A good article touching on interesting areas.

I think Rudd as well as the Labor Left realise that to stay in power they need to compromise their previously held ideals. Maintaining unity, ie avoiding, wedges is the main game for staying in power.

A major area of risk aversion for the Rudd Government is over nuclear power. In principle nuclear would be the ideal carbon reduced form of power but for Rudd to float nuclear risks a deep wedge/disunity in the Labor Party so he doesn't touch it.

Supporting the dirty brown coal power industry is part of Labor's climate change legislative package because it keeps Victorian Labor (that brown coal state) onside. There is also the pathetically cynical claim that brown coal is OK - because economical carbon capture MAY be developed in 20 years. While Labor supports brown coal (the worst power source climater wise) it shuns nuclear, the cleanest, most proven power source. As nuclear would divide the residual Labor Left from Labor people who are mature.

Another way to see defence spending on the 12 submarines is national, technical and industrial development. Such concepts apply across international political divides from China to the US to here. Every major country supports a large defence industry - even Japan.

So there is nothing inherently immoral in Australia taking industrial measures to defend itself. The devil is in such details as hopefully choosing a long range development of the HDW 214 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_214_submarine - to be built in Australia.

Pete

They should leave labor and join the greens. Labor is no longer representative of the left. They have been captured by power mongering and the big end of town regularly bends them over for a serve.

Interesting how often people of the far left attack their fellow lefties for being traitors. Similar things happen on the far right and among fundamentalists of each religion (some of whom also kill each other). It's that old totalitarian argument that "If you're not with me, you must therefore be against me".

People don't disavow extreme political views because they are treacherous. They do so because they grow up.

Trying to resurrect socialism is a lost cause. Even the few remaining socialists don't believe in it any more. Good God, Fidel Castro has been behaving more like royalty than the real royals - managing his own succession and making it into the Forbes 500!

The overwhelming majority of Australians are gathered near the middle of the political spectrum. Some may be rusted on Liberal or Labor supporters, but the differences in political view are not all that great. The major political parties have, at long last, come to reflect that. Of course, there'll always be a far left fringe as there will be a far right fringe. But both extremes cling to old and thoroughly discredited doctrines just as the religious fundamentalists cling to a doctrine written in our ancient past.

Socialism, fascism and religious fundamentalism have, between them, committed almost all of the genocide and sheer misery that the human race has had to endure throughout its recent history. Good riddance to the lot of them!

I consider myself a socialist, a liberal and a democrat. To address the specific issue of belief in socialism - well that must depend on your interpretation... There was a time when many thought of socialism as a fully centralised command economy... My own interpretation is that of a democratic mixed economy.

re: the 'crimes' of 'socialist' 'regimes' - the abuses of the Stalin regime have long been abhorred by most on the Left. But let us not forget - also - that supposededly liberal and democratic governments supported murder and slaughter - including of civilians - on a scale most people really could not get their minds around... Hundreds of indigenous people slaughteredin Gautemala, mass slaughter of leftists and those in the labour movement in Indonesia, the Vietnam war, Pinochet's coup in Chile...

The death toll climbs into the hundreds of thousands - maybe millions... I don't blame liberalism and I don't blame democracy. There are interests which exploit the system to further their interersts - and in the process abandon principles... Here the same is true of many governments and states which are 'liberal democratic' as states and governments which proclaim themselves 'socialists'.

Liberty, democracy and social justice are all important - and need not conflict overly with each other... Through popular mobilisation, though, we need to end the cynicism and lies - and apply genuinely the real values of socialism, liberalism, democracy... We need to stop the cynical exploitation of these ideas and values - by those who at the core are really only interested in 'straight power concepts'... Then maybe we'll see how liberalism, socialism and democracy are really meant to look like!!

re: indigenous people in Gautemala - I made a type - I meant hundreds of THOUSANDS slaughtered....

huonian,

I agree with you. "The overwhelming majority of Australians are gathered near the middle of the political spectrum".

But as the policy failures mount in coming years, we may see some of the older divisive issues re-emerge to once again represent greater political division. On the other hand, you may be right and we may not as most Australians may still conclude that extreme ideas from the left or right are not magical.

No matter which way we go, there will be consequences as the world gets tougher. Greater domestic protection will deny poorer nations opportunities, and more of the same will cause greater domestic policy difficulties.

I hate to be a bit pessimistic, but it beats being part of the simplistic left who write and talk in a language barely reflective of reality. Anyone who knows politics well should have realised long ago that Obama and Rudd (Labor) would not deliver many of their promises. Now with all the policy difficulties exposed, the left just turn in on themselves and even criticise their supposed saviours. Who said religion was dead in Australia?

It is great to be visionary and build bridges to address inequality, but the left should at least recognise ongoing difficulties when they promote their vision to save the world.