Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi #7

[Axver]

Perhaps the worst thing about Australian/NZ politics - and, probably, politics throughout the Western world - in the late eighties and early nineties was that every major party signed up to the whole neoliberal privatisation bandwagon. Yes, the parties of the right took it further, but like you say the soft version came in anyway. And, well, NZ pretty much got the hard version thanks to Roger Douglas. Keating had enough of a social conscience to not go as mad as his Kiwi counterparts.

The strangest part about all of this down here is that it wasn't really a vote winner. In the same way as both major parties right now have spent seven years failing to go for marriage equality despite huge majority support, one of my first political awakenings was how fucking pissed off everybody was about all this privatised shit.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I don't think it was ever popular, but once both sides signed up to a bipartisan economic worldview/consensus, they kind of had the public between a rock and a hard place. For a while, anyway.

That consensus is cracking up bigtime lately, of course. See recent comments by Sally McManus, Richard di Natale* and even old Keating himself (merely repeating some things he said in the last election campaign; the Third Way is dead).

*this one surprises me, as he's struck me as very suspect indeed, up until now

 

[Vlad n U 2]

I've been very impressed with Sally McManus so far.

 

[cobl04]

Of course you are.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Aren't you?

 

[dazzledbylight]

Back to music for a sec.
Quite cranky that Midnight Oil tix went on sale here in NYC a few weeks back before I did even know about it. And because it's a relatively smaller venue, tickets were all gone. (I can't afford marked up ones)

But very glad to know they're out there in these crazy times!

Back to poli...
I still would vote for a neo-liberal over a (USA) Republican, or a Conservative because a neo-lib will usually still match my social/cultural views.

I'm an old-school FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Wellstone, Ted Kennedy liberal/progressive, who also appreciates Nordic Democratic Socialism.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I see Fairfax finally stopped messing about and just went ahead and signed their own death warrant today.

 

[cobl04]

Sad, but not surprising.

 

[Axver]

Oh god, so not only more cuts and more shithouse stories, but a more right-wing editorial line?

Yeah, because we definitely don't have enough right-wing media in Australia. How the fuck is it that roughly half the population votes ALP/Green/similar-misc and yet there will now be no major media organisation targeting that demographic? (The ABC doesn't fucking count, shut up Ghost of Latho.)

 

[cobl04]

Where did you get that idea?

 

[cobl04]

Don't worry, just seen it. The Guardian have a vested interest in catastrophising the news, mind you. But it's still very, very sad.

Guess it's pertinent I just became a $100-a-year Graun subscriber.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Quite apart from which, they, the management at Fairfax, couldn't have come out with a more tone-deaf piece of boilerplate if they tried.

I'd like to think - haha - that The Guardian Australia gain something from Fairfax's loss, but, not too sure about them. They could be headed the same way, and that pretty much leaves us with New Matilda and whoever's left over at Independent Australia.

 

[cobl04]

New Matilda is trash if you ask me.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

The Guardian Australia is the only salvageable component of The Guardian.

 

[Axver]

Don't worry, just seen it. The Guardian have a vested interest in catastrophising the news, mind you. But it's still very, very sad.

Guess it's pertinent I just became a $100-a-year Graun subscriber.

They're on point though. We already have two-thirds of our print media as "pro-business" and "pro-markets" shills for Australia's worst exploiters, rent-seekers, criminals in suits, and second-rate speculators. Fairfax, for the past couple of decades, provided a modest alternative - often a tepid, cowardly, and toothless one, for sure, but a social conscience lurked somewhere in its pages and it didn't assume private enterprise by default trumps government in any given situation.

A move further to the left would help differentiate them. A drift to the right gives even less reason for them to exist. Why buy the Age if it just provides a slightly less hysterical version of the Hun's editorial line? Why buy the Age if it will give the current government as much of a pass as the Australian does?

Quite apart from which, they, the management at Fairfax, couldn't have come out with a more tone-deaf piece of boilerplate if they tried.

I'd like to think - haha - that The Guardian Australia gain something from Fairfax's loss, but, not too sure about them. They could be headed the same way, and that pretty much leaves us with New Matilda and whoever's left over at Independent Australia.

Independent Australia is the fucking worst and I will not take seriously anything published there.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Yeah, i was being a little eh, wry, guys. Independent Australia makes my skin crawl and New Matilda long ago made the decision to go tabloid (though one or two individual columnists, like Ben Eltham, are ok).

 

[cobl04]

A move further to the left would help differentiate them. A drift to the right gives even less reason for them to exist. Why buy the Age if it just provides a slightly less hysterical version of the Hun's editorial line? Why buy the Age if it will give the current government as much of a pass as the Australian does?

Ax be under no illusions this a deliberate and calculated move by the powers-that-be. I agree wholeheartedly, but it's very clear to me that this is just a way of lining the pockets of the very few before selling it off to an even bigger idiot. They know what they're doing. They don't give a shit about anything else.

 

[Axver]

Ax be under no illusions this a deliberate and calculated move by the powers-that-be. I agree wholeheartedly, but it's very clear to me that this is just a way of lining the pockets of the very few before selling it off to an even bigger idiot. They know what they're doing. They don't give a shit about anything else.

Time for some asset stripping, huh.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I wonder how it feels for Malcolm Turnbull, in his quiet moments, to know that he's less than a footnote in Australian history. I mean, seriously, he's a footnote to Tony Abbott. This is why I wasn't particularly fussed when he rolled Abbott, beyond considerable irritation at the thwarted opportunity to vote out an Abbott government at an election; I knew it would come to this.

As an aside, I see the forum is now doing the thing it was doing about 18 months ago where it won't even load unless I visit via a proxy server. I mean, what's that about?

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Meanwhile in the UK, the liberal punditry are outraged that Corbyn wants to bring back free school meals for children - so things are pretty dire at the moment, and a good reason why my tolerance for liberals is at an all time low.

 

[Axver]

I wonder how it feels for Malcolm Turnbull, in his quiet moments, to know that he's less than a footnote in Australian history. I mean, seriously, he's a footnote to Tony Abbott. This is why I wasn't particularly fussed when he rolled Abbott, beyond considerable irritation at the thwarted opportunity to vote out an Abbott government at an election; I knew it would come to this.

As an aside, I see the forum is now doing the thing it was doing about 18 months ago where it won't even load unless I visit via a proxy server. I mean, what's that about?

Turnbull could have been remembered as the Prime Minister who dragged the Liberal Party back to being the party of Menzies. Instead, well, we got the man you describe. He will be the most forgettable PM since Gorton and McMahon, who nobody today could say a single thing about.

Also, I've never experienced the thing you describe about the forum not loading, not at home or work or mobile.

Meanwhile in the UK, the liberal punditry are outraged that Corbyn wants to bring back free school meals for children - so things are pretty dire at the moment, and a good reason why my tolerance for liberals is at an all time low.

I don't spend much time following British politics, and as a consequence I don't know how I feel about Corbyn. On the one hand he seems to command enough support among the base to maintain his leadership, and he's not that far from my own ideology. On the other hand he seems to be torpedoing any chance of electoral success, and at times appears to have rubbish political instincts.

Also, I'm just a little baffled by this hatred for "liberals" at the moment, since the word is so poorly defined. I mean, I'm socially liberal, and so is practically every socialist and social democrat. In my own political awakening around 2004, liberal and left-wing were practically synonymous, but now "leftist" and "liberal" are posited as opposed ideologies. Yes, there's been a hardening of political perspectives in the past 13 or so years, but I find it ridiculous when "leftists" and "liberals" with rather similar principles and objectives spend more time loathing each other than the right.

 

[cobl04]

I've come to hate both terms, the fucking culture wars will still be going when Syria has rebuilt itself as the fourth great world power.

You know what is amazing, Clarke and Dawe. How many years, and they're still excellent. When there's no one left but cockroaches they'll still be turning out the goods.

 

[Kieran McConville]

The problem is that liberals, at least in the way that word gets used in America, are fairweather friends. Superficially sure, you might say why shouldn't liberals and those further left be allies? Why not indeed. But at the first hint of an actual left policy program, liberals turn right and pull up the ladder. It's a dynamic nearly as old as the French revolution.

I would guess that is what Vlad was getting at, and to a considerable extent, I tend to agree.

As for Corbyn, I don't pay enough attention to British politics either. I want to like him, I support the version of Labour he wants, and it seems like a hell of a lot of Labour members do as well, but it does seem that his ascendancy remains a symbolic victory. On a personal level he and those close to him seem to be not very effective politicians. It's a shame, a real shame.

The weird server bullshit sorted itself out anyhow. So that's something.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Turnbull could have been remembered as the Prime Minister who dragged the Liberal Party back to being the party of Menzies. Instead, well, we got the man you describe. He will be the most forgettable PM since Gorton and McMahon, who nobody today could say a single thing about.

The best thing Turnbull can hope for is that there isn't another economic crash on his watch, because then he gets the opportunity to go down in history like Stanley Bruce (who at least did quite a lot of what I guess we'd called NGO work these days, in his long retirement).

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Leftists have opposed/had issue with liberals for many, many years - it's certainly not a new thing. And understandably it's because our goals are markedly different.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Also, Corbyn's policies are so mildly social democratic, it's telling how far to the right the mainstream is when the 'sensible centrists' take issue with virtually anything he says/suggests.

 

[Kieran McConville]

The key argument from the remnant Blairites seems to centre around 'electability'. But as in the US, that mob can't even win elections anymore. So what's the fucking use of them?

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Blairites tried to be Tory-lite, that sure got them elected in 2015! They're shameless.

 

[Kieran McConville]

They'd rather lose than lose their grip, is what it amounts to.

 

[cobl04]

People think 2016 was awful, John Clarke has died