Crikey readers have found some similarities between the Morrison government’s economic fortunes and the current state of the environment — not a drop in sight. Meanwhile, readers pondered how Bernie Sanders‘ politics would go over in Australia, and turned over the fine details of Scott Morrison’s “boycott ban”.
On disappearing tax returns
Richard Shortt writes: It’s the drought, mate. Trickle-down has dried up. How’s about some “not-welfare-cash” for those of us doing it tough? Don’t forget, we wage- and salary-earning townies are the “salt of the earth” too, because without us our “salt of the earth” country cousins wouldn’t have a market, or someone to pay taxes to fund their “not-welfare-cash” payments.
On Bernie Sanders
David Edmunds writes: Bernie Sanders has proposed a policy suite that looks very like the Greens here, and not that different from Angela Merkel who is considered conservative in Europe. He appears extraordinary only because of the contrast with the status quo in the US. I doubt that many Australians would be surprised at a leader who espoused the Sanders policy suite, mostly because we have a good deal of it already — for example, universal health care and reasonable minimum wages. What Australia lacks is a political leader who is capable of selling a policy suite such as a green new deal, even though it is likely that a substantial majority of Australians already believe in it.
On the boycott boycott
Steven Westbrook writes: He’s buying into Canavan’s fantasy that its only cowardice that is stopping new investment in coal. Damn those easily intimidated insurance companies.
Humphrey Bower writes: Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the freedom to boycott are three different forms of freedom. The first two can legitimately be restricted in the name of non-violence, irrespective of political orientation (apart from fascism, which is inherently violent and hence intolerable either in public speech or as a form of public assembly, at least in a democratic society). To legislate against boycotts however either in the context of labour or investment is a form of state violence which is fundamentally undemocratic, except arguably in times of war or national emergency.
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Only if we can find an Opposition.
Labor is a party so degenerate the we could expect a good portion to desert to the ilLiberal Party if they became expected to adopt any policies, especially non-far-Right ones. Shorten is just waiting for the moment to knife Albanese, but the latter first has to become a worthwhile target.
We should start pushing the Greens to do more than protest. How about urging a serious policy agenda on water, for instance, and push the need for one on every single Greens MP. That will force some to either perform more aggressively, or make way for someone else.
What matters is results. Transnational capitalism’s man in Australia, morrison, is the strongman driving Austerity and ruling class plunder that they wanted abbott to be. Liberal leadership “turmoil” that we thought was the mark of a party falling apart was in fact the ruling clique sifting its leaders to find the ruling clique the head plunderer that they put abbott in office to be. Once again, we were distracted by the action rather than the dynamics; we mistook the activity for action.