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Below is an annotated version
of The Wran Lecture
delivered last night by
Senator John Faulkner.
With one exception, the annotation is done by highlighting and colour coding of text.
I leave it to Networkers to discern the reasons for the choice of colour as applied to the text.
The one exception is an insertion of text expressing my own view.
This is the one area where, so far, I am unable to agree with Faulkner.
The linked article was very slow to load. I thought it was not there, at first.
ReplyDeletePersonally I think it is too late to reform the Labor Party - too many entrwenched attitudes and entrenched vested interests (especially in NSW).
Better to start a fresh group, with a fresh name and fresh ideas.
I know that's been tried (Democrats and Greens) but one failed completely, the other is not really working (yet).
But with Martin Fergusson selling Australia as a quarry, but not insisting that we invest any profits (too few anyway) in a Sovereign fund, and not insisting on value adding in Australia, we are just selling ourselves down the drain, for little or no benefit to the people, or the fuiture of Australia.
Look at Norway, and its attitude to North Sea Oil. Compare ours.
Denis
Denis
One of the most enlightening comments I have heard in relation to the Labor side of politics was at a Conference of Independent Scholars held by Friends of the State Library of NSW about twelve years ago.
ReplyDeleteThe comment was made by the Marxist historian, Humphrey McQueen, at a time when globalization was a major item on the public agenda. He said that the ALP/Trade Union positions - at the time the ALP was established - were responses to the manifestation of globalisation of the time. I think that is quite reasonable comment.
The other thing to recall is that there have only ever been two strands of political zeitgeist in Australia: free trade and protectionism.
At this time, free trade is all the go. Protectionism, to get a civilised hearing at all, has to take on a lower key and less dominant manifestations.
I expect these strands to be maintained in one form another: First, Australia's response to the world; Second, Australia's participation in the world while trying to protect its own interests and its own particular place and contribution.
How the politics works out will change according to context (including a possible diminution in the American Empire and increasing domination of the Chinese Empire) and according to changes in Australian culture and access to technology. Governance - while the past informs it - is an ever-changing art.
What we have to accept in the present is that the whole world is, at the moment, in a more evident state of flux. This is occurring on political, financial, and environmental fronts. I think we are in a period of major demarcation just as The Great Depression of 1929-39 and the upheavals in youth movements in Europe and the USA in 1968 proved to be watershed events.
In Australia, this is represented politically and socially by the hung parliament. I really don't see that the hung parliament or the political upheavals on both sides of politics should be a cause for regret. These represent, though writ large, the uncertainties that currently abound in the Australian polity.
The cause for regret is that any of the political parties, including The Greens, don't appear to be capable of providing any relevant insight into the current zeitgeist of the Australian polity.