Your Problem Being?

Matthew Castray writes:

“Mr Rudd has also been careful to maintain the conservative cultural positions of his predecessor. In a suggestion reminiscent of the Keating years, in October the new Labor Speaker floated the possibility of removing the Lord’s Prayer from the opening of Parliament, and replacing it with a multicultural ‘prayer’ and some sort of daily acknowledgement of Australia’s traditional owners. That same day, the Prime Minister slapped the proposal down, citing ‘long-standing tradition’. Indeed, Mr Rudd has maintained a distance from Mr Keating himself: when the latter recently questioned the level of public reverence surrounding the slaughter of Anzac troops at Gallipoli in the first world war, Mr Rudd said publicly that Mr Keating was ‘absolutely 100 per cent wrong’.

The Ministry of Ethnic Affairs too, quietly shelved by the Howard government, has not made a return.”

Your problem being?

In Britain and Australia alike, back when Labour Governments were Labour Governments (when and why did the ALP change the spelling, by the way?), they were notable for their “conservative cultural positions”, and would never have dreamt of abolishing the Christian prayers in Parliament, nor of any need for a “Ministry of Ethnic Affairs”. Never mind belittling the Fallen!

This was inseparably bound up with their very active opposition to poverty, ignorance, ill health, unemployment, squalor, and needless war.

The rise of Communist and Trotskyist infiltration split both parties, and, as Marxism shifted from economics to the culture wars, turned the main body in each country into the sort of party that wanted to abolish the Christian prayers in Parliament, and wanted things like Ministries of Ethnic Affairs, but was actively opposed to any measure addressing poverty, ignorance, ill health, unemployment or squalor, or seeking to prevent needless war.

If Rudd is turning the ALP back into a proper Labour Party, then good for him. We need a proper Labour Party in Britain, too.

“Mr Rudd faces a new and formidable Liberal opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull.”

Leading campaigner to abolish the monarchy, the logical constitutional end of neoliberal economics, the moral and social attitudes from which neoliberalism is inseparable (what the market wants, the market must have), and the neoconservative remaking of the world in that image by force of arms.

Another reason to need proper Labour Parties around the Commonwealth and the world: the Keating-Blair school is staunchly anti-monarchist, whereas in its earliest days the British Labour Party peremptorily dismissed an attempt to make it ant-monarchist, rapidly going on to become a stalwart of such things as the House of Lords and the honours system.

Had it not done so, then it could never have done anything about poverty, ignorance, ill health, unemployment, squalor, and needless war.

Apart from the House of Lords, this is all equally true of Australia.