well judged," says Langmore. "The world is an integrated place, and what goes on affects every dimension of (domestic) public policy."

As Rudd put it at the UN, "to advance prosperity and stability at home, we must advance prosperity and stability around the globe".