WHAT an economist, Ross Garnaut, has called “the Australian great complacency” may be coming to an end. Since 1990-91, Mr Garnaut has pointed out, Australians “have enjoyed the longest period of economic expansion unbroken by recession of any developed country ever.” In recent years that boom has been sustained by the relatively simple business of digging Australia up and selling it to China. The campaign for the general election on September 7th was fought against the backdrop of a Chinese economy growing more slowly, and a sense that, with Australian luck running out, the country needs new ideas.

In ending six years of Labor Party rule and electing the conservative Liberal-National coalition—and hence Tony Abbott as prime minister—voters certainly plumped for change. In part, Labor can blame the tiresome, self-destructive infighting that characterised its rule. The prime minister elected in 2007, Kevin Rudd, was toppled in a party coup three years later, only to scheme his way back into the job just ahead of this election. But the vote also marks a distinct shift to the right in Australian politics: on economic and social policy, and on climate change.

Mr Abbott said the election was a referendum on the tax that the Labor government imposed on carbon emissions and which he wants to abolish. If so, voters spoke decisively. The coalition looks likely to have a majority of at least 30 in the 150-seat lower house of Parliament. But a problem for Mr Abbott looms in the Senate, where only 40 of the 76 seats were contested at this election. A fiendishly complicated voting system appears to have handed the balance of power to perhaps eight independents and minor parties. They include the Palmer United Party of Clive Palmer, a mining billionaire from Queensland, which may have two Senate seats. One of his possible senators-elect has indicated she may not vote to scrap the carbon tax. Other likely winners include the Australian Sports Party and the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party (core values: minimal government, freedom of assembly and “mateship”). Their voting plans are unpredictable.

From his earlier days as a student politician in the 1970s, Mr Abbott emerged as one of Australia’s roughest political brawlers. He was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, where he boxed for the university, and later spent a brief stint in a Catholic seminary and also worked as a journalist before entering Parliament 19 years ago. The press used to call him the “mad monk” for his aggressive style and gaffes. But in late 2009, with behind-the-scenes support from John Howard, the Liberal prime minister from 1996 to 2007, an influential figure who is both Mr Abbott’s biggest champion and hero, Mr Abbott won the Liberal leadership, by a single vote.

He is a social conservative in Mr Howard’s mould, opposing gay marriage for example. But though he casts himself in the Thatcher and Reagan tradition, Mr Abbott is less predictable when it comes to the pro-market stance of the Liberal Party. Some detect in his religious background a suspicion of big business, and approval of government intervention. His plan for an expensive federal scheme for parental leave, for example, is not the stuff of small-government conservatism, his party’s usual fare.

Foreign affairs barely featured in the campaign, perhaps reflecting a bipartisan consensus on most big issues. But Mr Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, mocked Mr Abbott’s foreign-policy credentials, suggesting his analysis of the war in Syria (“baddies v baddies”) belonged to the “John Wayne school of international relations”. Mr Abbott probably did not mind too much. Often photographed in Lycra, he plays up his image as a kind of Australian superbloke, whose natural habitat is the beach (he is a volunteer lifeguard), barbecue (firefighter, too) or gym.

The coalition spelled out only two clear foreign policies: a controversial plan to use the navy to turn back asylum-seeker boats at sea; and a $4.5 billion ($4.2 billion) cut over four years in the budget for foreign aid. For the rest, the coalition’s policy was summarised as “more Jakarta; less Geneva”. The slogan acknowledges that Australia’s destiny is now bound up with its immediate Asian neighbourhood, which accounts for more than two-thirds of its trade; and that the new prime minister gets this.

Mr Abbott has had to distance himself from his loyalty to the “Anglosphere”. In his 2009 memoir, “Battlelines”, Mr Abbott wrote of his support for Australia’s alliance with America and its ties with Britain and its monarchy. But now, says Julie Bishop, who will be his foreign minister, his policy will focus “not exclusively but unambiguously” on the Indo-Pacific. His first foreign trip will be to Indonesia. It might be sticky. Indonesia, a staging post for most of Australia’s boat-people, is not impressed with Mr Abbott’s plans to push them back there.

Even more important is how to handle China, Australia’s biggest market. Mr Rudd, far from being admired for his mastery of the language, was reviled in Beijing almost as much as in his own parliamentary party. In contrast, Mr Howard managed to improve ties with both America, sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, and with China. Mr Abbott hopes to do the same.

Surprise, surprise

Since Mr Howard’s day, however, China has grown more assertive, while America, with its trumpeting of a strategic “pivot” to Asia, has pushed back. One aspect of that is the agreement in 2011 to rotate 2,500 marines through Australia’s Northern Territory. Ms Bishop argues that China’s anger at this deployment was a result of not having been consulted; Mr Abbott will avoid such pitfalls with a “no surprises” approach. But more than diplomatic courtesy will be needed as military rivalry between a rising China and the incumbent superpower intensifies. In “Battlelines” Mr Abbott argued that China’s growing strength “may not mean much change for Australia’s international relationships or foreign-policy priorities.” So far, that has been true enough. But it may yet turn out to be another facet of the great complacency.

Economist.com/blogs/banyan