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Australia needs a new political party with a membership of diverse and innovative thinkers.
Australia has an aging population. At least 40% of the nation's voters are in their fifties, yet you could not tell this when you look at policies of governments, corporate advertising and the behaviour of decision makers. Government, employers, sellers of good and services, commercial FM and digital media, are focused on the twenty to thirty ager brackets. The focus is on an under educated, inexperienced and self absorbed lot whose ability to think deeply about anything is watching commercial news, Big Brother and Australia's Biggest Loser. The Treasurer, Peter Cotsello, commenting on the shortage of skills in Australia due to the myopic tradition of getting rid of workers who turned fifty, suggested that we "should now work till we dropped".
Poor
human resource
management and employment practices, and even poorer
public policy,
developed and implemented by a short term focused, semi - literate, political dupopoly (labor and liberal) brought us here. This is the quality of analysis, and commentary, from the person who aspires to be Prime Minister and whose stewardship of the Australian economy has created barriers to wealth creation and innovation through poor policy. Short term goals, and consumer riches, is the mantra of the Howard - Costello partnership. The Prime Minister said that older Australians might have to find other types of work and work and be managed by someone in their thirties. Over the years I have had a stint of being managed by wet behind the ears, thick, people of this vintage. Their experience, ability to think and to understand the world in which they are operating is limited to the concept that operate in a free - unfettered market place. In one organisation the Directors did not read newspapers, or educate themselves about the nation or the world. They generalised about their market sector and created organisational strategies, and actioned them, based on perceptions that had no research or factual base. They were adamant that the Australian economy, and workplace hiring practices, would move to large scale temporary employment. In their minds Australian employers would have a workforce, of the future (2006 and beyond) of contractors supplied by third parties. They would supply such workers. Based on their assumptions they hired, and sacked people, with regular monotony forever chasing their elsuive objective. This switch to tem[porary would, according to them take place in the first quater of 2006. Turnover of staff in the first half of 2006 is 100%. They often remarked to me that there was little work
ethic
in people today. They told staff that the new Work Choices Act of the federal government allowed them to sack them without the need to give a reason. I found most of their behaviour, propositions, comments, and their observations, about people who worked for them, to be an irony. There were no mirrors in the company. They were somewhat ignorant in general, the epitomy of the proposition that Australian expertise, in management and generally, is "dumbing down". They are not alone in the Australian landscape and are the norm rather than the exception. They mirror Australia's public policy makers in many respects.
The Australian Labor party has a bare policy cupboard and the leadership is as narrowly focused as their liberal and national counterparts. Yet many of these people are in, or approaching, their fifth decade in life.
Tell them to where to stick their mendacious vocabulary and absurdity.
The vocabulary of politics (politicians) and corporations (executives) is desiged to camouflage information, hide intent and alter perception of performance. It is interesting how "managerial speak" travels the world and we are confronted with the language of babble and sophistry borrowed as if it were a disease. The jargon of politics, and business, is laced with mendacity. They claim "core values" but when the pressure is on they demonstrate in droves that thesde values are non existent. Their values are different to civilised and honourable people. Their values are the values of personal survival at any cost. The government or the corporation
over the individual/s.
They have game plans as if life and employment, career and for some, simply existing, are some form of sport to be played on a field called "Australian economy". The economic commentators, and the money market gamesters, are like gamblers in the casino. They add no value but rather are destructive, through betting the price. Bet a dolar or bet a million the ffect is the same. It adds no extra value to the society in terms of shared income or profit. They love "lean and mean". They punish anyone who does not play their game. Their punishment can be career, and soul, destroying, yet they are not charged, and prosecuted, as the criminals many of them are. They do not have to be accountable. Governments emulate lean and mean. Spin manufactures our consent to accepting that failures of our governments, the politicians there in, the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats there in, the failure of boards and corporations and the performance of people there in are packaged as challenges, and opportunities, to be faced. Not by them, by others who wear the outcome. They can reinvent themselves much as a snake that sheds it skin, a grub can aparently become a butterfly and an incomeptent can go from one position to another as if the history is erased.
These people are not prepared to exchange information but rather to demand that we interact on their terms yet they will all call us "clients" and "customers". High sounding words of hollow core, claims without merit or proof, "coproemes". These people are debasing our ability to think and treating us as commodities, the collateral of the small mind and the "30 second" media grab. When you add government policies such as Work Choices the environments these people create and operate become horrible places to work for they value very little,
least of all the people.
What party should some federal labor members be in?
The Australian media loves a good politial scrap and reports it in great detail. So when one factional ggroup within the two major parties, decides to cull another factional group, the
media rushes to the circus ring for the best seats. Most recently (March 2006) the Australian Labor Party began such a scrap and it escalated with sitting parliamentary members being ousted from
standing for labor at the forthcoming state and federal elections.
None of Australia's political parties are actually representative of the nation.
The bulk of representation is white, European. This is because the system breaks everything down to a twp party preferred voting outcome.
Participation in Australia's government and politics is micro - managed (controlled) by a handful of liberal and labor party members
working in concert with the national party. This is a highly dangerous and corrosive management and Australian democracy is diminsihed under this
methodology and system. Australia's politicians are one of the greatest threats to the national interest by limiting our political freedoms, choices and participation.
Successive Australian governments have progressively weakened our institutions. The Australian Bradcasting Corporation Board is now an unbalanced membership which is unrepresentative of
the national community. It is the "monkey of the organ grinder." Higher education is being commodified and
placed under the rule of the market by a less than subtle process of globalisation and manipulated fudning rules and systems.
The Australian liberal party, once the broad church is now the political anti - church. The Australian Labor Party of old is now no more.
The electorate has been brain washed to think it knows what the liberal party, under John Howard, is all about.
It is often described as the party of "business". Some claim that it is now the party of the battlers.
Apparently it is a "broad church" to othes. We know it contains, among other things,
the ethically challenged, the mean and tricky and the
seriously rich and greedy. We know that it is changing laws to control both houses of parliament and the
ability of members to represent their electorates. We know its is changing the laws of political donations to hide the cronies who
buy influence and decision. We know it is a corrupted entity.
Then again labor around Australia has a lot of thsese types and it is also corrupted.
The electorate thinks it knows the greens and some voters like aspects of their policies.
However the radical nature of the Greens and their inability to articulate and
negotiate ensures thatthey are next to useless in giving a balance to Australia's democracy.
A great number of voters
seem to have disregarded the democrats. Political commentators are predicting the end of the Democrat party at the 2007 federal election.
If the Democrats were to present new and influential candidates they could resurrect themselves.
Other voters have a flirtation with
independents and a large number run hot and cold on the national party which is having problems being relevant and in some places its seats are disappearing.
The National Party leadership is a negative in its longevity.
But as for the federal labor party, well there is a real quandary.
They have a large quota of voters and share the political meal table with the liberal party.
The Australian labor party is born out of the labour movement and much of its structure and representation, if not all, is controlled by
factional elements within trade unions.
The members of labor occupy little enclaves, the left, centre, right, hair brained, the nothing and
and the seriously. Every labor member of parliament got there on the system managed by the trade union leadership.
Some, having done so, have now decided that the union official influence should be reduced, or eradicated.
They want a "nebulous" body called the "rank and file " to decide all things relative about who should be the candidate for the electoral seats.
The problem here is that this proposition is somewhat disingenous and silly.
If they think that union influence should be diminished then they should form a different party with
different management, and manipulative, influences, styles and processes. They could fill it with peple of the same ilk. The people who apparently
have taken on a different persona since being in parliament. They could call it the "rank and file" party.
Critics say that too many members of labor's ranks are from unions and labor pary machinery backgrounds, they have narrow experience! They must therefore be
incopetent, unaware, unrepresentative and suspect. This is indeed an irony of the bloody obvious, given that both major parties are unrepresentative. Why shouldn't they be?
Why should the labor party (union party) have to change because a bunch of critics, and disgruntled types, believe that
federal labor cannot win government or that they should, once in parliament,
e rewarded for their loyalty rather than performance?
The critics really do not explain why every state and territory government in
Australia has labor governments whilst the federal is a liberal/national coalition?
Julia Gillard is apparently having a tilt at the leadership, displaying her credentials, whatever that might mean.
She is barking, along with every other aspirant type and the current leader Kim Beazley is lambasted for
not doing whatever it is the last labor member to rant, in any one moment, says he should.
He apparently should take the system that put him, and them, into parliament, to task.
We know they cannot and will not. For that would require resources, money, organisation and structure.
It would create another party on the periphery.
They would not be in the main game occupied by the duopoly.
Maybe the bulk of trade union officials do not actually want to win government!
They may merely want to have a turn in parliament with all the neat benefits that go with it.
So what are Ms Gillard, Mr. Crean and their compatriots really? Are they
members of the Australian labor party, the party created for, and belonging, to the unions?
The opponents of the disienchanted say that the ones who do not like thes ystem should pull their heads in and shut up.
Critics say that disunity is political death. Fourty liberal members have just told Howard they do not like his child care policies. Others hate the government's immigration and detention policies,
occupation in Iraq and much more. This is not disunity. Warren Mundine, the new folksy labor party president, thinks that they should have a cup of tea.
Sit aroud the camp fire and chew bark. According to well placed sources, wherever they may be placed,
Kim Beazley, the leader of the federal labor party, has from ten minutes to four months, to show us what he has
and do everything for everyone or they (unidentified) will replace him with someone else of their liking.
This is the same lot who gave Australia Mark Latham as leader and prime minsiterial candidate. Perhaps someone in the Australian labor party (on the whinging side side)
might like to tell us what party they should be in.
The governmment of Victoria, Australia is engaged in presenting the Commonwealth Games (March 2006).
The streets and the river have been cleaned. The homesless have ben shipped off to obscurity in short term accommodation out of sight.
The city is being spruced up. Ths is a repeat of what the New South wales government did for Sydney 2000 Olympics.
The politicians of state governments of Victoria, like NSW, will point to their extraordinary abilities and achievements. Australans love a good parade and a bit of sport even if it is a cut down version
where participation is limited to a monarchy, and organisation (the Royalty of England and the long gone British Empire of the Commonwealth)
long past its use by date. Common - wealth is not one of its traits. Queensland's Premier, peter Beattie, ever the marketer rushed into the airports and
blue - tacked tourism posters for his state everywhere.
The politicians of the governemnts of NSW and Victoria do not actually organise, and present, the games or any major event.
They hire others for that. They think that the majority of people will become euphoric and overlook their inadequacies and we do.
The governments of Victoria and NSW cannot actually run hospials, health, community services, transport, utilities or most services with any effective performance but for the twenty or so days of
another major event they will make out that this is the way Melbourne is. Well that is a
always nice to clean house when visitors are going to come. Melbourne is a greate city in spite of the politician's efforts to corrode and degrade with all their best intentions.
The visitors will simply love Melbourne.
What is galling is that a number of pompous, and egotistical, parasites will laud themselves and spend public money making themselves and their chosen few, VIPs. They will then advertise how great they were and expect us to vote them back in on sahhlow
gloss and facade. We will, because there is litle alternative in a nation where the political proces is carefully managed to exclude broad representation
and quality of candidates.
The Victorian labor party is movng to put a high profile chosen candidate into parliament. Wvan Thornley, the founder of internet ciompany
Looksmart, is to be stand for a safe upper house seat in the parliament. Mr. Thornley, we are told is a quality candidate who will bring a lot to the peoples' government.
He is a risk taker having bet on his ability in the dot com boom. However he will not be contesting a marginal seatr. He is to be given a smooth ride into Victoria's
retirement home for politicians, the upper house. He will no doubt be given a ministry. We do not know what Mr. Thornley thinks, or will
think, of his political colleagues. He is joining the ruling oligopoly, and is being given a comfy ride into the publicly funded clown house we euphemistically call parliament.
Mr. Thornley is apparently not an independent thinker. If he is why did he join a party that makes its membes goose step in tune?
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Emperors who have no clothes.
Food for Oil Corruption UN Report
Role of Australia
Cole Enquiry Transcript
Scandal enveloping Australian enterprise and government
Safeway fined $9M for price fixing bread to damage smaller competitors
Lessons in privatisation, creeping stupidity.
Self absorbed, Victorian Labor Party
Smart state?
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