Indy

You go along with the lie that the descendants of aboriginal Australians 'requested' a Voice to Parliament? That doesn't sound like you.

indyvidual,

Give it a chance. It will be monitored and legislated
by the government. The Voice is only an advisory body.
Which is not a big ask really - especially as it only
concerns policies and programs that apply to our
First Nations people. Who by the way were all consulted
around Australia.

The most important thing with the Voice is to keep
cutting through the political lines and barriers and
emphasizing the fact that these are largely fabrications.
The genuine reality opposes the fiction.

If we compare the sitting works of Parliament during
the Morrison government - it was something that the
Morrison government endured. In stark contrast the
Albanese government has jam packed each sitting
session with an agenda of bills.

Over all the Albanese government is finishing its
parliamentary year feeling pretty good about itself.
And so it should. While the Opposition must seriously
be under no illusion of the huge size of work it's got
ahead of itself - especially with the Nationals
creating problems.

Albanese summed things up rather well: "This is just
in our 1st six months. I look to the next six months
and beyond."

As do we all!

"Good lord, how can intelligent and rational human beings not see the custom-built racism on which the Voice concept rests?" asks political and social commentator and author, Andrew L. Urban. ('A belligerent Voice?' 30/11/22).

Is the Albanese government not being racist by assuming that aboriginal Australians all think alike, vote alike, "solely because of their race"?

Urban correctly describes the attitude behind the Voice as "unmitigated racism".

Urban gives his own prescription to solve the problem, but the 'well meaning fools' won't be interested, and the rest of us know what should be done, and should have been done, long ago.

The Voice will be put up; we don’t know which way it will go; but, if the referendum passes, the problems and belligerence will continue, without anything being achieved. Just like ATSIC, that other you beaut circus established by Labor.

"the Albanese government has jam packed each sitting session with an agenda of bills." Foxy

“That government is best which governs least” Thoreau

The great disaster for Whitlam and Australia was economic. Whitlam himself had admitted to being an economic illiterate, thinking such issues were best left to lesser beings.

Whitlam and indeed the whole of the ALP had spent the previous decade pondering how to redistribute the results of the great economic boom of the 50s and 60s. They understood little and cared less how that boom and wealth had come about and therefore assumed that it would just continue by magic.

Unfortunately for them they came to power just as the boom was coming to a shattering halt and they didn't have the faintest idea what to do about it. Incompetent treasurers like Cairns and Crean closed their eyes to the problems and continued to spend. Government debt, which had been declining since 1946, exploded.

Inflation ran rampant to levels that today seem impossible, reaching 17%. Wages grew even faster since the Whitlam government was disinclined to put any brakes on union power. This, predictably, ushered in a period of stagflation.

Whitlam had promised to grow the economy by 6-7% but instead didn't even achieve half of that.

The bungled tariff cut destroyed jobs and industries throughout the economy, a blow from which we never recovered.

The true legacy of Whitlam is that his government showed the vastly better Hawke government that unthinking reformism cannot be divorced from economic realities. Whitlam never learned that but Hawke absorbed the lesson.