Tuesday 26th of November 2024
Home » Blogs » John Richardson's blog

representing the people .....

representing the people .....

Let's judge the moderates and extremists.

Once in power in 2007 who supported in practice the US led invasion of Iraq, an invasion which has killed more than 1 million civilians? Labor.

Who supported the invasion of Afghanistan and has kept Australian killers there? Labor.

Who supported and now directs the racist Northern Territory intervention and has expanded parts of the welfare quarantining program into other areas of Australia? Labor.

What is the life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians under Labor? 17 years.

What is the gender pay gap between men and women under Labor? 18 percent and growing.

Who supports the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which since it began policing building sites has seen death rates rise? Labor.

Who has presided over a massive shift in wealth from labour to capital? Labor and their doppelgangers before them, the Liberals.

Who has done nothing about addressing climate change, other than introducing schemes designed to cut workers' living standards and shift more wealth to business and the polluters?

Who opposes gay marriage? Labor.

Who locks up refugees, including kids, in concentration camps? Labor.

Who backs to the hilt the US Alliance? Labor.

Who supports unquestioningly Israel's genocide against Palestinians? Labor.

And, to me the greatest indictment of all - 2 billion people are starving or malnourished because they can't afford food. Labor's policies and actions reinforce this ultimate failure of capitalism.

What could be more extreme than a system that condemns one third of humanity to hunger when more than enough food is currently produced to feed everyone on the planet?

So let's look at Labor's record. Warmongers in favour of imperialism and Zionist ethnic cleansing. Pro-boss, anti-worker. Anti-equal pay. Anti-equal love. Racists. Homophobes. Sexists.

And they are the moderates? Give me a dose of extremism any day.

Just who are the real extremists?

meanwhile .....

Extremists, reprehensible, deranged, socialist ideologues, hardline, anti-semitic. These are just some of the lies 'respectable' Labor and Opposition politicians, the Murdoch Press and the Zionists are throwing at the left-wing Greens.

Why? Because in New South Wales the Greens' policy is to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

Not only that but NSW Greens' Senator elect Lee Rhiannon, who takes her seat on 1 July, has reaffirmed her support for BDS in recent days, despite the fierce opposition of national Greens' leader Bob Brown.

Yet in spite of all this vilification Greens' candidate Jamie Parker has claimed victory in the New South Wales lower house seat of Balmain.

The attacks from the political elite of Labor and the Opposition and the Murdoch press are reaching a crescendo of irrationality, an irrationality driven by fear that the Left (broadly viewed) might gain some traction on a range of issues, including Palestine.

Imagine having a Senator in the Federal parliament who didn't actually parrot the ruling class's lines. Shock horror, someone from the Left to perhaps challenge the plutocracy.

Support left-wing Greens against the establishment's attacks

a boulder in one's shoe...

Who opposes anything and everything? : the Libs (conservatives)... We, the plebs, are caught between a rock and a hard place... But I believe there is more hope in helping change attitude in the Labor party than in the Libs (conservative right ratbags)... Sometimes the Labor and the Libs (conservatives) tactics are weird and deceptive, especially when some of the pollies pull the blanket toward themselves rather than for the good of the country or the planet. The sods.

Yes... if the Labor Party is a bit like a stone in one's shoe, the Libs (conservatives) are more like boulders in thy sandals, or iron shackles to the workers while the Libs (conservatives) themselves are destined to enjoy the sun on the (French) Riviera...

One has to remember that Johnnee Rattus LIED very carefully and cleverly about the war on Iraq (and many other things mind you) and conned the Labor dummies that war was in the "national interest" designes to stop WMDs (that Johnnnee knew never existed) ... Yes Johnnee was a good spruiker for the bad bags of tricks...

We live in the age of deceit...

more for the people .....

He was one of Labor's biggest fund-raisers, pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the hotel industry, but now ''the publicans' friend'' will be showered with cash at his own fund-raiser.

Three of the state's most prominent publicans - the former NSW Australian Hotels Association president John Thorpe, the ''pub king'' Arthur Laundy, and the central coast hotelier Bob Bourne - are hosting a ''farewell and thank you'' cocktail party for the former Blacktown MP, Paul Gibson, next Monday night.

The invitation offers hoteliers the chance to ''make a farewell contribution on the evening''.

At least 50 publicans are expected to attend the party, to be held at the AHA's Macquarie Street NSW headquarters on the eve of the association's state council meeting.

Mr Gibson, who has retired on an annual parliamentary pension of more than $100,000, has raised more than $500,000 for the Labor Party since the 2003 election, with many of those donations coming from pubs as well as trade unions.

Mr Bourne, a former AHA president, said Mr Gibson had been a ''true friend'' to the hotel industry for decades but particularly came to its rescue in the late 1990s, when poker machines in registered clubs were harming pubs. ''We were broke, we couldn't compete with the clubs and he would always be there to point us in the right direction and showed us who we needed to talk to,'' Mr Bourne said.

Publicans invited to repay retired Labor MP who was a 'true friend'

The perversion of social democracy in Australia...

...

Some recent Australian public policy debates came to mind when encountering Judt’s thesis:

  •  The need and disputed measures required to address climate change (Outcome: Economic cost and efficiency must naturally take priority over what is good and right for the environment now and in the long-term. A good economy is what keeps society thriving.)

     

  • The introduction of a Paid Parental Leave Scheme, the level of financial support a government should provide and where the money should come from. (Outcome: Providing equal opportunity for individuals to participate and succeed in all aspects of life, including both work and family, through comprehensive paid parental leave? A utopian myth.)

     

  • The often avoided question of an undervalued tertiary sector (Outcome: Technological innovation? We’re proud when innovation does eventuate but we’re doing enough and Australia doesn’t traditionally support intellectual elitism.)

     

  • The allocation of public health care funding and the particular areas that should be prioritised (Outcome: So what about mental health?) and

     

  • The question of significant public investment in vital infrastructure like the National Broadband Network versus the alternative – a minimally regulated public-private sector collaboration (Outcome: If the NBN is built solidly and cohesively by the government using public finances this will lead to definite increases in work productivity. This is good for the economy and that is why it must go ahead.)

...

Bestowing equal consideration to social democratic values and liberal values is a sure path for Labor to follow in order to become a credible, robust and distinctive long-term alternative to the Liberal party. And personally, I am concerned about the current and future implications of the Labor Party’s current direction on balanced liberal and social democratic policy creation in Australia.

Foresight and innovation is required for this country to transition into a new carbon-conscious and sustainability-focused world. The same great and somewhat risky step is required for Labor to transition into a truly progressive party for now and for the future.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/55630.html