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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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?

Originally Posted by 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.

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