Dear Shadow Minister,

What a miserable post.

The lady has won the seat with a groud swell of public support and joins other independents who sit in the house of reps. Wilke increased his vote by 4.4% and Indi was handed over to a fresh independent in Heln Haines. However none of your post was directed at them was it. You are just butt hurt that your man Abbott got shown the door.

Dear Loudmouth,

Getup spent one twentieth of what Clive did. One wonders what deal Scomo did with him but one thing is for certain his support will not have come for free. Yet you feel more aggrieved about Getup. Why?

Steele,

Marx would say, always seek out the class basis for political activity. I would have thought that Manly & environs were ripe for Greens assault, on that class basis: affluent, well-educated, with that superior born-to-rule attitude, and probably very virtuous about the environment, they have the bumper stickers to prove it.

But you put your finger on an interesting phenomenon: that sections of formerly-Liberal supporters have concerns about the environment - that the Greens are getting increased support, not necessarily from Labor voters but from Liberal voters.

I wonder if Antony Green is doing an analysis along those lines right now, and surmising that from now on, the greens will get their votes from Liberal voters (certainly not from Nationals voters) and, of course, from the children coming through school and uni - while disaffected Labor voters are moving towards fruit-cake parties like One Nation.

I think that's quite appalling really: I would much rather see the Labor Party representing and working for actual working people rather than trying to catch the educated upper- and middle-class vote.

I really do think that Marx would be fascinated by the way things are turning out.

Cheers,

Joe

Indi got another Indy, (Sorry, just had to say it!!).

Dear Loudmouth,

You wrote;

"I would much rather see the Labor Party representing and working for actual working people rather than trying to catch the educated upper- and middle-class vote."

So trying to bring back penalty rates for some of our most lowly paid workers or the $1000 every two years to go to pensioner dental health was not enough for you?

Dear Loudmouth,

Further you wrote;

“I really do think that Marx would be fascinated by the way things are turning out.”

A single wealthy industrial/mining fatcat outspent a grass roots organisation (made up of thousands of ordinary Australians) by a factor of 20, much of it stripped from the pockets of his former workers, to warp a democratic election and you are asking what Marx would thought?

Oh gee whizz, I wonder.

You still haven't given a perspective on Clive.

Hi Steele,

I didn't mean to suggest that Marx would have supported a venture capitalist like Palmer. But he would be fascinated by the development of a well-educated, well-paid class of virtuous people who purport to be on the Left. He might have been surprised at the abandonment of the working class by parties purportedly on the left, as well as the evolution of its rather non-revolutionary nature.

Some academic, I hope, is busy writing about the changes in class politics since Marx's time. Not that they would get it past any university's research ethics committee.

In 'defence' of Palmer, he did spread his sixty million of free money around a couple of hundred electorates, not like the rather paranoid-psychotic multi-million focus of Get-Up! on individuals like Abbott. And Dutton too - how did that go ?

Cheers,

Joe