Category: Julia Gillard

13 Mar

Comments Off on Is the ALP’s condition terminal? A crisis of social democracy

Is the ALP’s condition terminal? A crisis of social democracy

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  My latest piece for ABC’s The Drum was published yesterday. Here is the original text for your reading pleasure. Comments most welcome, and I will try to respond. A flurry of excitement gripped federal politics in the last fortnight — from Kevin Rudd’s failed challenge for the Labor leadership to the parachuting of Bob Carr into […]

31 Oct

Comments Off on Qantas lock-out: The 1% declares all-out war on the 99%, and Gillard lends it a hand

Qantas lock-out: The 1% declares all-out war on the 99%, and Gillard lends it a hand

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If there was ever any proof needed that the central concerns of the #occupy movement, about rising social inequality and injustice, and the absence of democratic institutions willing to protect the interests of the vast majority, surely we got it in the behaviour of Qantas management over the last few days — and the Gillard government’s […]

13 Sep

Comments Off on Australia’s ‘Left’ in government. Part 1: The graveyard of progressive politics?

Australia’s ‘Left’ in government. Part 1: The graveyard of progressive politics?

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The stench of death surrounds the Gillard Government. It is impossible to exaggerate the historic depths to which the ALP has fallen in the polls, with last week’s 27 percent in Newspoll confirming that there would be no “bounce” once the carbon tax announcement was digested by the electorate. Even the temporary revival of sleaze allegations against […]

09 Jul

Comments Off on Carbon pricing — even the Right admits it’s really all about neoliberalism

Carbon pricing — even the Right admits it’s really all about neoliberalism

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  This is what the climate movement, the Greens and sections of the Left have staked their futures on: [I]n Australia, the push for carbon pricing originated from the Treasury as a pro-market economy-wide reform whose great advocates were Ken Henry, Martin Parkinson and Ross Garnaut with their ideas holding sway with John Howard, Rudd and […]

27 Mar

Comments Off on Rock-bottom redux: Last drinks rites for the Labor Party? Part One

Rock-bottom redux: Last drinks rites for the Labor Party? Part One

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As a party able to offer itself as a viable government, Labor is not just under existential threat. It is finished. Unless, of course, it can engineer an extraordinary resurgence. Labor’s looming death as a stand-alone political entity is the biggest story in contemporary Australian politics. —Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 2011 How […]

20 Feb

Comments Off on Have the Australian Greens become Julia Gillard’s ‘useful idiots’?

Have the Australian Greens become Julia Gillard’s ‘useful idiots’?

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Since the dust from the August election settled, something strange has been going on in the Australian Greens camp. I think it’s probably a conscious “strategy,” but I’m not privy to the discussions in the party room, so I can’t be sure. But here is my stab at it, and why it worries me deeply. […]

21 Nov

16 Comments

Taken at face value, Labor is in a lot of trouble

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It was difficult to know how to approach Paul Howes’ Confessions Of A Faceless Man, his public “diary” of the 2010 election campaign. Was it to be a tell-all insider’s account delivering anecdotes that journalistic efforts would miss? Was it to be a re-evaluation of the problems the first-term federal government got itself into, a thoughtful […]

26 Sep

7 Comments

Desperately seeking authority

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That new paradigm thingy didn’t last long, now, did it? At least not the world of “kinder, gentler” politics that Tony Abbott was promising. Nor the ability of rural Independent MPs to rise above the fray of deal-making and remain untainted by “old-style” party politics. Nor, of course, the dream of politicians finding more “consensus” […]

14 Sep

8 Comments

Legitimacy, mandates and the media

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There has been much discussion in the left-leaning blogosphere about the stridency of the Murdoch media campaign against the “legitimacy” of the Gillard minority government. As Left Flank noted on the weekend, The Australian has editorialised that it is committed to having the Greens “destroyed at the ballot box”. In the AFR on Friday (paywalled, […]

22 Aug

Comments Off on Welcome to another edition of Thunderdome?

Welcome to another edition of Thunderdome?

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When we started this blog in July, we addressed the “democratic deficit” in Australian society. Yesterday’s result, of a likely hung parliament, is a reflection of the inability of the main parties to even create the illusion they have won a mandate to govern. The election was a disaster for the ALP. Having killed the […]