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Julia Gillard’s inability to change political direction: A price we all pay

By Bruce Haigh - posted Thursday, 8 September 2011


My notion of a Left agenda would include the state providing a framework to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number of people, including the empowerment of Aborigines and asylum seekers. It would embrace the abolition of water licences and state ownership of water for the benefit of all Australians. It would encompass a greatly increased state contribution to public schools and concomitant decrease in funding to private schools. It would see state regulation of banks as a better tool for managing the economy than the crude instrument of Reserve Bank controlled interest rates.

It would see support for innovation, research and local manufacturing and a return to apprenticeships across a range of skills, increased state support for higher education and the CSIRO and the bonding of medical students for service in rural and regional Australia. It would also see a greatly enhanced program of public infrastructure, financed if necessary by borrowings against future productivity gains.

My left wing agenda would also see a withdrawal from Afghanistan and a parliamentary inquiry into why and how Australia was taken to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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On the basis of the above the Greens can hardly be called Left, leftish perhaps in a bourgeois sort of way, but on key issues within their platform, such as management of water and land use they have squibbed it.

The so called Left of the Labor Party has allowed the Right to call the shots. The fact that a Labor Party has a Right which dominates the party agenda is a significant statement in terms the current political environment.

In a recent interview on ABC TV, former Prime Minister John Howard, described his politics as conservative, but there was nothing conservative about taking Australia to war and nothing conservative in the systematic abuse of asylum seekers and the election ploy of abusing Aborigines through the cruel tactic of a military backed ‘intervention’. I would call these measures radical.

I have had enough of the radical Right, of the abusive Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard, who suck up to our big and powerful friends and kick down the most vulnerable and those most in need. They are weak and they are bullies and we don’t need them.

I for one want to get out of the feed lot and into some greener pastures.

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About the Author

Bruce Haigh is a political commentator and retired diplomat who served in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1972-73 and 1986-88, and in South Africa from 1976-1979

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