"While Labor brings in minor parties and interest groups to enlarge the tribe, the Liberals are inclined to do it all by themselves."

What about the Nationals? The Liberals are just the senior party in a coalition. It would be interesting to see how they would go on their own. Labor has no official coalition with the ratty Greens; they obviously use them if necessary, but most respectable Labor politicians view the Greens with the same contempt that 92% of the population does.

And, the Liberals have hangers-on just as Labor does.

Both major "tribes" are rubbish. The Greens are loathesome. Hopefully voters will get the chance to put the UAP, One Nation and the Liberal Democrats at the top of their ballot papers next year.

The Greens are loathesome.
ttbn,

Greens should not be allowed to work in the Public Service !

One thing the liberal party ain't is liberal. It is a conservative party! With all too few fiscally conservative and socially progressive!

Moreover, it's overburdened with the privileged elite, crippled by the political straight jacket of a born to rule mindset. And oscillates from telling pork pies to pork-barreling, just to win or stay in office?

And new labor has leaned further and further to the right to become a pale shadow of the "liberal" party!? And as with the "liberal" party, the only real goal is winning and occupying the treasury benches!

Tis remains the state of affairs because you can fool some of the people all of the time! And because that's so and as a significant cohort, they're the ones who decide all our elections!?

Will we pay a price for this simple-minded philosophy? Well, might we as we've been sleepwalking to a date with destiny and a China that wants to rule the world!? As a nation effectively disarmed by the aforementioned!
Alan B.

It is an insult to the good people of this land to claim as if:
«Almost everyone identifies with a particular political tribe»

The political "tribes" in question have very little in common with any original tribal society of "extended family groups": almost everyone has a family, but only few belong to a political tribe.

We, the ordinary masses of people and families who happen to live on this land, are the innocent victims of these two predator groupings, we are not the perpetrators!

It would therefore be more proper to name these political groupings, "packs", as in a pack of wolves or a pack of hyenas. I wish we could be left alone, I wish them both gone, I do not wish any of them success.

Kudos to that.

I liken politicians to a plague of mosquitoes.
The political classes are incestuously attached. I believe that state of affairs to have the outcome of the duopoly we inherit as a political alternative.

And yes, as mosquitoes as an insect appear benign, in actual fact though they are directly responsible for millions of deaths of innocent people a year.

What better analogy?

Dan

It is an insult to the good people of this land
Yuiyutsu,
And, what about the other 20 Million ?

Except, of course, Labor is a made-up word and liberal is not. I have a feeling the courts would not allow the Labor Democrats or the New Labor to pass unchecked.