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.