SYDNEY (AFP) — Australian opposition leader Kevin Rudd, tipped to be the country's next prime minister, appears to have shaken off his image as cartoon character Tintin or a blond Harry Potter.
The round-faced Rudd, 50, has instead been depicted as China's revolutionary leader Mao Zedong in a satirical take on the Australian election campaign which has become a hit on the Internet, with nearly 25,000 viewings in five days.
The three-minute clip, presented as a rejected advertising angle for the Mandarin-speaking Rudd, relates a fictional biography in which he founded a lucrative cleaning products business and spent five years on the moon.
The Chinese propaganda-style video focuses on Labor leader Rudd's tendency to agree with his opponent, 68-year-old Prime Minister John Howard, and his promise of an "education revolution."
"Rudd impress and frighten Australian person with his earnestness offensive," read the subtitles offered for the Chinese commentary.
As triumphal music swells, it continues: "He unnerve decrepit Howard by deploying clever principle of 'similar difference'. Leader Rudd declares swift and violent Education Revolution."
The video's creator, law student Hugh Atkin, said the clip was not intended to be anti-Labor, merely amusing for voters faced daily with grim arguments about interest rates, tax cuts and climate change.
"I'd like to see Labor win the election, but I'd like to make fun of them in the process," he told The Sydney Morning Herald.
Labor and Howard's Liberal Party are using their websites and the free video site YouTube to publish their views ahead of the November 24 election but mini-films produced by guerrilla videomakers are proving increasingly popular.
Despite the millions spent on carefully crafted advertising campaigns, a video of Rudd apparently eating his ear wax in parliament is also making its way into national consciousness, viewed on more than 200,000 occasions.
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