IMO read this to under Australia & the Election result

For those interested in understanding what Aust feels in 2004 , this article is very, very good.

Please comment to keep it in the new posts.

BTW I voted Green Peter 147.

[B]The road kill on history's highway
October 11, 2004

The wins and losses go beyond the figures in the tally-room, writes Paul Sheehan.

On Saturday night the giant, lumbering road train known as the will of the people, aka the democratic process, smashed through the pretensions, delusions and manipulations of the unelected and unaccountable who presume to tell Australians what to think and who to be.

As I write this in the clear light of an early summer day in Sydney, the road train has trundled through, the dust has settled and road kill has been left pancaked into the surface of the road. A lot of road kill.

In short order, John Howard has decimated four Labor leaders - Keating, Beazley, Crean and Latham - and in the process decimated the hopes of the True Believers and progressive utopians, the people who dominate the milieu in which I live and work. This milieu is now in toxic shock. Not only has the wider electorate declined to endorse the endlessly repeated mantra that the Prime Minister is a dangerous, deceitful drone, it has delivered John Howard the transformative leverage he has never had as leader - de facto control of the Senate.

Howard will have to pay for this. What he has won through the electoral process will now have to be de-legitimised by other means. Prepare for corrosive spin-doctoring on an epic scale: the election victory was built on a lie (a spin automatically applied to all Howard victories). It was a triumph of fear over substance. A political victory for Howard but a moral defeat for Australia. Mark Latham won the campaign but lost the election. The public chose greed (mortgages) over conscience (Iraq, truth in government). The religious right will have dangerous influence in the Senate.

Meanwhile, in the real world of election contests and hard facts, the Howard Government, far from wearing down after three terms, has been rejuvenated by being given both an increased majority and control of the Senate. It thus has the power to roll over the obstructionists who have dominated the Senate for a decade. Power will shift from the innumerates who think 8 per cent is a majority.

Failure by the anti-Howard forces is seeing several significant transitions already begin to unfold. The Greens are replacing the Labor left as the party of uncompromising progressive utopianism. Labor and the Greens are becoming de facto coalition partners. The union movement's domination of the parliamentary ALP is eroding. And the electorate's rejection of Mark Latham was Labor's worst primary vote in half a century.

Old Labor, in other words, is in trouble.

Three weeks ago I caught a train to Blacktown, to the federal electorate of Greenway, a red-ribbon seat. If Labor lost Greenway, it would lose the election. I had no trouble finding the Liberal candidate, Louise Markus, but when I tried to interview the Labor candidate, Edham Husik, I was given the brush-off. What Husik didn't want to talk about, to me or to the electorate, was his background as a union official with the Communication Electrical Plumbing Union, specifically a branch plagued by vote-rorting and sundry dirty tricks. A former union official was sanitising his union background in a traditionally blue-collar union seat. These matters were canvassed in this space two weeks ago, and in turn canvassed in Greenway.

Husik lost Greenway on Saturday. Lost it badly. The 4 per cent swing from Labor means another seat in Labor's western Sydney heartland has shifted to the Liberals. This was more than just a metaphor for demographic shift. Another union hack, foisted onto the electorate by the factional machinery, has been rejected by an electorate that no longer votes with tribal docility.

Because Greenway's victorious Liberal candidate is a member of the Hillsong church, the largest evangelical congregation in Australia, this has provided fodder for the argument that this federal election has marked the emergence of right-wing Christians in Australian politics, yet another American trend being replicated in Australia.

Secular progressives don't like evangelical Christians, which is why the elevation of Andrea Mason, the first Aborigine to head a national political party, has received only muted enthusiasm. Mason, the head of Family First, appears likely to win a Senate seat from South Australia, while another Family First candidate, Steve Fielding, is almost certain of a Senate seat in Victoria after polling a primary vote of 2 per cent. The ABC's Kerry O'Brien, who looked as if he was sucking lemons through much of its Saturday night election coverage, could no longer restrain himself when it came to Family First: "How healthy is it," he asked, "for a party to be entering Australian politics so closely associated with [the Assemblies of God Church]."

It is yet another of this election's many ironies that two conservative Christians, one of them an Aboriginal woman, both benefitting from Liberal preferences, could knock out the Greens as the majority-makers in the Senate.

Last week this column featured one of the leaders of Family First, Paster Danny Nalliah. Yesterday he was elated. "We are 99 per cent sure of a Senate seat in Victoria. We are also very, very confident about Andrea Mason in South Australia." He spoke from a hall where 2200 people were giving prayers of thanks for Saturday's results.

John Howard went to church yesterday. So did the Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, and the Treasurer, Peter Costello, who is far more religious than Howard. All three can now relax into the anticipation that on December 22 Howard will overhaul Bob Hawke as the second-longest serving leader in Australian history. This will leave him with only one achievable landmark: March 11, 2006, his 10th anniversary as PM. Later that year Howard, at age 66, will step aside for Costello, who will be only 49. Costello is already the most formidable performer in Federal Parliament, and Mark Latham suddenly has a much bigger electoral and political hole to climb out of.

As for Howard, he can begin to think about his legacy, which means he will be busier than ever. He has, at most, 24 months left. And there are clouds over his stewardship. Because of Howard's adventure in Iraq, Australians are at greater risk of being murdered by medieval Islamic jihadists. And because he has not rung the alarm bell on Australia's deteriorating landscape, if the wasting away continues to accelerate, broaden and worsen, Howard risks being seen, over time, as a leader who was inert at a time of an unfolding national crisis.

But this is only speculation. During 20 years of reform by the Hawke-Keating-Howard governments, Australia has thrived, the wealth, health and productivity of the nation have improved, while the culture has seamlessly continued a long-term transformation into a multiracial society with burgeoning ties to Asia. For now, Howard can relax at Kirribilli House and savour a very big view[/B]
 
Good article.

I particularly like how he blows away any attempts at excuses other than the truth - lies like "we won the campaign - we just lost the election" etc.
 
likewow said:
Jesus!! This religious conservative right stuff is getting scary, whats going on with our country?
Hi Likwow

Please don’t confuse religion with Right wing. They are not one and the same.

What is going on (not wrong) is since 11 Sept 2001, there has been a move towards many religions. Catholics, Christians, Hindu, Islam, Buddhists, etc. have all seen increased patronage as people seek comfort from troubled times ( war, terrorism, fear…)

Believing in God (in whatever form) does not make you a nutter. If so I am a nutter.

Personally I am Salvation Army and I deny anyone to say they don’t help all types, left, right, black, brown, whatever. Come to the X on a Friday night when they feed and consul homeless people to see what I see as real religious passion. Or come to Sydney Congress Hall Sunday night at 5pm when the people from the drug rehab centre come in to worship. It is serious stuff! They deny no-one.

As for Family First, so far I see nothing to say they are nutters. I could go on with many examples but they have as their leader an Aboriginal Woman! I mean….. how left wing is that?!?! If the were called Green First they would be vilified as hippies!

Don’t let so far unsubstantiated comments from one person re lesbians cloud your view. If that was the case comments that the greens all want drugs to be freely available for kids are true. When in fact they propose de-criminalization of Marijuana. The media love a half informed comment from someone involved with something new to gain spectacle.

Sometimes the losers Labour etc..simply cannot accept that stuffed up. Even those within the parties are all over the papers today admitting this fact. Blaming a secret deal with Family First is a way for them to not face the fact that Australian is not longer them and us, workers versus bosses. The sooner they do understand that fact, the sooner they have a chance.

Peter 147
 
Why are so many people biased against religious people also being politicians?

We have a secular state, through our constitution there is little prospect that Australia would quickly be taken over by religious extremism.

People with religious convictions are also likely to have social & moral convictions - and not necessarily right wing views!

Isn't it preferable that our leaders have opinions and convictions of their own rather than pasting on whatever colour chicken features are in season & changing their views with the morning papers?

I prefer to have our country run by someone with strong views, (some of which I disagree with), than by someone with no convictions at all!

And I say this as an an agnostic whose background is NOT (unlike most of Australia's) grounded in any form of christian faith.

Cheers,

Aceyducey
 
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