Whenever the ALP does anything for the workers, the media accuses them of being pressured by the unions. I would dearly love to hear even one parliamentarian tell the press that they stood up for the workers, because they actually care about the workers and not whatever is trendy this month.

The ALP has shown that it is prepared to do or take any position to get elected. They have put this nation in debt like never before and yet claimed to be fiscal conservatives before the election, they jumped on the gw band wagon knowing they have no chance of implementing their promises,they promised to be for the worker and yet I doubt anyone is better off, they continue to war in Afghanistan proving their policies are no different than the previous Government. The national broadcasters blamed deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan on Howard and Bush but now blame them on suicide bombers. Quite pathetic really. The sad part is that Mr Turnbull is just as much about spin as Mr Rudd is. Mr Howard and Bush were men of conviction while Obama and Rudd are men of spin. The ALP at State level makes Sir Joh look like a saint. Space would not allow me to publish scandals from rape to corruption to child abuse. The ALP is bereft of morals as is sections of the Liberal part.

Apart from Runner's silly comment, straight from the Murdoch/Turnbull tabloid neo-lib non-issue hand book, concerning neo-Keynesian "physical" stimulus emotivated as "debt", can find little to fault in the analyis or the following blog comments.
A hollowed-out shell, full of rightist Judases.
In fact worse than Judases, because at least Judas had the decency and shame to go hang him himself after his particular act of betrayal.

"The ALP needs a movement for democracy dedicated to in placing not only the preselection of candidates but also the framing of policy to its genuine members."

Like the Greens.

"A democratic revolution can only come from a grassroots movement."

Like the Greens.

"dissidence, picketing, direct action".

Like the Greens.

I disagree vehemently with Marko’s analysis, while agreeing that branch-stacking is abhorrent, arrogant and profoundly anti-democratic.

Marko seems oblivious to demographic change. The "working class" is now about 20% of the electorate, while aspirationism - materialism that swamps other values – gets many Kath and Kim votes out there. I supported Whitlam, but today's public mindset has moved on.

"Socialism" is a distraction, a concern about means rather than ends. The centrally planned economies were a zero-sum-game disaster. What Marko calls sellout by Rudd, Hawke and Keating is not that at all. It's a recognition that while social justice requires concern about how the economic cake is divided, it’s far more effectively pursued by ALSO creating conditions in which the cake can grow.

The electorate today doesn’t want a re-run of Whitlam's grand program of the 1970s. It wants competent economic management at least as much as social agendas. I despair at the neoliberal, one-dimensional economic view of life, and want our country to re-emphasize community. That requires not just political leadership, but a turnaround in some of the values of Australian society, which has become distressingly receptive to atomistic individualism.

Bikesusenofuel suggests the answer is The Greens. Absolutely NOT! They have got into bed with the Socialist Alliance, a bunch of totalitarian-left political scum!

Rudd attracts me for 1. his intelligence and competence, 2. his Christian-based ethical approach to economic and also social problems, 3. his concern for long-term economic and environmental issues.

Marko's prescription of a radical swerve to the Left amounts to self-immolation. Wrong way. I want this government to stay in power. Change is not sustainable unless pursued gradually. Howard's hubris in foisting Work Choices on the electorate was his destruction.

For the benefit of Runner, I quote Isaiah 10:
"1 Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees,
2 to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.”

What no one understands is that there is an accord between the left and the right, where the right controls economic policy and the left controls social policy and social justice issues.
The Left's abdication on economic policy and ideology means the abandonment of the goal of decommodifying our society.
Left activists are recruited to the party on environmental, health,education women's issues and generally reactive economic issues.
There is no attempt to build a left alternative to economic rationalism as a consequence any left criticism of economic rationalism meets the response of what would you do revert to central planning.
The left must build an economic policy that achieves the following:
-reshaping monetary policy to enable quantitative measures to be used and not totally rely on interest rate movements
-democraticising corporate Australia
-implementing social democratic policies to influence the investment cycle
We need to find a way to encourage the next generation to not only be interested in environmental issues but to build interest in economic policy.

Thanks, Marko.

A thoughtful and useful article.

We are truly caught between a rock and a hard place at the Federal level. On the one hand there is an incompetent pro-business Labor Government that is wasting vast amounts of money in order to 'stimulate' our business sector instead of just spending the money directly on worthwhile Government projects.

On the other hand we have an Opposition that every day moves closer to reclaiming the appalling legacy of the Howard era that less than two years ago it tried to disown.

In Queensland the State Parliamentarians are completely beyond the control of the rank and file. On the Queen's Birthday weekend the state Labor Conference didn't even have the backbone to oppose privatisation even though the Government has no mandate whatsoever to privatise and 84% (now 86%) of public opinion is against privatisation.

I think Queensland would be much better off to see the end of this Government sooner, rather than later, for this and many other good reasons.

There is a risk that we could end up with a nasty Kennett style Coalition Government, but if Queenslanders don't stand up to this Government we stand a much greater chance of getting that anyway, whether the Labor Government becomes such a government or whether the political demoralisation of Queenslanders allows a newly elected Liberal National Party Government to become that Government.

Slasher, I agree that when economic rationalism means reducing all values to dollars and cents, that's a disaster. I spent the last decade of my Commonwealth public service career trying to combat the excesses of eocnomic rationalism and managerialism.

When you talk of "the left", do you mean people whose concern is mainly for community (social interest, rather than just economic interest)? I believe the fundamental objective of public policy should not be "efficiency" (however a powerful means to an end that CAN be), but the well-being of people in our community.

But how do you measure well-being? People are perverse enough to differ on how they see THEIR well-being. They vary a lot in extent of materialism. Some are irredeemably selfish.

You give three prescriptions for the left:
1.quantitative monetary measures, ie regulation - like the very prescriptive lending guidelines banks had to observe 30 years ago? Also, should Keating have used quantitative import restrictions instead of the blunter instrument of interest rates to deal with the collapse of commodity prices at "banana republic" time? The longer-term policy states were high.

2. "democratizing corporate Australia". What does this mean? Employee representatives on corporate boards? I can't think of what else. Are you talking of representation, or control?

3. Influencing the investment cycle. How? By fiscal policy (as now, with the government's Keynesian stimulus package)? Or by forcing companies to spend at least some of their money in a particular way? That has been tried in the past with mandatory local processing requirements from mineral developments. It came in for lots of criticism on economic efficiency grounds, including longer term viability of such forced investments.

I certainly believe that economic policy should have a heart, but it can't cut off the head!

What do you think of Lindsay Tanner?

Glorfindel,

Quantitative controls are simply having different reserve ratios for different sectors. This means when asset bubbles form the reserve changes the ratio of reserves that must be required to be held with the reserve bank. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9401.
Secondly democraticising corporate Australia is much broader than employee reps on boards, eliminating the Tamany Hall influences such as purchased proxy votes by non-shareholders to be used at shareholders meetings (BrisConnections), eliminate ballots where the board can track outcomes during voting and hence round up votes for the results it wants, identify key issues that require shareholder ballots and allow individual unit holders of superannuation and managed funds to exercise proportionate votes rather than the trustees of the funds.
Thirdly to influence investment cycle we need to establish industry funds where corporations place pre tax profits into funds to invest in future projects similar to Swedish investment funds. see http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8678

The ALP has not represented the interests of ordinary Australians for decades. Working men in particular have seen their children abused by the anti family, loony, left, lesbian, femanazi, paedophile policies that labour have been promoting and implementing for years. If you want to abuse children vote labour. Q, What does ALP stand for? A, Associated Lesbian Paedophiles.