I trust Julia Gillard, PM, is far less dumb than both of us put together...

If you've never made mistakes in your life, or said the wrong thing at the wrong time, or been a bit cagey about an issue that was a bit too hot to handle, you are a far better man (or woman) than I am... 

I guess you seem to hate Julia for whatever reason... Fair enough. Possibly because she accepted or instigated the deal to dump Rudd... Possibly because she has not been able to solve the asylum seekers issue in an acceptable moral fashion nor with a "one-liner" like that of John Howard about choosing who to reject, nor has she been able to sort out the issue of gambling to everyone satisfaction or hope... Nor has she been able to make a strong inroad into a few other issues, or for all reasons posted above...  

From my point of view, Julia Gillard has laid out important stepping stones that are worth mightily for the future.

Of all the pollies we have elected in the position to make decisions for this country, Julia Gillard is the least duplicitous, despite her famous no carbon tax and her introducing a carbon "pricing".

Of course we all will discover too late, that the globe is warming up and we need to reduce our carbon emission to zero extra carbon. It's not an opinion, but a scientific fact that the denialists are trying hard to make appear as an opinion...

Labor's NBN which is coming our way reasonably on time is the BEST option for improving communications in this country — no matter what the detractors say... Of course the merde-och press hates it because it will increase competition to the cable networks.

I guess that Tony Abbott has tried all the tricks in the books of bad tricks to drag her to his grubby level, while the merde-och press has been gunning persistently for her, the Fairfax press has not been far behind this sorry style of affairs.

Say for example that Peter Slipper is not a savoury character but the way the opposition (and the media) went after him was far more disgraceful. Yet for the media it's Tony Abbott love in as usual... We can only expect more crap from him, this year — all supported by the media, including the ABC...

I suppose as a nation we prefer to be whinging for real about something — thus having Tony Abbott at the helm would make us so happy to have a massively bigger whinge...

...

The picture used at the top (from the original article) was of course chosen to do the most image damage... It is not a fair representation of Ms Gillard, but is a short moment in time when she did put on a silly funny face — who knows, may be during a charitable event...

I have thus decided from now on, when people take a photograph of my mug-face, to either destroy their cameras or look like Buster Keaton.

Meanwhile the coalition is lying through its teeth, it will destroy the place and blame labor for it, while oiling the boots of its rich masters. Nothing more, nothing less...

Thanks for the ‘dear john’ letter … I’ve been waiting 64 years for one of those!!

You are wrong to assume that I hate Julia Dullard Gus. As best as I can recall, I’ve never actually hated anyone, including ‘rattus’ Howard.

What I have hated & do hate is what these people stand for, what they do & sometimes, of greater importance, what they don’t do.

My main beef with Dullard is that, as leader of the government & the Labor Party, she has & is betraying working class Australians, whilst serving the corporate interests of the big end of town & the personal interests of the party machine members, who represent most of her cabinet colleagues.

I detest the absence of a moral compass in the Dullard government & the modern Labor Party. I detest the corruption that has infected the Labor Party from top to bottom, at both a federal & state level.

I despise the willingness of Dullard & her colleagues to openly compete with the conservatives to deliver the greatest level of mediocrity in government. I weep at the absence of critical thinking; the absence of imagination, aspiration & inspiration.

I resent the boring drone that has become the excuse for political discourse in this country, delivered by a determined fixation on the part of the major parties & the legions of their political advisors to focus on out- manoeuvring each other to be the same, rather than having the courage & character to forge a path for the future based on principle & the interests of the entire nation, regardless of the slings & arrows let-fly by the vested interests. If yo are not prepared to take-on the task Gus, get out I say!!

I’m sickened by the moral failure of this government; be it through the corruption of its so-called refugee policy; its continuation of the ‘rattus’-inspired genocide of the aboriginal people or its failure to pursue, represent & secure the rights of ordinary Australians, rather than kow-towing to the interests of the spivs, rent-seekers & corporate plunderers who litter our national landscape.

I’m ashamed that an Australian Labor Prime Minister has to be threatened with a parliamentary caucus revolt before she was willing to even think about not backing the Zionists & their enablers on the Potomac over the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people.

I’m disgusted that we have a Prime Minister & a government that isn’t willing to take-on the vested interests in this country over things like poker machines; that is proud to engineer & benefit from a Labor inspired scam that is the electricity sector; that isn’t capable of developing an independent foreign policy; that refuses to truly govern in the interests of all Australians.

I’m fed-up with hearing the likes of Macklin, Ferguson, Combet & the rest of the whackos from the discredited Labor machine mimicking their conservative counterparts & lecturing the community about the importance of people finding work, even when there is no work to be found.

I’m tired of my taxes being spent supporting ‘rent-seekers’ who do nothing to create viable & productive economic enterprises in this country, or on the horde of ‘basket-weavers’, who seem to think that they have a god-given right to tell everyone how they should live & what they should think.

I despair at our ignorant politicians, like Dullard, Macklin & the liberal dolt Kevin Andrews, who assert that we should be ‘retraining’ people, rather than offering them the barest of government support to keep them alive.

I’m fed-up with the horseshit that passes for political leadership I this country Gus.

But more than anything, I’m over the complacency that has overtaken this country … the rise of selfishness & a complete absence of concern for the well-being of others … the cynical contempt that is evidenced towards anyone who is isn’t totally pre-occupied with the pursuit of their own naked self-interest, at everyone-else’s expense.

I’m pissed-off Gus with the willingness of the so-called ‘workers’ party’ to maintain middle-class welfare for those who don’t need it, whilst denying the most rudimentary support for those who have the least in our society.

I’m not sure if you are aware of this of not Gus, but the share of GDP going to the owners of capital in this country has never been higher, whilst the share of GDP going to labour has never been lower.

And whilst Dullard pulls-down $500K + a year & the likes of dopey-dora Macklin rake-in around $300K a year, the ‘average’ full-time, permanent employee in this country earns $47 an hour (befor tax) & receives paid sick & annual leave, plus super on top of that … down the road a-piece, 40% - yes, that’s 40% - of the workforce survives on casual work & averages an hourly rate of pay of $17 – yes, $17 - & receive no paid leave of any description.

Of course it’s OK for the likes of Dullard & Abbott to lecture everyone about the importance of working & paying your way, but none of them have ever held down a ‘real’ job & none of them would have a clue what it’s like to have to struggle to make ends meet.

As for productivity Gus, that’s just another red herring thrown-up by the big end of town to try & keep downwards pressure on wages, on the one hand, & pressure on the government to cut regulation & reduce taxes on the other. Never a word about management productivity Gus … in fact, management consistently fails to deliver their objectives & they still get paid their bonuses!!

I’m fed-up with the ring-around-the-rosy game between Dullard & Abbott, when frankly, I detest both of them. I can’t distinguish between their respective positions on almost every issue & neither of them or their parties seems to give a tinker’s cuss about anything other than taking & holding political power. They are really a pox; a mistletoe on this country & if they all disappeared tomorrow, we wouldn’t notice they’d gone for all the effect it would have.

As far as the ‘threat’ of Abbott & his acolytes; give me a break Gus. Could they be any worse that ‘rattus’ & his mob? And to you really think that the average Australian cares that much? Too busy watching the cricket mate, or dreaming of winning Lotto. She’ll be right (refer to my post ‘she’ll be right mate!!’ …

Meanwhile, Labor continues with its systematic bashing of the underprivileged in pursuit of its mythical surplus … talk about a magnificent obsession Gus.

Jenny Macklin, she who is perversely referred to as the ‘Minister for Families’ leads the charge by removing 100,000 single parents (90% of whom are women) from the single parenting payment or the partnered parenting payment to Newstart (the dole). 

According to ACOSS, this will result in a loss in weekly income of between $60 to $110 a week for the single parent when their child turns 8. This previously (before 31 December) kicked in when the youngest child turned 16.

Macklin argues this will encourage more people into the workforce. It won’t. As Penny Wong & Craig Emerson pointed out in 2005 & 2006 when John Howard tried something similar as part of his infamous Welfare to work program, all it will do for most of the single parents & their children is increase their poverty & misery, whilst contributing budget savings of around $728 million over the next 4 years.

I can remember when the current Finance Minister, Penny Wong, condemned the proposed Howard changes to parenting payments in 2005. She said there was no evidence that ‘dumping a sole parent or her children or a person with a disability in this country onto the lower dole payment would help them get work.’ Exactly Penny, exactly.

Remember Dillard’s famous ‘Abbott is a misogynist’ speech Gus? 

The same Dullard who, that very morning, pushed the $728 million in cuts to the single parent payment through the caucus, impacting mainly on poor single mums. This is systemic misogyny Gus. 

These Labor attacks on single parents were all about a budget surplus. This has little economic rationale but in the current circumstances lots of political rationale for Labor as the servants of capital.

The fetish of a budget surplus is code for attacking workers & the poor to make us pay for the crises of capitalism, & if the single parent disgrace is any example Labor is doing it in an even more draconian fashion than the arch Tory John Howard.

The truth is Gus, that the collapse in company revenue means that Labor cannot now achieve a surplus in 2013. Wayne Swan has quite rightly abandoned a Budget Surplus by 2013 as a key Labor commitment. Labor should abolish its attack on single parents too.

The even sadder truth is Gus that it is Labor today which is out of touch with ordinary working people & those millions of Australians living below the poverty line.

That is the wider issue here, poverty & Labor’s policies of shifting wealth to the rich at the expense of the rest of us. The low level of the dole & shifting many single parents onto it are but a part of this increasing inequality & poverty in Australia.

More than 2.2 million Australians, including almost 600,000 children, were living below the poverty line in 2010, according to the Australian Council of Social Service in a recent report & what, pray-tell has Dillard & her cronies done about that? Well Gus, apart from increasing the number of people now filling that space, they have ensured that they all have a lot less than they had when they arrived there, whilst making sure that it is a whole lot harder for them to leave.

Sadly Gus, the policies of neoliberal Labor & Liberal governments over the last 30 years have been to shift more & more wealth to the rich & business. The share of national income going to labour is at its lowest & to capital its highest since records began to be kept.

Ian McAuley’s graph in New Matilda starkly reveals this reality.

Inequality in Australia has increased since the 1980s. The OECD’s key country findings for Australia in its Divided We Stand report included the fact that the share of national income of the richest one percent increased from 4.8% in 1980 to 8.8% in 2008. For the richest 0.1% their share trebled, from 1% to 3%. The report on global inequality found it had increased across the developed world & said that in Australia this was due to two factors – growing inequality of incomes & less progressive tax & transfer policies & outcomes.

While the earnings gap between the top 10% & bottom 10% of workers increased by one fifth, the tax system ‘offset’ only about half that increase. This is indicative of deeper tax changes since 1980 in Australia. Tax has become less progressive. So why not tax the rich Gus?

A Senate Committee in November for example found that the Newstart allowance was inadequate but did not recommend an increase because they didn’t know where the money would come from. Oh by the way, and totally unrelated of course, Gina Rinehart has $29 billion in wealth, Australian banks are the most profitable in the world, and we are a low tax country.

Some Labor members of the Senate Committee looking into the adequacy of Newstart payments broke ranks & argued for an unspecified increase. ACOSS & other groups, have argued for a $50 a week increase. A $50 a week Newstart increase would still see the payment below the poverty line, only less so. Business supports an increase in Newstart. People on the dole are over $100 a week below the poverty line. but it is not just people on social security payments who live below the poverty line.

The shift of wealth to the rich over the last few decades & increasing poverty has been in part because we workers haven’t fought back. But its also because the workers party & its leadership have betrayed their philosophical roots & have fallen-in with the servants of big business.

The time has come to tell the very, very well paid Jenny Macklin & the ruling class she represents, that the poverty she & the rest of the Dullard Labor government create through their deliberate policies has to end. 

So Gus … hate Julia Gillard? No, I wouldn’t waste my energy.

But Gus, as I said in a post the other day, John Curtin, arguably the greatest Australian Prime Minister & best Labor leader this country has produced, would literally turn in his grave if he could witness the unprincipled betrayal of working class Australians by his modern namesakes.

Ironically, whilst Curtin was at one time consigned to the opposition benches because of his refusal to compromise his principles, the current Labor government will shortly be consigned to oblivion because it has no principles.

And for me Gus & millions like me, it won’t make an iota of difference when they’re gone.

Apologies for the rant!!

Thanks for the reply... good one... points taken and being digested... I have posted a longish ideal to do list for Labor at http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/25762

Changing horses may not make much difference in the short term but in the middle to longer term, we will be buggered like never before with the Libs... I also mean the planet will be stuffed far sooner with them, and especially with the little Rattus Abbortus... Thus for me, it's still worth trying to save Labor from itself — CONSIDERING THAT THE "WORKING CLASS" HAS BECOME A MINORITY IN THIS COUNTRY. The media of course is FULLY responsible in making individualism more palatable than the common good to most people... Cheers. Gus