Ben,

You are voting for something that no longer exists, but you would like to believe does. The reason that the voters have abandoned labor is precisely because while labor espouses certain values, its actions completely ignore them.

Secondly the class system of the 50s no longer exists. Trade unions represent about 1 in 8 "workers", and the regressive Labor policies being introduced seem to be dragging the country and economy backwards.

i think it is big mistake to rave on about the past and Labor did this and that.

As a historian, you would be better off showing why Labor is on the nose, what are the factors limiting its past approach to its chance of offering a tradtional policy mix, and how Labor can address such realities in a vastly different way than the Coalition.

It wont be easy, but is possible. There are indeeed some Labor policies that are in line with its ideals, but other policy decisions also explain the mess it is in.

The author says that the ALP is:

"a revolutionary ideal that shone out of the late nineteenth century boldly promoting the value and dignity of the working class."

Tell that to the members of the HSU.

I am currently researching and writing up article on calls for ministers to resign in all states and the national level from 2000 to 2011.

The record of Labor will indeed make some interesting reading; will sort of complicate any belief that it is Labor that is the shining light of polital parties, although corruption and poor perfomance is evident on both sides.

No wonder academia is in such a mess when even one of its members can show such a capacity for self delusion.

What ever it is he's taking, I want some. Anyone who can find any of Chifley's dignity anywhere in the party today, must be getting some help from something. To suggest that there is any dignity in any of their policies is such a joke, it's not even funny.

...Labor blunders on under the misconception of "Lysenkoism", which justifies its (Labors) materialistic dialectic. Forgotten are the true theories of Mendal and Morgan which states the existence in living beings, of an unchanging character (historic traditions), inherited through genetics. Lysenkos theory falls flat under the misconception that change in human nature is primarily subjected to, and manipulated by environment.

...But from the perspective of “Unification Thought”, the reverse is true: The human being (as a genetically fixed object), is the subject and ruler of the environment. Labor supporters issued the directive to install a leader of choice (Kevin Rudd), in order to bring the environment under control: A move rejected by the “Lysenkoites” of Gillard and the faceless quasi rulers, to the peril of the Labor machine, forthwith and onwards.