Graeme Haynes
Bill or Albo?
It may as well be a choice between Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men for all the difference it would make.
Is that really the only choice that the working-class have?? If Bill Shorten had retained the position of Opposition Leader, he would have the same shallow directionless caucus that currently rubber stamps Albo’s gutless performance.
The ALP is a neo-liberal party and any close examination of their policies would demonstrate that – e.g. Support of coal mining, rotten support of Free Trade Agreements, disgusting immigration policies and refugee concentration camps, support of privatization, supporting funding of elite private schools, (bipartisan) parallel positions on warmongering bodies of ANZUS and NATO that have dragged us into unconscionable U.S. imperialist wars and all their dreadful consequences and an Industrial policy that differs only in style but not substance.
Hollow words spoken by hollow politicians- neither of these useless pricks have made any comment on the need to abolish the Secondary Boycotts Provisions of the S45 D & E Trade Practices Acts- the Amendments were made 43 years ago by the Fraser LNP government- of all the rotten anti-union laws in this country -this Act is the worst- for it prevents any union providing any form of industrial support to any struggling union and no other country has similar legislation- not even the USA.
A weak neo-conservative ALP opposition simply gives licence to the incumbent conservative LNP to go even further to the right- there is a weird perversity that then develops into a strategy of retaining previously awful positions that now are redefined as “left”.
The lack of working- class consciousness in our parliament is measured not by hollow crowd-pleasing words for the journo’s benefit but should be measured by tangible outcomes and those outcomes overwhelmingly support their wealthy benefactors- definitely not the working class.
Instead of the micro-analysis of the post-election analysis of why the ALP lost the election (media, Clive Palmer, greedy Boomers, LNP lies etc ) which are all valid in their own right, however, it neglects the fact that neither the LNP or the ALP managed to gain 50% of the primary vote – the ALP’s (worst performance) 35% and the LNP’s 40% is hardly a ringing endorsement of the electorate but more a reflection of our bourgeois democracy and the choices available.
It’s time for the working-class to ‘arise from its slumber’
