Wednesday 17th of April 2024
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australia day .....

‘Like Bush's America, Howard's Australia is not so much a democracy as a plutocracy, governed for and by the "big end of town," even though, as Mark Twain pointed out, this is "an entire continent peopled by the lower orders." He was not that far out; for my generation, like that of my parents, we were the poor who had got away. There was a sense that we had inherited something other than the British legacy. Long before the rest of the western world, Australians gained a minimum wage, an eight-hour working day, pensions, maternity allowance, child benefits and the vote for women. The secret ballot was invented here and became known as the "Australian ballot." The Australian Labour Party formed governments 25 years before any comparable social democracy in Europe. In the 1960s, with the exception of the Aboriginal people - who are always the exception - Australians could boast the most equitable spread of personal income in the world.

 

It is a proud history that is barely a memory in Howard's Australia. His is an undeclared union with the "opposition" Labour Party, which under his predecessors Bob Hawke and Paul Keating launched a spectacular redistribution of wealth in favor of the rich. According to the financial analysts County Securities Australia, the deregulation of the television industry alone gave Packer and Murdoch "a one billion-dollar gift entirely free of tax." The convicted crook Alan Bond built a paper empire that owed A$14bn, or 10 per cent of the national debt. "Bondy," said Hawke, was also "larger than life."’ 

 

A First-Rate Country Run by Second-Rate People

three years on .....

I wonder what would Hugh Mackay say in retrospect? 

 

True-Blue Ideals Begin To Fade

Anger and action.

 It's good to be angry - and let off steam. But if anger achieves no change with  a tangible outcome for ongoing good,then we burn to no purpose but our own destruction. True, we are in a sad way with many things persistently going against justice and sanity. True, we are not a democracy but an oligarchy. But what are we doing about it?

Only radical action can cure a radical problem. The Labor Party started the path to party-politics but the benefits have not been achieved. The Democrats & Greens attempted to cure the drift away from democracy - by power politics - which, of course could not work. Independents have similarly cynically opted for power politics.

So we have just drifted further down stream.

Democracy and party politics are simply not compatible.

The way forward is the extension of the 'Australiam Ballot' into parliament itself to make our representatives - ours.  

This is the radical medicine that will disconnect all politcians from parties  and send them all scurrying to their electorates to hold public meetings and endear themselves to their own  people. 

This bonding we must have for a new era of sophisticated democracy, which will see the people in contro,l and wisdom of a new order prevailing, with a new political integration of the community with parliament. Then the people will govern as well as being governed.

Basil Smith, Convenor  Secret Ballot Party (secretballotparty.fastmail.fm)

Australia Day

"Australia is not so much a democracy . . ." A spade is a spade, is a spade, is a spade.

It is not a democracy. Who cares what other crazy it is.

The only thing to worry about that it is NOT a democracy even if it is not a democracy by only .01 percent. It stills means it is NOT a democracy.