What Do You Get If You Vote Labor
Lindy Edwards made a great post on April 3 when she wrote:
Clashes over ideology key to Labor’s ructions!
“It’s not a personality issue – the party is at war because there are traditions jostling for dominance.”
“The Labor Party currently has three competing traditions jostling for dominance. It has its old blue-collar tradition based in the union movement that was traditionally socially conservative, suspicious of big business, and saw a strong role for government in reducing the scope for the rich to exploit the poor.”
“A second tradition was the Hawke-Keating tradition, which argued that robust economic growth was essential for providing the material conditions of the working classes, and to being able to afford a welfare state. They tended to overlook the exploitation in markets and focused on being able to compensate the free market losers through a robust safety net or the ”social wage”.”
“The third tradition sprang from the liberation movements of the 1970s. It sought to tackle the next generation of challenges to social equality by addressing the marginalised status of women, Aborigines, migrants and gays. This generation also embraced saving our environment as a core ethical norm.”
Which brings me to my question, what do you get if you vote labor?
Currently we have the old blue collar tradition in a dominant position – flag waving, class war battling traditional Labor values.
The only problem is though that the jobs of the traditional base for this brand of Labor began going offshore during the Hawke – Keating years. Remember the rhetoric about creating a level playing field? The only problem was that I think that we were the only ones on the playing field at the time…
As subsidies and protective trade barriers were dropped, jobs went with them.
As a result, the union base for this section of the Labor party was seriously eroded.
Somehow though, someone forgot to tell them about it, and as a result, today we a Labor Party in power which seems intent on having a class war, but who with?
The majority of Australia’s population today are better described as being aspirational – they want to build a better life for them selves, build a better income, put money away for their retirement (which has been encouraged by previous governments, including the Keating/Hawke Labor government.
The distinctions between so called classes are, thankfully, blurred in this egalitarian society in which we live.
Kevin Rudd Was Styled As A Younger John Howard
Many people who voted Labor in 2007 were fooled by Kevin Rudd being styled as a younger, more contemporary John Howard, and probably thought that they would get an updated version of the previous Labor government. Unfortunately, we got something much worse.
As I ponder this year’s election I can’t help but wonder what we will get if Labor wins another three year term.
Will Julia Gillard continue to lead the party, or will Bill (I don’t know what the PM said, but what ever it was, I support it) Shorten be the new leader?
Or will the “Liberation Labor Party” get a gong?
The apology to the stolen generation was necessary, and I believe was great for the country.
Women’s rights are still an important issue, but I can’t see that having Julia Gillard as the first female Prime Minister in Australia has done much to advance this cause, and while some may regard gay marriage as vitally important, it isn’t nation building stuff – I can’t see it creating a mass of jobs or adding to the country’s well being.
The Labor Party has always been a coalition of causes.
I wonder which ideology is going to rule next…?