Posted by gw, Thursday, 1 December 2005 10:51:17 AM
Unquote.

By 2007 everyone will have forgotten the I.R. and terrorism debates and getting on with whatever the issues of the day are.

YOU WISH. For what it's worth, my prediction for this, will be that the workers of Australia will NEVER forget what's happened this year regards I.R. Legislation, and if you think they'll forget it, obviously you can't be a worker, as then you'd be only too aware of the dangers this Legislation poses upon you in the course of earning an income.

As for the label of SOUR GRAPES, so it maybe, however the Labour party doesn't have to look any further then the next mirror, to find who's responsable for their poor showing at the last election,(fielding such poor candidates ensures their defeat in any election) thus the situation this country finds itself in today, the Labour party carries a large percentage of the responsability.
Their failure to read the electorate and to respond to it's desires instead of their own Party desires has been their downfall.
It's also very apparent, the Party faithful HAVEN'T LEARNT A THING from this experience, evidanced by placing a two time looser as leader, thus virtualy guaranteeing the status quoe at the next election.
Makes me wonder really, who the Labour Party is supposed to be representing, sure as hell, it isn't the Australian electorate.

Sorry to break in Faustino, but you must know that most of the recent Liberal get up and go is based on Thatcherism which is said to let the real goers have a go, make the money, and let just enough trickle down to the economic slow-going underclass.

It is all about economic rationalism and extreme right-wing global capitalism, Faustino, and as you intimated in your Post, it was Bob Hawke who introduced it to Australia. But Hawke introduced it much more gently. Though his economic views were right-wing for Labor, he still had the commonsense to pursue with union backing a policy to look after the battler, and maybe even too far when he declared to bring all those in need up to at least a decent level of prosperity.

Of course it did not eventuate, as it would not in any society. But Hawke was right to think about it, as Adam Smith the father of modern capitalism thought about it. As Smith declared, because free market capitalism is based on the urge to win, it is nigh impossible to take the greed out of it. That is why Smith was one of the first social philosophers to warn that because free market capitalism only meant freedom from government for the businessman or employer, it still had not allowed much freedom for the worker. John Stuart Mill with his great essay "On Liberty" further took up the challenge.

Part Two

Of course, the above is why the Keynesian mixed economy is still regarded by many social philosophers as possibly not so monetarily successful, but far safer than free-market capitalism. It has also been far safer for the small farmer who wishes to stay small and the need for lobby groups and boards, etc, to protect the ordinary producer, who prefers to stay small, as we see the problems among our dairy farmers in Western Australia right now.

So what our modern social philosophers do tell us, is that capitalism can have more than one face or caricature. First, state or managed capitalism, as in China, and possibly Singapore, where the government can deal in a capitalist world, but the nation is far from democratic. Then we have a democratic nation with a mixed economy or a gently guided capitalism, as Australia became in answer to the Great Depression, and changed with globalisation back to right-wing market capitalism during the 1970s.

Certainly it does seem if we could believe the warnings of Max Weber, possibly the real exemplar of capitalism, that though capitalism is needed for what he terms the national “value rational”, if overdone it can negate its purpose by over-influencing the lives of those who have created it, making them like cogs in a wheel, while the real people might disappear from view. Of course, it was Ghadafi of Libya, who said that even a normal capitalistic structure can be turned into a dictatorship without much trouble.

There are so many holes in that article, I would not even attempt to fill in, and it is a typical compilation of premeditate crap: From babies overboard to Tamper, just emotional charge lies devoid of fact: Read the Senate report, and find out that ; who are the real liars and manipulators . No surprise: Labor- Greens- Democrats, large portions of the Media, all the (Pirates: Looters: Moochers) Hand in hand to create more myths for a programmed response.
So many are feed up with the simple methodology of propaganda. I can only refer to the articles author as a bigoted ignorant Moocher. When you start to put to print TRUTH and Fact mate, then maybe a little respect. You are the disseminator of such vial garbage for and of selfishness in a cloak of informed opinion, well it is not informed opinion that you espouse is it?
Perhaps the liars and the manipulators would have preferred Mark Latham as PM. Then people: you would exactly realize what rant raving lunatics are like in a more passionate violent fit of there considered reason, just as the violent treatment some have for fact finding and truth. But when you have a market with such pathological programming of vial hatred for anything not of their doing, simple things like truth hurts and serve as what a Virus would be in a computer software program, there are more than a few bugs we have to get rid of.

Faustino, bushbred; Faustino, I also agree Hawke and Keating were two of the Liberal Party's greatest Prime Ministers, old fella {bush bred} in my humble opinion, you are the most knowledgeable amoung us, and I love the information in your posts, please continue to write, you are educating all of us, and some of us are most appreciateive, your knowledge comes from experience, which a lot of people don't have, and obvious intellegence. Some rely purely upon philosophy, were as you have lived your philosophy, and found it to be sound. Those of us who are a little bit younger than yourself, learn a lot from you, as far as I am concerned, you should be awarded the VC.

Bushbred, concur with Shonga.

What I appreciate is the well reasoned rational approach you take with your posts. And the absence of name-calling - some posters should take note.

Will senate control be reversed in 2007? One can only hope; at present we have a government that more closely resembles a dictorship than at any other point in Australia's political history. What is worse, we have an opposition that (for reasons only known to itself) is complicit. While Labor lacks the numbers, surely it still has a voice?

The silence is deafening.