Liberal Bloodbath: What Does it Mean for Politics?
I’m sure everyone with more than half a brain cell has been enjoying the Liberal Party tear themselves apart in the battle between the idiots and the uber climate change denial idiots.
Well, the joke is about to get even funnier following Tony Abbott (Climate Change Denier, Anti-Abortionist) winning the leadership today. He could possibly open the flood gates to make the Liberal party irrelevant.
He represents a shift to the right in the Liberal party even if this is a bit unstable. They’re battling between trying to remain relevant and trying to maintain their terrifying principles.
But as much as this is enjoyable to watch, I fear for the direction politics will head as a result. The Liberals shifting to the right, I fear, will result in the whole of official politics following suit. The Labor Party have space to follow them to the right and still appear reasonable given how insane the Liberal party look.
It was like when Liberal backbencher Wilson Tuckey made the appalling and mythical statement about asylum seekers on boats being terrorists. Rudd, who also is a racist and has an appalling position on refugees, could look far more ‘humane’ standing next to Tuckey, even though their polices and Rudd’s statements mimic Howard’s position during the whole Tampa affair.
And then we look at the current debate around climate change. The ETS bill is a joke. It’s so watered down to have no affect at all; it effectively rewards polluters whilst excluding some from doing anything all together. But beside the Liberal party, it looks sane because at least Labor admits climate chance is happening.
For anyone with a rational view of the world, official politics looks like it has nothing to do with the views of ordinary society. The general opinion polls show shifts to the left on things such as same-sex marriage but this is nowhere near mirrored in the halls of Parliament.
Parliament and electoral politics is a complete joke, represents to the lack of democracy we actually have under capitalism and for anyone wanting to change the world, placing your hope in voting in the right person is a guaranteed way to get demoralised and think you can’t change anything.
It’s time for us to take action into our own hands.
It is time to take action into our own hands – but witnessing this from afar I’m not enjoying seeing one of the major parties shift to the right precisely for the reasons you state – it moves the entire debate to the right, particularly on climate change.
It will have a polarising effect and some of those who might have supported them wont because of the barmy positions they are tasking, but the flip side of that is that previously sane people who are politically moderate (or less thought through) will be swayed towards thinking climate denial is a respectable position.
That’s not good in my mind, even if the side benefit is that the Liberals find it hits them in the ballot box (which it may or may not)
Yeah, it’s like how the BNP over your end of the world gives space to the other parties to get tougher on immigration.
I guess I think the Liberals will take a hit at the ballot box, but toward Labor. There’s no credible alternative to the Left of that, which I guess is the task ahead of us.
Although the political crisis within the Liberals is interesting, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I enjoy it. I don’t want a Labor Party entrenched in government for decades without needing to worry about losing power to an opposition. The Labor Party’s position on many things already sucks, like its stances on asylum seekers, the environment, and censorship. Like you suggest, with no effective rightist party they’ll probably move further right, like the Liberals did in the first place after the Conservatives vanished. It seems to be easier for governments to be conservative. Complacency, perhaps.
I wouldn’t mind seeing the Liberals collapse if the Greens benefited out of it, rather than Labor. Except for that stupid candidate they have standing in the by-election where I am, they seem to have the right ideas on things. (But not Dr Hamilton, who apparently thinks censorship is good. Why did the Greens choose him?) I think a parliament in which the Greens were effectively kingmaker, with the balance of power, could be a good thing.
I do think the current electoral system is broken. For instance, even though I’m an Australian citizen, pay close attention to politics, and would love the right to vote, I am banned from having it for no good reason (my age). Even once I do get that right, I only get to use it to vote for a party that will make all my decisions for me without me getting a binding say until the next election. At least I do get to rank the parties, rather than having to weigh up whether I should vote for the Greens because I like them or Labor because there’s more chance of them beating the Liberals… that would be frustrating.
Anyway, I do think we need reform. “Taking action into our own hands” is a very vague phrase, though. What do you suggest? Interesting as violent revolutions are to study I don’t actually want to live through one. Furthermore I can’t see the general population being galvanised into revolt barring some truly major crisis. I have trouble seeing what our options are. Australians can exert pressure over individual issues (e.g. Howard’s IR reforms, the Iraq War) but pushing for fundamental change has to be harder.
I think you’re right to say that Labor being entrenched is a bad thing, and as I said, I think they’ll use it as an excuse to move further to the right.
But this needn’t be the case if there was a sizeable opposition from the Left. And I think the Greens can’t provide it. After being involved with the refugee campaign, it was disappointing to see the Greens fail to come out strong against Rudd’s asylum seeker policy.
There’s a refugee rally in Melbourne on Saturday, but I doubt there will be enough green triangles there. They’ve abandoned grass roots activism in favour of messy electoral politics, and I think even they are shifting to the right on some issues, namely private education and a consistent policy on military interventions (wars).
Add to your points about an unfair electoral system, the fact that money largely controls how much influence a party has and it’s pretty hard to see a party that stands against the interests of big business winning.
My point about “Taking action into our own hands” was deliberately vague because that part of my argument could be a number of posts in itself. You’re right to say a revolt won’t happen without a major crisis. I don’t think you can make it happen and I don’t predict one for some time.
But I do think we need to get rid of the whole system, and I don’t think it necessarily has to be violent in the extreme.
I am a proud socialists. I hate Liberals to my core; I understand Labor is supposed to be leftwing, but they actually are a party that protects the rich and oppresses the poor.
John Howard was Liberal-right, wants to smash unions, hates gays, loves the rich, hate foreigners, addicted to nationalism and wants women to belong in the kitchen. He balanced his views out by having Costello and Downer in his cabinet as Liberal-centre and Liberal-left respectively.
Tony Abbott is Liberal-right. His shadow cabinet has Joe Hockey a Liberal-left and Julie Bishop a Liberal-centre.
Tony Abbott could very well do what Pauline Hanson did in 1996.
She gave voice to the rightwing backward bigotry, and this all of a sudden awoke the Australian left to fight back against her.
Could the same thing occur with Abbott? Is he going to be vocal about his attitudes towards abortion, women’s role in society, gays, gay marriage?
Mikhail Silverwood´s last blog ..NOVEMBER GAY RALLY 19 by Dmitri Imaz
Mikhail, thanks for your comments.
It is possible that Abbott could reignite the ‘culture wars’ as Hanson and Howard did and this has been suggested by the right as well if you saw Paul Kelly’s piece in The Australian this week.
I sure hope so. The problem is that Rudd is a politician that is very careful not to stir up controversy and hopes for a quiet climate. The lead won’t come from him and he will be very keen to pacify any resistance.
Malcolm Turnbull was a classic case on ‘judge by actions not by words’.
At the start of this year, Kevin Rudd wrote an essay in the Monthly where he talked about how wonderful Keynessian social-democracy (government intervention on the markets to ensure stability) is.
Immediatley, Malcolm Turnbull replied with a speech to the national press gallery. He explained that, despite the GFC, he was still a committed neo-liberal monaterism (free markets, without government regulation). He said that only free market could give Australia great wealth.
(Turnbull quoted Margaret Thatcher; he did understand the difference between social demcoracy and socialism.)
Immediatley, I thought ‘We’re going to have one heck of a political year. Turnbull and Rudd are going to be ripping each other apart in debate over economic policies’.
But this never came to be. Turnbull, throughout the entire year, was weak as water. He never toughened up and challenge Rudd on any level of policies; he conceded ground when he shouldn’t have and he was chasing his own tail for a long while.
Turnbull revealed himself as being no Milton Freidman clone that would declare the greatness of capitalism. Instead, he was lukewarm and no Liberal party could stand for that.
Will Turnbull be a shadow minister or will he leave politics forever?
Mikhail Silverwood´s last blog ..NOVEMBER GAY RALLY 19 by Dmitri Imaz
I think Turnbull’s career is effectively over.
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