Now George has a pithy turn of phrase, and his views deserve to be more widely seen than being buried amongst the comments on an old blog entry. So I have decided to publish them here. I am also publishing my own "cartoon" of Beazley drowning in the sea of public opinion, in need if being rescued by a sympathetic Norwegian Sea Captain (of the Tampa).Here is George's comment on Beazley:
"Kim Beazley is a very sad case. He appears to be "with Howard all the way". Kim is never there when there are hot issues to be debated. He is not there for the times when we need the representative of the Australian people to be ripping into the Liberal party policies and applying the 'blowtorch' to Howard and his cronies.
(A favourite old Labor Party term: "applying the blowtorch to the belly" - DJW)
"Where is Beazley when we as society have lost so many of our rights and civil liberties? The Howard Government Industrial legislation took the workers back at least two centuries. Hardly a bleat out of Beazley.
"I believe that the Australian Labour party is in an extremely sad state, almost in it's last convulsions.
"We have a government which is not concerned with values of a civilized society, i.e. care of each other, care for the vulnerable among us, preservation of our ecological environment, encouraging the growth of spirituality and appreciation of the intangibles (e.g. art in it's various forms). Instead we are encouraged into gross consumerism and greed.
"I think that Beazley is Howards pawn. A sad individual whose time is over and who should not be the parliamentary leader of what was once a great Australian political party. I shall not be voting for the Labor Party at the next elections. It will be Greens or Democrats (if they still exist!)."
By the way, the continued existence of the Democrats is tied merely to the political careers of four sitting Senators. They have no impact outside of that.
The Greens appear to be attracting former Labor voters who are becoming more and more disillusioned. But whether that is enough for them to become a real force in politics is doubtful, in my mind. They also have four sitting Senators.
2 comments:
When he does pop up, and his colleagues, they do nothing but whinge about the government. It's all so bloody negative. What we really need is an opposition that offers policies, alternatives, gives voters a reason for voting for them. The best they can come up with is 'don't vote for the other bloke'. Hardly inspiring is it.
Yes, Colin.
It is along time since Whitlam came to the people with a fully fleshed-out set of alternative policies.
Still, history has agreed that he was a disaster. I still don't accept that. What happened was a strike of capital, whereby the money people invested off shore, bringing the country to its knees.
As it turns out, it was the beginning of the internationalisation of the economy, but we didn't know that then. These days, hardly any clothing, footware, or electronics equipment is actually made in Australia. But I digress.
There is no Labor vision these days. No "light on the hill" to follow. Very sad.
Denis
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