First and foremost what has to go is an elite committee deciding how others will vote.

If the party can't muster an absolutely compelling argument for any policy position it doesn't deserve to survive; let alone grow and proper!?

And it needs to stop the endless talk fest and just crack on selecting candidates from a far wider section of society and consequently become a less condescending, more inclusive organisation that attracts a much more diverse demographic; if only to capture the imagination of a nation and with it rekindle the light on the hill!

And with that accomplished it needs to embrace genuine nation building tax reform and simplification; instead of becoming a small target and a pale imitation of the coalition!

It needs to start to draw distinctions that set it up as the can do party the like of which gave us the visionary snowy mountains scheme.

The way we got through the GFC bordered on the miraculous; and demonstrated that new labor is the only party with a genuine understanding of how the economy works and what needs to be done to make it grow again!

Preferably before the contractionary policies of the coalition force us to follow Greece?

Nuclear energy needs to be on the table as would be the resumption of of the provision of low cost not for profit energy as public policy as the only strategy we have in the economic tool box to reawaken/regrow our manufacturing base!?

While we need foreign capital, we don't need foreign control or foreign ownership, or the fire sale of our economic sovereignty that seems to go with it!?

Why do we remain one of the few nations to not have embraced thirty year self terminating bonds, to at least give our own super industry a reason to remain and invest our funds here?

Even if that public power policy then compels government to compete with the private sector for the energy dollar!

To that end renewable policy or official terminology needs to be replaced with carbon free or carbon neutral alternatives!
Rhrosty.

Essentially this is all just tinkering round the edges. Labor should be challenging the government's narrative. Instead of trying to run a surplus, they should explain why doing so would currently be bad for the economy.

Most of the public are still under the impression that there's a limit to how much the government can borrow, and lazy Labor have done nothing to bust this myth.

Aidan,a surplus would be possible, if all welfare for the rich were wound back,i.e., negative gearing and super subsidies and so called family trusts along with the ending of all other tax avoidance!

Doable if only we could junk a fundamentally flawed system with more holes than Swiss cheese, in favor of something like a broad based single stand alone unavoidable tax.

Which if it were an unavoidable expenditure tax, would force the multinationals to pay s fair share and make most tax avoidance schemes more costly than simply paying a fair share?
Cheers, Rhrosty.

Aidan, you do understand, don't you, that in order for your food to arrive on your table, someone has to engage in actual productive activity? They have to tend the land, remove pests, plant crops, harvest, transport, process the food?

Your idea that we can make society wealthier by printing pieces of paper is flatly incorrect, and only displays economic illiteracy. It doesn't matter how much you've been brainwashed into reposing an open-ended credulity in government's monopoly control of money and credit, it's still an erroneous and infantile belief.

But if it's true, why not just print so much that everyone in the world is rich?

To understand the errors of you superstition, the following explain it in plain language:
“What Has Government Done to Our Money?” by Murray Rothbard
http://mises.org/books/whathasgovernmentdone.pdf

“The Mystery of Banking” by Murray Rothbard
http://mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf

But if you're not interested in the truth, less said the better eh?

Tristan
You're contradicting yourself.

Ok JKJ I'll buy into it - how am I contradicting myself?

Jardine, of course I understand! I am not suggesting (and would NEVER EVER suggest) printing money as a substitute for productive activity. What I'm suggesting is printing money IN ORDER TO GET MORE actual productive activity. Currently far too many people are unemployed; not just the 6% claiming benefits, but the much larger proportion who don't have a job but would take one if they could get one. Until the economy improves enough for the private sector to be confident of being able to employ them profitably, it makes sense for the government to do so.

You do seem to waste an awful lot of effort chasing strawmen.

What laugh.

To begin with, Tristan, you can not trust the Labor party to "democratise" the economy when it refuses to "democratise" itself. I was once a member of the Labor Party (my branch leader was former MLA Rodney Cavalier) and Rodney himself explained to me how there was no democracy in the Labor Party. "The branches can pass as many resolutions as they want", explained Rodney "the executive just ignores them."

The reason why the Labor Party is dying in terms of branch membership is because branch members know that the Labor leadership could not give a fig about what their own branch members want. Those who oppose such concepts as gay "marriage" or multiculturalism (like me) left long ago. We realised that our only role in the Labor party was to hand out leaflets at polling booths, come election time. From my own experiences, I have observed that the only ones doing that now are people hopeful of getting appointments to lucrative posts within local councils.

It is hardly surprising that Tristram is still trying to socialise industry. From memory, Tristram once wrote an article on OLO defending Marxism using the hoary old excuse that "Marxist" countries were never really Marxist. Marxists were really nice people who opposed wear and greed and all that nasty stuff. But unfortunately for Tristan, reality trumped Quixotic idealism, and Socialism became the most efficient form of totalitarianism after Islam.

I lived through a time when all Socialist countries were giant prison camps, and our "intelligent" tertiary educated elites were all claiming that they were idyllic societies. My own uncle Norm was a committed commo all his life, and he dreamed of visiting "the workers paradise." (his own words) Some people are just dreamers who need to idealise some sort of human created perfection, and no amount of cold reason or self evident reality can disavow them from their compulsive emotional needs.

Socialism does not work, Tristan. How many times does it need to fail before you can flash on that?

LEGO - How about addressing the actual arguments from the article? You can throw around the 'S word' as much as you like trying to frighten people away. But to begin I am arguing for a democratic mixed economy - and not a 'traditional command economy'. Secondly you don't have to be a socialist to support these kind of policies. A mixed economy with a substantial role for natural public monopolies was supported by Conservatives - including Menzies - for decades. The point - ironically - is that natural public monopolies are good for capitalists. Consumer associations are naturally good for consumers. And strategic government business enterprises are good for competition - and hence also good for consumers.

We really have to move on from the ossified paleolithic views of LEGO. Australia is multicultural and we have gay marriage and capitalism is destroying our climate and economy.

Capitalism is an abhorrant economic system only imposed by previous regimes of colonialism, fuedalism and slavery. Its modern practice is to bankrupt nations - Greece and Puerto Rico are the latest examples: bankrupt states (at least 32 in USA;) bankrupt cities (Detroit, San Bernardino etc); and bankrupt families. It survives in the West merely as a glossy patina over a humongous underworld of homeless, poverty stricken, unemployed and destitute overloading the available shelters, charity kitchens and food stamp programs, and millions incarcerated in prisons.

This gloss only lasts a few decades.

What sort of society do you want - a capitalism such as in America where one child is shot every hour?

LEGO seems particularly uninformed about all the damage capitalism and its alter ego, fascism, has reeked all through the Third World.

LEGO also seems uninformed about the amount of debt capitalism necessarily piles up just so capitalist markets can operate. This is now 200 trillion dollars and several nations need more. If this amount was in a pile of 1 dollar coins it would reach from the Earth to the Sun three times.

And the trends are that all this is about to get a lot, lot worse.

It is now clear that we need an alternative to capitalism and Australia has the right to defend the rights of its citizens by developing a form suitable for our conditions, unencumbered by the poorly conceived and disruptive comments from the likes of LEGO.