Kevin Rudd in government has continued the same ambivalence towards Iraq as he exhibited in opposition. On June 2, the Prime Minister announced that the Australian Defence Force's Overwatch Battle Group (West) and the Australian Army Training Team Iraq had formally ceased their operations and that combat troops would return before the end of the month. He said that, notwithstanding the Government's "pride and appreciation for the service and sacrifice of our troops in Iraq", Labor "did not support the decision to go to war".

That's correct, of course. In 2003, the Labor leader Kim Beazley made it clear the Opposition opposed the Howard government's decision to join the coalition of the willing in invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein's regime. Labor's position turned on the fact that the coalition of the willing - comprising the United States, Britain, Australia and Poland - did not have formal United Nations approval.

Rudd went with the Labor line. However, he was not as strident in opposition to the invasion of Iraq as some colleagues. At the time Rudd was a member of the essentially self-selecting Australian American Leadership Dialogue, which meets each year in the US or Australia. In the May issue of AFR Magazine, the journalist Brian Toohey reported an anonymous participant as saying that there was not a lot of opposition to the invasion within the "dialogue" and he/she obtained the impression that "Rudd would have gone in".

Clearly, this is hearsay. But there is hard evidence that Rudd believed Australia could do more for Iraq, following the fall of Saddam's regime. Last year John Howard's office released a letter which Rudd had forwarded to the then prime minister on November 17, 2003. Here Rudd argued that, "now that regime change has occurred in Iraq", it was Labor's view that "all people of goodwill" should "put their shoulder to the wheel in an effort to build a new Iraq". He did not advocate the Australian Defence Force's immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Significantly, he did call for more Australian resources to be devoted to training the Iraqi Army and police force.

Soon after, Rudd was a guest in The Bulletin's "Lunch with Maxine McKew" series. On December 2, 2003, the magazine reported that he believed the American and British leaders were of the view that the Howard government had not done enough in Iraq. Rudd went on to accuse Howard of "political cowardice" for (allegedly) wishing to exit Iraq. Certainly, following the revelation of AWB's involvement in the food-for-oil scandal and in the lead-up to last year's election, he upped the rhetoric. But last week Rudd consciously played down Labor's position on Iraq.

In his speech to Parliament, the Prime Minister made it clear that "this withdrawal does not signal an end to the Australian Defence Force's mission" in Iraq. He pointed out that the navy "will continue maritime security operations in the Persian Gulf", that the air force will support the Multi-National Force Iraq through "vital transport, sustainment and maritime patrol tasks" and that the army will "protect Australian diplomats, other civilian staff and senior visitors to Baghdad". Also, the force "will maintain headquarters, logistics and embedded support elements". In short, Australia remains a member of the US-led Multi-National Force Iraq. Also, Australian forces will continue to play a key role in Afghanistan.

Rudd has softened his attitude towards the intelligence which led the coalition of the willing - and other nations, including France and Russia - to believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Labor used to maintain that Australia's involvement in Iraq had been based on a lie. Last week the Prime Minister said, accurately, that "the decision to go to war was based on flawed intelligence". In other words, the allegation of mendacity has been junked.

The essential weakness of Rudd's address is that it focused on the role of the US in the decision to invade Iraq. This is politically convenient, in view of the fact that the US was led by George Bush's Republican Administration. Yet it is not just the political conservatives in the US and Australia who were central to the invasion of Iraq. So were the social democrats in Tony Blair's Labour government in Britain. It is a matter of record that - while many ALP leaders in Australia have criticised the likes of Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld - few, if any, have bagged Blair and Jack Straw in Britain. Neither belongs to the much derided class of neo-conservatives.

As Alexander Downer pointed out in The Australian last Friday, the Overwatch Battle Group was dispatched to Iraq following a request by the Blair government that Australia protect Japanese engineers operating in southern Iraq. This decision, which was opposed by Labor, was much appreciated by the Japanese Government. Japan remains a member of the Multi-National Force Iraq, along with traditional Australian friends such as South Korea and Singapore. Writing in The Canberra Times on March 10, the former Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew argued the case for a coalition of nations to support the US in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Iraq venture, while not over, is scaling down and there are reasonable prospects of a satisfactory outcome. Meanwhile, Rudd Labor is attempting some initiatives in foreign policy - including advocating an Asia-Pacific community. This may or may not come to fruition. Agree with Howard or not on Afghanistan and Iraq, Australia was never so influential as it was from 2003 to 2007. Except during the final years of World War I, and the postwar peace settlement, during Billy Hughes's time.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of the Sydney Institute.