Even in this electronic age, Australia can still seem like a
faraway outpost of North Atlantic civilisation, a bit out of touch.
As late as 2013, she has come up with a neoliberal leader who started out as
an economically left-wing social conservative.
Just when, following the collapse of neoliberalism, economically left-wing
social conservatives are coming back in Europe and North America.
The Liberal-National Coalition has a formal policy in favour of abortion, and its only position on the legal redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples is that it has no position on the legal redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples.
The Liberals, especially, are the same old suburban WASPs as they have always been, no more socially conservative (a problematic term, of which more in future) as the centre of the Anglican and Uniting Churches at the given time.
If that. “Simple-minded advocates of the free market,” Tony Abbott called them to Bob Santamaria, who refused him a reference when he eventually applied to become a Liberal parliamentary candidate.
Quite.
On both counts.
Santamaria was well to the left of the people who have mostly taken over the ALP. The very people whom he exposed and opposed.
Those 47,391 Senate votes for the DLP in what to that party had historically been impregnable New South Wales are starting to make more and more sense.
And to look more and more like the shape of things to come.
And to look more and more like the shape of things to come.
David Lindsay, the Britsih Santamaria. The North, maybe the North East especially, could serve as slightly detached Victoria to the South's, maybe the South East especially's, New South Wales. But even in the South our people would come round eventually, as they are doing now even in New South Wales. If the flame never dies in the North like it has never died in Victoria.
ReplyDeleteI would not go so far as to compare myself to Santamaria. But you make important points otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThe name of the Democratic Labour Party is already taken in Britain, though. By a group of ex-Labour Councillors and their supporters in Walsall.