ALP’s Mark Latham has praised far-right senator Cory Bernardi’s defection from the Liberal National Party government. Going along with Bernardi, Latham, Trump-like in his own stupidity, expressed dissatisfaction with the LNP, and criticises the Labor Party’s policies calling them “cultural Marxism.”
Latham never claimed to be from the Left … his economic position was to abandon working class politics and embrace aspirational middle class values [Civilising Global Capital: New Thinking for Australian Labor (Allen and Unwin, 1998)].
Both corporate Australia and its media oppose Trump because he may interfere with Australia’s trade with China, one of two main factors for the escape down-under from the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The other factor was migration, currently at its highest at any time in Australian history. How ironic! The federal government is refusing entry for refugees but are taking in nearly 200,000 new migrants each year.
Speaking of the middle class … the LNP is Queensland is currently experiencing mass defections to One Nation.
If this continues there will be a One Nation government by the end of the year (2017).
And the blame partly lies with the Queensland Labor Party … particularly with ALP figures like Peter Beattie and Deputy Premier Jackie Trad (who claim to be from the Left) because both have supported every corporate land and mining deal they could lay their hands on.
For example, Trad supported the West Village development in Mollison Street South Brisbane (in her own seat), and shut down Independent MP Rob Pyne’s attempts to expose corruption in local government when suspicions abound about corrupt mayors taking graft from developers. Also Trad and her backers support the Adani coal mine in central Queensland. Trad’s parliamentary declaration of financial interests reads like a bottom-0f-the-harbour scheme with family trusts burying transparency.
AWU (read Austrlalia’s Worst Union) backed Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk who claims her government supports jobs yet the Bligh Labor government took away as many jobs as the LNP’s Campbell Newman. Labor robbed the regions by amalgamating shire councils under its fairy tale of economic rationalism.
Meanwhile Beattie has got into bed with Brisbane’s Israeli Chamber of Commerce and is trying to drum up support for investment in Israel and Queensland by shonky apartheid supporting business people. Beattie is the CEO of the Commonwealth Games for 2018 to be held on the Gold Coast and is open for business so long as he can says ‘jobs’ at the media conference.
Now Labor have kowtowed to the anti-women group Cherish Life as a back-lash builds against Rob Pyne’s bills to decriminalise abortion and take women’s health out of the Criminal Code. None of the Labor front bench have openly supported Rob Pyne’s bills. Pyne is putting forward progressive legislation, he was the only person in the parliament to oppose the Adani coal mine.
It is not surprising that people in small towns and outer suburbs of Brisbane are lining up with baseball bats … Palaszczuk’s government is doomed. And Pauline Hanson will never sign a coalition agreement with LNP leader Tim Nicholls (Clayfield) so we are looking at a government of the far-right in Queensland.
The ALP did not have to bring us here.
Remember that Mark Latham was Gough Whitlam’s research assistant.
Ian Curr
12 February 2017
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Australians are worried about Trump. But there's a lot to be worried about at home
Photo: Screen shot from far-right counter demo organised by Cherish Life at Parliament house Brisbane against Rob Pyne’s bills to decriminalise abortion.
