Labor stands for nothing because it does not inspire it's constituents to achieve beyond what is mundane and mediocre.My father use to wax lyrical about Bob Hawke.He represented the aspirational working class.Our modern day unions on the the other hand seek priviledge without effort and appeal to the most base of most base of our motivations i.e get what you can with the least amount of effort.

While there are many in the elite who vote for the Coalition also seeking also a free ride,by comparision,their numbers are are few.

The Labor Party is still living in images of past capitalist's exploitation,and consumed with individual rights.

If the Labor Party want to become relevant,inspire ordinary people like myself to achieve beyond our mediocrity.

Our modern day Labor are introverted,self indulgent,and appeal to our weakness rather than our courage to achieve.

You are only partly right, Arjay, but, yes, Labor needs to be more aspirational, but better still, inspirational, because aspirational means to usually chase after someones else's ideas rather than your own.

Furthermore it was aspirational rather than inspirational for Hawke to have Labor go for economic rationalism in the late 1980s. Furthermore Hawke would have known it was nothing new, and was not Labor's dinkum socio-political territory.

Hawke as a scholar must also have known that economic rationalism and the free market had already been tried and tested. First, a warning from Adam Smith, the creator of Laizess-faire that during workings of free-market competition, man's natural greed would need strong government laws to take care of the underclass. Years later, the British philosopher, John Stuart Mill said almost the same thing in his literary classic "On Liberty."

Some of our group have already called the above style of research, historical twaddle, or old pap, but even as Winston Churchill warned, if we don't go back many more times in history than we go forward in our speculation, we could be in for a lot of trouble.

Yes, Arjay, the world is in such a mess at present, it needs something intensely inspirational to get us out of it, and that does not mean in old language, making better artillery.

So maybe Labor will come out of the woodwork yet, for to be sure the Libs have not, only able to aspire mostly to what Pax Americana is already trying to achieve.

Brushbred one thing I agree with you on is Global Capitalism.It is feral with short term objectives and is self destructive.

Multinationals are strutting the World looking for the cheapest labor and thus selling their products to western nations for the highest prices.

They have failed to realise that real wealth exists in the minds of your people.If you diminish any nation to poverty,you are simply diminishing the size of your market,since poor people with less time on their hands,for learning, have less intelligence and thus less spending capacity.Subjugate your population and everyone becomes poorer.

With free trade we are running the risk of even fewer jobs for Australians.We have the choice of being insular and not competing with countries like China or India and thus missing out on the latest technologies or reduced real wages for many who have to compete with third world wages.Chinese workers exist on less than $60.00 per week.No holiday pay,worker's comp,sick pay,long service leave,payroll tax, OH&S regulations ,litigation,insurances,union demands or taxes for social security.This is a major area in which all parties have just put their heads in the sand and hoped will sort itself out.

Global Capitalism will create more poor people by letting fewer to be consumers,but wouldn't be it ironic that our own greed may well delay the planet's environmental degradation.

Maybe there is a consciousness beyond our own

Look markets and capitalism are very different.

Markets are healthy and can be shaped by government to opperate more favourably to more people too - ie. Health being a good example of where government has a role in altering the provision of the market - whether by performance itself (like the NHS in Britain) or by giving insurance (like Medicare).

Markets give a good account of efficiency but don't always create obvious benefits for those who don't own assets. Therefore make assets easier to obtain, like promoting shares for poor people by subsidy, or houses for poorer people.

Capitalism is the use of market power. This is used by big business and big labour. Both are the big beneficiaries of capitalism that promotes oligarchy, and monopoly.

Australia is prone to capitalism because the smallness of its' market - ie. media being the best example.

Markets are good and can be shaped to promote more social good by "light touch" regulation, and capitalism is an altogether different beast that the ACCC must watch.

Corin