Happy honeymoon Albo, but when will real reforms start, mate?

We wish the newlyweds Jodie Haydon and Anthony Albanese all the best. May their togetherness last long. But how long should we wait for the Prime Minister to stand up and make a real difference in a world in change? Tim Dunlop asking?

As the non-Labour side of Australian politics continues to reshape itself (a bit like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly), there is a new awareness among commentators and the wider political class that some long-held assumptions about Australian politics are no longer valid. Everything from the values ​​of the major parties to the idea that we operate in a two-party system to our relations with China and the United States is in a state of flux that requires new thinking.

Australia is under enormous pressure from international forces that are relegitimizing varying degrees of fascism, including undermining post-war shifts in gender and racial equality. Even—or especially—in the United States, a dangerous majority no longer believe in the assumptions of liberal democracy and international humanist equality, and we are seeing an increasing normalization of abuses against the most vulnerable.

Moreover, the Trump Administration is actively is spreading This toxic mentality is everywhere in the world.

A number of recent articles have correctly pointed out that Australia is equally at risk of drifting to the far right, and that no matter how much protection our electoral system provides, it will not protect us forever, so we need to get our act together.

I couldn’t agree more, but before I explain why I think this all means this, I want to offer a little historical caution about how we analyze what happened.

Labor needs to get rid of Anthony Albanese as soon as possible.

shift right

This perfect piece Lamestream MediaFor example, looks at recent data Australian Election Research and notes: “While election results show the Coalition struggling to maintain support, Australians are actually moving to the right on hugely important issues such as immigration, Indigenous peoples, gender and climate (the number of Australians who think climate change is a serious threat also fell in this poll).”

The article states that this is “a reminder that election results do not tell the full story and that Australia is still very susceptible to a shift to the right, especially as the economic situation begins to deteriorate”.

The data to support this are in the article (and To work) and I don’t object to that at all. The caveat I would like to add is that the idea that the country is shifting to the right depends on where you start measuring.

I was reminded of this while reading historian Henry Reynolds’ new book. Looking from the North: Australian History from Top to Bottom.

There’s a really interesting section in the book about the end of the White Australia Policy, which reminds us of how far we’ve come. Reynolds notes that after the War, especially after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed (or acknowledged) and as a process of decolonization began among the devastated European empires (accompanied by the creation of various human rights treaties), Australia risked remaining an outlier.

Reynolds writes: “The White Australia policy retained its hold on voters. References to racial purity, the need to preserve the blood of our British ancestors, and the need to reveal the color of the biological heritage of the Indigenous minority were still common.”

It was Australian diplomats who first began to pressure governments to change, he explains, because they were at the forefront of international disdain for our attitudes towards race:

“Australia’s diplomats from around the world were saying that the status of First Nations peoples and their ever-present poverty was an inevitable obstacle and hindered efforts to enhance the nation’s prestige in a rapidly changing world. Australia had few friends or admirers among non-European states or Soviet bloc countries. The relevant problem was the White Australia policy and its blatant racial discrimination; soft words could not ameliorate this.”

“Political leaders from both major parties recognized that change was being forced in Australia, but there was still strong social support for the old ways. Gradual reform and a measured relaxation of entry conditions were therefore carried out, with the ever-looming danger of South Africa being cornered by apartheid.”

This reminds me of something else I read recently in Geordie Williamson’s excellent book about the decline of Australian literature: Burning Library. One of the works that Williamson examines is Sumner Locke Eliot, whose 1977 novel Water Under the Bridge (set in the 30s) puts the following thoughts into the mind of its main character:

“Sometimes when the sirens went off at noon, Geraldine wished it were a real air raid, bombs falling, buildings bursting into flames, death and destruction sweeping through the city, shattering people’s complacency in what was surely the most self-indulgent country of all. So isolated, chauvinistic and proud of it, she cared for all things Australian, championed the White Australia Policy to keep out crackpots and niggers, and patronized pommies and dagos. All All cricket. longitudes and platitudes of the good old Bondi beach nation of loving, racing-mad, beer-loving, sun- and surf-worshiping, deep-rooted suburbs, dear old mothers, fathers and children. Truly, this whole vast country was one great Mosman…”

Any shift to the right that is occurring now should, in my opinion, be measured against a base that has changed significantly since the 1960s. I’m not making excuses for current trends, I’m just pointing out that there was a time when things were much worse and we need to remember how we overcame much more deep-seated biases.

“Is it the natural party of the government?”

My point is that it may not be incrementality that changes us for the better, but incrementality may be what takes us backwards.

Robert Manne, in another of the recent articles on these topics, wrote something important about how things are changing. “The seamless transformation of White Australia into a Multicultural Australia seems to me to be one of the greatest achievements in the history of this country.” I no longer think we should forget or undermine this, any more than we should ignore Manne’s later comment: “The emergence of Far Right parties in the United States and Western Europe in the last decade should alert us to the current era of Thermidorean cultural counter-revolution.

The future stability of such Australia can no longer be taken for granted.

But here’s the thing. You can’t just take sides against the kind of slide we’re seeing in the US and elsewhere; You must fight and defend the value of these democratic and humanist values ​​and establish them as a clear part of the national operating system.

Anthony Albanese’s back room is uninspiring, minimalist and a throwback approach

It cannot compete against the powerful right-wing revolutionary force currently concentrated in the United States and assembled here.

The Prime Minister’s fervent wish for Labor to be the “natural party of government” is ultimately a conservative wet dream that takes our eyes off the prize and provides space for the far right to come together and set the agenda. As the Lamestream article points out, this change is already taking place, even amidst the current chaos within the Coalition. There is no need for Labor to revert to Whitlam’s “crash or crash” approach, but for God’s sake,

They need to wage the progressive struggle more faithfully than they do now.

I doubt this will happen under Anthony Albanese.

Republished with permission – original Here.

With Donald J. Albo supporting mass murder