Yes to this article, but an overlooked reason for voter disaffection is the world in which we live.

The noose of the economic nightmare called market forces, renders all before it powerless. Especially politicians.

Little is likely to change until the mass of the starving and disaffected, exceed the power of the wealthy to ignore it!

diver dan

Your belief that totalitarian government would make the poor wealthier is plain stupid. It has been disproved both in theory and practice many times, at the cost of untold deaths. But short of totalitarian government, there will always be the dreaded "market forces" you complain about, won't there?

The scarcity that human beings are faced with is not caused by market forces, and cannot be made to go away by abolishing voluntary transactions, no matter how much brainwashed, confused and stupid people believe it can.

JKJ:

Totalitarian V Democratic , show me the difference! In one starving is dictated, in the other, starving is mandatory and ensured by unregulated market forces! The end result...No difference!

Could diversity have anything to do with the collapse of Australian politics?
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/papers/2005/NLetki_social%20capital%20and%20diversity_final.pdf

How many people are members of political parties in this country? 150,000? 200,000 at the most, so less than 1% of the population are active in politics,that 1% I bet would have a median age of 50 or older too.
I don't see any way that a party could build up a significant supporter base in a society...whoops, nearly fell into the trap of describing Australia as having a society, pardon, a population where people self identify according to Left wing identity constructs rather than developing their identity through interaction with their peers and and adherence to a set of widely held social standards or norms.
For a party to grow a supporter base it has to appeal to young men, the only way forward is through the energy and aggression of youthful, heterosexual males who have some sense of the value of their own posterity, when a party has that base the young women will also want to participate and a natural rather than artificial gender ratio will emerge.
This is a huge task when you consider that surveys indicate 40% of Australian men have no friends,no social circle and are not involved with the community beyond paid work:
http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/1/2/4/i/w/7/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.1248jq.png/1418381188691.jpg
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/lonely-men-lose-friends-when-life-gets-busy-study-20141210-1248jq.html

Jay,

I've been reading this forum for a while now, are you tacitly refering to White Australians there?
From decline new growth will occur. Annastacia Palaszczuk's electorate of Inala for example is around 50% non-White; mainly of various Asian ethnicities. As enclaves grow, the parties can focus on strategies for homogenized sectors. That's the natural path multiculturalism takes that the politicians know about but keep privy to themselves.

Jay, the article says 1 in 4. That's 25%, not 40%.

Aidan,
You mean the article on men? It claims that 39% of men partake of no social activities at all and it's illustrated in the graphic.

Gaudian,
No, not necessarily,I think politics could radically change for the better if the conservative viewpoints of Third World migrants came to influence party platforms.
Most of the people arriving here as migrants are already "White" in quotation marks, they speak English, they have a western style education, they're law abiding,they aspire to the same standard of living as we do and so forth.
Political activism is already a predominantly White, elitist occupation, I make no secret of my racism but it's not an ideological position, the people I identify as the enemies of my people are the White elites.
The current White ruling class are leading us toward a society something along the lines of Malaysia or Singapore with a small Anglo elite and a narrow Chinese rentier class with a lot of impoverished Whites and Asians making up the bulk of the population.

Jay,

I don't think we'll see any such viewpoints on third world migration to Australia. For the last few decades conservatives of all persuasions have had the rug pulled under their feet time and time again. When they try to regroup, what they were fighting for had already been lost and a new offensive had begun; each time they became more and more diluted in their conviction and public image to the point we can today mockingly ask them "what exactly is left for you to conserve?"

Jay,
Yes that's what I mean. It claims 39% of men are not involved in any of the listed activities. That doesn't mean they partake of no social activiities at all, let alone that "40% of Australian men have no friends,no social circle and are not involved with the community beyond paid work".

Washington neo-liberalism, empire building and the military industrial complex behind it
Transnational ownership and corruption of all large media in Line with Washington agenda
Dumbing down of the education system and the theft of our intellectual history
Dumbing down of public debate thru the misuse of political correctness to disrupt reason

Aidan,
That's a pretty comprehensive list, I take it to mean that 39% of the men surveyed have no social life beyond work.

Gaudium,
No I mean that people from the Third World usually hold conservative or shall we say traditionalist views, Islam, Catholicism, Pentecostal Christianity etc. Those values might be one way to rehabilitate political parties, both sides are currently bogged down in Leftist identity politics, the coalition having gone down the "Social Justice" rabbit hole can no more escape that paradigm than can Labor or the Greens.

Jay

‘For a party to grow a supporter base it has to appeal to young men, the only way forward is through the energy and aggression of youthful, heterosexual males who have some sense of the value of their own posterity, when a party has that base the young women will also want to participate and a natural rather than artificial gender ratio will emerge.’

Yes, this is the way of the patriarchy. Men lead/women follow. Men active/women passive.

The old parties based their support base on this gender-exploitive foundation – indeed, they barely even factored women into their power equation. Women were bound up into a patriarchal package nebulously defined as ‘family issues’. Give them some child endowment and, later, Family Tax Benefit A and/or B and they’ll happily go back to fretting over what colour to paint the bathroom and signing up for yoga lessons.

The society in which the old parites were formed was based on the prevailing belief that women existed only as the domestic servants, homemakers and playthings of men – a belief that women dutifully accepted in the absence of any alternative..

That was how it was and it worked for a time. However, women got sick and tired of this crap and started politicising for themselves.

One of the major problems for the old parties is that they were overwhelmingly geared towards men’s interests and operated through the power struggles between powerful males. It was assumed that what was good for men was automatically good for women by default.

The hysterical, but very successful, backlash against Julia Guillard was a major defeat for women. However, a just cause is never vanquished by mean-spirited power hegemonies. Any so-called ‘way forward’ has to include women as full-fledged political participators.

Killarney,
What's good for men IS automatically good for women and patriarchy ensures that women and children are cared for by their husbands and fathers.
The reason the political parties are dying is because they can't attract young male members but they treat them like crap when they do join and the fact is that young women will only join in when there are men their own age present.

Killarney wrote "Yes, this is the way of the patriarchy. Men lead/women follow. Men active/women passive".

Yin and Yang is more than some esoteric dribble. And to hold passivity in an inferior light and without it's own sphere of power and universal necessity is to reveal a rabid feminist lurking about somewhere.

Killarney, without the patriarchy -- and without associating the feminist misuse of the word -- then we're without order and virility that drives a society. But more than that, woman are now in more positions of power in the patriarchal model than ever before - and continuing to rise.

So what then is issue with Jay's post?

Take Euro-Maidan the girls filled the molotovs and their boyfriends threw them at the cops, division of labour.

Jay

Tell that to the millions of women over the centuries who were deserted by their protectors or left widowed, and then found that their only means of survival was menial labour, religious charity, putting their children into orphanages or, more recently, welfare (which is now under serious attack).

No, the only real protection for women and children is for women to have their own financial independence.

One of the main reasons the old parties are dying is because they still operate under the old competitive male-breadwinner system, which inhibits policies that provide for more equal distribution of opportunities and outcomes for all.

Interesting that you resort to a warfare analogy to 'prove' your distribution of labour point, without realising that war is the ultimate expression of competitive male violence.

Gaudium

'reveal a rabid feminist lurking about somewhere'

My posting policy is to ignore childish provocations of that sort. If you wish to post a mature argument about gender and politics, I might consider engaging with you. Otherwise, you go straight to my 'Ignore' list.

Killarney,

What you quoted of my post cutoff the preceding statement of that sentence; an important point too. Taken as a whole you'll see I wasn't provoking you.

Gaudium

With or without the context, your use of the term 'rabid feminist' is childish and provocative. It wasn't meant for me. It was meant to show solidarity with other men and women who find feminism threatening and femininely unattractive.

Either engage with me as an equal and as a person of intelligence or don't engage with me at all.

Killarney,
Huh? The divorce rate before 1976 was 16%, now it's 45% and the number of women who live alone or as life long spinsters is somewhere near 15%, even if you don't accept that Feminism was in part to blame for the increase in broken marriages as an ideal it's severely tainted by coincidence.
It's also interesting to note that since Feminism imploded in the 1990's the divorce rate in this country has been going down, now that the tide has turned and young women are rightly rejecting Feminism things will start to improve.
In light of what you've posted on the Auschwitz thread you obviously do understand the way the world works but why debate one Jewish inspired conspircay theory while promoting another, ie Feminism?
The Holocaust and Feminist narratives are at one level just Jewish revenge fantasies, European women never lived as virtual slaves to their husbands oppressed by patriarchal religious laws but guess what? The Jewish women on the Shtetls and in the ghettos DID.
Is it a coincidence that the leading lights of Feminism had last names like Dworkin, Friedan, Abzug, Steinem, Blume and Cantor?

Jay

‘Huh? The divorce rate before 1976 was 16%, now it's 45% and the number of women who live alone or as life long spinsters is somewhere near 15% …’

I see that as a good thing. It shows that marriage as an institution was failing miserably. If marriage had been fulfilling to both genders, then the divorce law reforms of the mid-70s would not have made much impact.

And feminism did not ‘implode’ in the 1990s. The main goals of the 60s and 70s, i.e. removing legal barriers to women’s participation in public life, had been achieved, so second wave feminism was no longer needed. The backlash against feminism was part of the general wave of conservatism that swept the world at that time and much of the backlash trail leads back to powerful global lobby forces, especially the US Heritage Foundation.

‘In light of what you've posted on the Auschwitz thread you obviously do understand the way the world works …’

I don’t know about that, but I do know that social justice movements explode on the scene when socio-political factors come together to create opportunity. Second wave feminism leads back to the Eisenhower administration of the 1950s, which saw the untapped potential for women to become both a new consumer market and a cheap source of labour. They couldn’t give a damn about women’s rights – women were merely a means to an end.

As for the dominance of Jewish surnames in the feminist movement, I’ve noticed that too. However, it’s purely a US phenomenon. It doesn’t apply to feminism outside the US.

To try and stay on topic, my arguments here are not to discuss gender politics, but to refute (what I see as) your premise that political parties need to return to the days when global society and politics was based on young heterosexual males being mentored and supported by older heterosexual males. The future of the main political parties depends on whether or not they are willing to accept the new social realities.

Jay

Just one more thing... Although you strongly condemn feminism, I do appreciate the fact that, as much as I can recall of your posting history, you stick to addressing the arguments and don’t resort to unhelpful taunts about feminist ‘ugliness’.

Killarney, "As for the dominance of Jewish surnames in the feminist movement, I’ve noticed that too. However, it’s purely a US phenomenon. It doesn’t apply to feminism outside the US"

In Australia they seem to be lapsed Roman Catholics.

Perhaps there is a common element in there. Especially given the strong and enduring support of western feminists for Islam, tent outfits and all.

Some music,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCmdCM3A3xA

Killarney,
But what are the new social realities?
The reality that the majority of people no longer see political activism as a pathway to change?
The reality that political activism is a bourgeois pastime and that middle class Social Justice warriors devote much of their time and energy to keeping "bogans" out of their movements?

Killarney,
I like women, we have two daughters and my wife and I are raising them to be confident,self reliant and to give them some practical skills. The reason I reject Feminism is because it infantilises women and if followed to the letter renders them more vulnerable to things like exploitation and sexual assault.

Jay

By ‘new social realities’, I meant how the major parties still make policies based on lingering patriarchal norms, e.g. male-breadwinner/single-income families and punishing women for being single mothers.

And I don’t think protest is dead in the water. It’s morphed into organisations like GetUp and Avaaz, which use social media and crowd funding, instead of street marches and placards

Jay

‘The reason I reject Feminism is because it infantilises women and if followed to the letter renders them more vulnerable to things like exploitation and sexual assault.’

OK, let me see if I got this right …

On that basis … because feminism encourages women to be financially independent and proactively control their own lives and personal safety - that ‘infantilises’ women!

Yet, the anti-feminist belief that women are happiest when being supported by their husbands and that men are hard-wired to lead and women are hard-wired to follow – that renders women ever so adult!

And the feminist challenge to draconian rape laws that make it almost impossible to convict a rapist, and that inhibit women from even reporting rape - that makes women ‘vulnerable’ to ‘sexual assault’!

And the feminist challenge to patriarchal cultural norms that objectify women’s faces and bodies, rather than valuing them for who they are and what they accomplish - that makes women ‘vulnerable’ to ‘exploitation’!

Yeah … white is black and black is white.

Honestly, if anti-feminists would just make a decent, logical argument once in a while, I’d be willing to take them more seriously. But everything I’ve seen them write and say so far is based purely on (lots of) disinformation and traditional gender prejudice.