The Turtle House: September 2013

Final Analysis (by me) of the Sept 7 election in Australia. I think the outcome of the major parties will be:
Liberal National Coalition: 99 seats
Australian Labor Party: 46

In looking back on the ALP over the last few years I'd see the biggest mistake being the replacement of Rudd with Gillard and the abandonment of the Superprofits Mining Tax. In one fell swoop this removed a most popular leader as well as Australia's most sensible tax revenue that would have seen us through many decades. It would have been hard to get the Superprofits tax through, for sure, and as many of the deeply involved people against it were within the higher echelons of the ALP, perhaps it couldn't have got up anyway...but it was a very good well thought out tax and we, as a country, are much the poorer without it for the long term.

Gillard's errors and those of the other ALP leaders following the leadership change were so many, and so profound that it's hard to single any out...apart from welcoming a US Marine Base in Darwin...as soon as this happened and we militarily aligned ourselves even more closely with a big build up of US forces in Asia aimed at 'nobbling' China, well China reduced its purchases from us, as anyone with any self respect would.

The ongoing tragedy in Australia isn't to do with the ALP or the LNP but rather the fate of so many people still left in limbo in the new/old/new/old Howard immigration/refugee plan that costs us so many billions of dollars ongoing with the only outcomes being the increase in misery of people trying to escape misery, and a re-inforcement of xenophobia and paranoia as being 'the norm' within our society.

The Gillard years were littered with new legislation...hundreds of new laws...yet, like Fair Work Australia, that she set up earlier, they aren't laws that particularly do anyone any good unless you are someone like Craig Thompson.

This time around, you can't say that the ALP really has had any opponent at all, apart from mining industry funded ALP members near the top of it, and it will lose because of deep problems within it rather than any 'bright light of the right' in terms of the Abbott Group.

I do look forward to the reformation of the ALP after the awful and bitter blood-letting happens from Saturday on, and it need not take so long to do so if members look to their philosophy as a democratic socialist party; & to see Australia as an independent nation, a real and modern republic where people really do matter. I will be happy to be a supporter and member of that ALP as it emerges from this challenge as time goes by.