The rise of the right is really the collapse of the left.

The electorate has become sick of the deceit, incompetence and hypocrisy of the left as demonstrated by Juliar, Blight, and Keneally.

"The left in Australia is an endangered species. Its habit is scattered and its birth rate falling."

If only that were true.

The Left have a stranglehold on the media and fight tooth and nail to prevent balance.

We have one reasonably balanced mainstream newspaper, "The Australian". The Left want to get it under their control so it can propogate Labor-Green propoganda like the remainder of the MSM. They want parliament to pass lefgislation to ensure it stays under the constrol of the Left (the left are trained in the Left dominated factories for training and brainwashing journalists)

Examples of the Left media outlets:
ABC (Tony Jones, Jerry O'Brien, 7:30 reporters, Barry Cassidy and his "Insiders", and nearly all the rest of the staff and reporters). There is no attempt to achieve balance on the ABC (Australia's "Pravda");

Fairfax Media: Age, SMH, Financial Review (e.g. Laura Tingle)

Crickey, Matilda.

Then there are the many Left propogandsa web sites sites for fear-mongering and Catastrophes. The Conversation, Climate Spectator, The Drum, Crickey, (wrongly named) Skeptical Science, New Matilda

Many of the Left web sites delete comments that do not support the Editor's and Moderators' beliefs: e.g. Climate Spectator.

The statement:
"The left in Australia is an endangered species. Its habit is scattered and its birth rate falling."
is clearly false

I see you got 6 likes already; Bruce you are not alone.

Poor article though. what about the rest of the story. Are you saying there are not elements of lefist influence in Australian society? if you are, that is ridiculous.

Sure politics is a lot harder today, but commnetary should also reflect this reality.

The right need to read more (and understand what is written by really thoughtful people).

The neo-liberal/conservative policies in place since the mid- seventies led to the GFC. On his Australian tour in the late nineties John Ralston Saul pointed out the problems but no one took enough notice.

Just today I received the article at the link below. The right needs to be scared. If inequality continues to increase the outcome can be horrible. The end of Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities" is worth recalling. "Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seeds of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruits according to its kind".

Excess rewards to those at the top destroys markets for real goods and services. The Great Depression was not overcome until demand increased. Unfortunately much of that increase in demand was for war goods but who would want that cure now?

A blog worth reading in Australia is written by Prof. Bill Mitchell at Billyblog.

http://www.alternet.org/story/155918/exclusive_interview%3A_joseph_stiglitz_sees_terrifying_future_for_america_if_we_don%27t_reverse_inequality?akid=8990.1085576.HClF4O&rd=1&t=2

Interesting brief and rather grim summary of modern Australian political history, Bruce. I agree with you that Labor no longer presents a 'Left Wing' alternative, perhaps because a majority of us have become too affluent to need support as workers. The Greens are that alternative now and it remains to be seen if they can retain the viable 'third party' mantle they now have in Government. They have to fight much harder than the conservatives who have inertia and big money on their side.

Perhaps those of us who still believe in truth and justice need a wake-up call. Yes its about truth and justice vs lies and avarice not left vs right.

Truth and justice will never die because there will always be people passionate about maintaining it. The websites which Peter Lang helpfully named are testimony to that (tut tut you omitted Getup, Peter. Is that name too satanic for you utter?).

PS Peter and Shadow; Are there Reds under you beds? Better have a Tea Party to get rid of them

I do agree with you Bruce that the truth and justice lovers in their 'scattered habitats' need to band together and do something. We are in real danger of losing this battle. At the moment the forces of big money are prevailing; they have bought too many media outlets and the spinners to staff them. With a bit of organization, those of us who want truth could band to together and set up a newspaper- something like the 'Guardian'. I think it would sell well. Part of the reason The News Ltd and Fairfax papers are declining is because they don't give the news / facts people need to hear. They censor the real facts and replace them with 'analysis' that is really just right wing opinion.

We should all think very carefully about what happened in Europe during WW2 when the greedy and powerful (fascists) took to direct plunder to take what they thought was their right to have. They did it by first taking over the media for propaganda purposes. Fascists only manage 7% in Greece now but Neoliberal rightist governments today still manage to wage their deadly oil wars in the name of 'national security'.

Problem in Australia is that money (or love of it) is allowed to rule, both in our personal lives and in politics. We need to remind ourselves that it is only a tool,(not an end in itself)and can be used for good or bad.

"The Greens are that alternative now"

The Greens are not left wing, they are ideologically motivated elitists who disdain the normal recipients of left wing compassion to the point of misanthropy.

The Greens are the ones pushing AGW and the 'solutions' to it which will greatly reduce the lifestyles of the average citizen.

The Greens are the ones pushing the current situation with illegal immigrants and the responsibility for the deaths of people on the boats should be laid entirely at their feet.

The Greens hate Australia, and currently the Greens receive NO critical analysis and their pernicious influence pervades the media, education and the bureacracies.

The left/right dichotomy no longer applies; it is the Green misanthropy vs the pro-human philosophies.

Bruce is off his medication again!

Best take a bex, a cuppa, & a quick lie down mate.

What ever conceived harm the right, or someone of the right did you is over now mate, so these vindictive outbursts do nothing for any one, you in particular.

It really is brilliant that anyone on the left can complain about balance in the media. Perhaps they can't see our ABC, academia, education & bureaucrats, or glanced at that bastion of the left, the UN. None of them have a clue what it is.

I am ready to dance on the political grave of the left.

But I fear I will have some time to wait. Like bad smells, they seem to linger, their noses stuck in the public trough.

Ahhg, with a mishmash of subjective judgements on what is Right or Left, based on cherry-picked history, the author, OLO's Duracell Bunny, keeps on going and going... ad nauseum.

Planta

I agree with some of the previous posters as to being absolutely incredulous over articles such as this which suggest that the Left has little or no influence. I also agree wholeheartedly with Peter Lang about their dominance of the media.

Its not that the Right doesn't have a substantial presence in the media, of course they do, but they just don't strongly cover many of the issues which the Left regard as their pet causes.

In particular resource-use environmental issues, which are therefore in most cases only covered in the media from a Green-Left perspective meaning that resource use industries struggle to have any voice at all in defence of how they operate. Presumably this lies at the heart of Gina Rhinehart's disagreement with Fairfax mdia over editorial influence.

I think the problem of supporters of the Left (like Mr Haigh) in failing to recognise left-leaning influence is largely one of not knowing anything much about their pet causes. After a lifetime as a forester, I can easily see the inherent Green-Left bias in most reporting of this topic, but I suspect most lay people can't recognise it ..... so unless a journalist or politician is strongly advocating some extreme Left position, such as the end of the timber industry for example, they are regarded as Right-wing.

Entirely over the top horse feathers and bird's fur. The intervention didn't make good entertainment on the nightly TV. But as many concerned Aborigines will confirm, it did work.
As did welfare quarantining.
Finally we saw humbugging alcoholics/drug addicts, forced to surrender part of the income they effectively pissed up against the wall and instead, become essential nutrition in the bellies of seriously deprived and abused children.
Some of our more vocal posters seem to abhor that result and or the intervention, that for the first time, ensured some of the formerly abused children, were finally able to sleep safe in their own beds.
Some of our posters also reject that outcome on the entirely spurious grounds, that it was a forced white fella outcome.
Lets get real here, the black fella autonomous model created the problems.
Albeit, there remain some funding issues, that made houses that cost a tad over a $100,000 to build almost anywhere else, reportedly cost around a million each, inside NT Aboriginal communities.
And a result, I believe, attributable to a state based Labour administration, patently skimming the cream off of Federal housing assistance money, as management fees?
There is not a white way, a black way, just a right way.
I strongly reject the premise of the article, and agree wholeheartedly with Foyle. In today's political landscape, there is not a left or right? Just an up or down, or good policy or bad policy?
Rhrosty.

As a member of the media I can say that to claim the left does not dominate the media is absurd. I think the problem is that Bruce has seen articles he disagrees with and, being hard left himself, has leapt to the conclusion that sinister forces have worked to produce that contrary opinion.

The hard fact Bruce has to swallow is that the electorate itself has changed and is far less tolerent of hard left actions and rhetoric than they were, even when he retired, let alone in the prime of his career. In fact, the trend is away from people being even interested in politics. Ihe rest of us, including politicians, have to adjust, so should Bruce..

Cohenite, you hit the nail right on the head. The Greens wouldn't know what day it is in the real world.

I suspect that the average jingoistic Australian also couldn't give a stuff about sinking boats either. All they want is for their neighbourhoods to not be overrun by hijab wearing Moslems. It is rather ironic that the Greens, who profess to be such humanitarians will be the ones who help keep the Moslems out.

David

Perhaps the Right is succeeding in Australia because it's -- well -- RIGHT. As in factually correct. With an electorate that is getting smarter and better-informed all the time, the days of the Big Lie and ideological purity trumping reason, common-sense and logic may well be over.

If and when the Labor Party demonstrate a better capacity for rational decision-making than their opponents -- not too hard a task, surely -- then they can have my vote and welcome.

An excellent article---very well written too; it looks like hyperbole but it's actually true---Bruce and I agree with every word. The only left-wing politics going on in this country is puerile identity politics, and I'm not sure feminism and the gay movement aren't more about libertarianism than social reform.
The one thing you forgot to mention is that our politicians perfectly reflect the electorate. The reason the right is so dominant is it has recruited much of the left. By which I mean that far from being the romanticised proletariat, the hard-line unionist left, throughout the West, has always been partly comprised of xenophobic nationalists rather than communists. Thus in Australia there's little encouragement for any party to move more to the left.

There is an old adage that if you are not left-wing at 20 you haven't got a heart, and that if you are not right-wing at 40 you haven't got a head. The ageing of the population is big factor in the turn to the right in Australian politics. Hopefully Tony Abbott will soon get into power and begin the good work of cutting welfare, stopping the boats, and repealing the carbon tax.

"The left in Australia is an endangered species. Its habit is scattered and its birth rate falling."
You mean there is a God after all ?

Plerdus,
Adages aren't much of a guide. Most people on the right understand little about philosophy or economics.

I posted earlier and drew attention to a couple of excellent sources of clear thinking. There has been no comment on the information that can be found at those sources.

The results of a well-being survey of the 21 OECD countries, conducted by a German company are worth reading at;
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/opinion/blow-americas-exploding-pipe-dream.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
http://www.sgi-network.org/pdf/SGI11_Social_Justice_OECD.pdf

Australia rated 21st and that paragon of the right, the USA, only rated ahead of Greece, Chile, Mexico and Turkey.

The more egalitarian countries took the top places.

"The more egalitarian countries took the top places."

Since high scores on the survey appear to be heavily weighted in favour of egalitarianism, that's hardly surprising. Note too that countries which have less money to go round are almost certainly going to show up as more 'egalitarian' -- when everybody's got nothing, then everybody's equal. And is Australia really worse at 'poverty prevention' than Greece? Oh come now!

But at least it's not as fatuous as the megadaft Happy Planet Index, which puts Costa Rica as the #1 place to be...

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2012/06/14/measuring-what-matters-the-happy-planet-index-2012

plerdsus, I'm over 50 and left till the day I die, even while I recognise the failure of idealistic materialism. One day, sooner or later, it will dawn on humanity at large that there is no acceptable rationale for a hierarchical structure based on monetary elitism---rather than a real meritocracy---whether dynastic or entrepreneurial/ruthless opportunism, especially when it manifests as material/egotistical glut and excess, as it does. Australia is bourgeois central and our politicians reflect that. Malcolm Fraser represents an embarrassment for conservatives and shame for Labor.

"Most people on the right understand little about philosophy or economics."

What a ridiculous statement; you must be thinking of Krugman; Like most 'left' economists Krugman is a Keynesian and has been critiqued by everyone from Davidson to Genetski.

Likewise your survey is strange; the US ranks just ahead of Mexico; pulease! Likewise Australia ranks well down.

I'll tell you the best survey; which way is the immigration going; from The US to Mexico; from Australia to the OECD countries?

Your survey is a farce.

So we agree, the left is finished.

Next all we have to do is to wait for the Muslim Brotherhood to take over, & we will be rid of these troublesome feminists.

Of course they will never let any of us, male or female have access to the net, so we'll never really know.

@Squeers,

<<One day, sooner or later, it will dawn on humanity at large that there is no acceptable rationale for a hierarchical structure based on monetary elitism---rather than a real meritocracy---whether dynastic or entrepreneurial/ruthless opportunism,>>

Funny thing though, I’ve noted that whenever the left is in the ascendancy. It inevitably moves to subvert meritocracy substituting in its place a centrally directed process that sees privilege and opportunity parceled out according to group membership.

All these claims of 'Left Wing Influence' in the media and elsewhere today completely miss the point, centring around the word “relative”.
Today's right consider Hawke and Keating to be on the Left, if only because they claimed to be Labor politicians.
Truth is, no one in the history of this country did more to destroy the Left. The pair of them emasculated the union movement, and privatised (sold off) everything they could lay their hands on to balance the books; very much a 'Right Wing' strategy.
Fraser, in hindsight, is considered to be a 'little bit left'. At the time, relative to Gough, he most certainly was not.
The Pendulum swings. Always, whenever it swings to the Right, the gap between rich and poor widens, threatening the middle class.
When the middle class joins (or is forced into) the lower class, things tend swing back to the Left again.
Often violently.
Very very soon now, the aspirationals are going to have to admit their chances are roughly Buckley's. Without aspirations, the upper echelons start looking more like tyrants, and less like heroes.
The Left's greatest disadvantage is of course that they are just as greedy as the Right.
Only when the Left gets greedy, it's called 'corruption'.
When the right do it, it's just Business.

Great comment, Grim.
One criticism I have of the so called left, that is the "democratic" side of capitalism, which buys into your comment about greed, is it always wants to share, or redistribute the wealth, no matter how much there is to go around, as if that's some kind of justification for Australian's to enjoy such a decadent lifestyle while the real poor. offshore, starve.
Here we are sitting on a modern version of Solomon's mines and all we here from the pollies is talk about improving living standards--like it's conscionable that we can just keep upsizing the Aussie rump (Wagyu burger). It's this mentality that drives the mining boom; the insatiable greed of the moguls and the carrot dangled in front of Oz of ever increasing living standards. That's what I always hated abouit unions, never any moderation or sense of proportion or responsibility, just more more more. I wonder when it's enough enough enough.

Do you speak English Squeers? If you do, it is strange you don't understand it.

Please give your definition of decadent.

Nice one Grim. Pretty spot on.
Combine demographic (ageing population) and our unique economic situation and the rise of the Right is inevitable for some time.
The Right has been hijacked by selfish interests, as has the Left.
Minimising waste is good (Right and Left agree), but to the Right government waste is evil while private waste is good, and visa-versa for the Left. "Buy in" to either extreme and you can be steered by the media.
Finance has hijacked true conservative economics so that huge parasite industries are OK just because they are not government!
Anyone who thinks that wealth is actually created in house inflation or "financial services" will be surprised and disappointed when the recent "boom" backfires. Those of us that understand economics better will know that this was never going to end well. You cannot pay pay a sector 30% of your GDP if it produces nothing of value...there is only so much "value" that banking and insurance gives to society! Unlike government they do not provide services beyond basic accounting (purchases, accounts, etc), adult daycare and possibly keeping socio-paths out of vital areas of society. Alas this parasite industry is now killing the hosts in many parts of the world. It's like the company accountant becomes CEO and sells of the warehouse and the factory so that Accounting becomes the biggest activity of the company. Exporting manufacturing and allowing foreign ownership of power, transport, communications and food (and defence to U$A) is a *really* bad idea if we want to be an autonomous nation.
Invoking Right/Left issues to hide excessive clout and greed is now so common that the terms are almost meaningless.
Both sides support bad wars, bad industries, and bad policies: Stupid dishonest Left, Stupid dishonest Right...who cares: We need Smart and Honest.