The Australian Labor
Party (
ALP) is an anachronistic organisation that purports to have a
monopoly on social conscience and represent the working classes of
Australia.
It is controlled by a caustic mixture of unionist bully
boys who make "On the Waterfront" look like "Saturday Night Fever" and casuistic right-wing intellectuals posing as messianic left-wing intellectuals. Both groups share a common vision, namely the manipulation to their own (perhaps pecuniary and/or machavellian)ends of
two corresponding strata of the Australian electorate.
One stratum is the worker and disadvantaged who perceives itself to be "abused" by the "boss". It is likely this perception is a hangover from the Australian penal/colonial mind set of "us and them" and may go some way toward explaining the Australian sense of inadequacy on the international political and cultural scene. (
cf. sport and Australian supremacy -also consider Mark Twain's report that Sydneysiders were oddly proud of their harbour "ain't she beautiful"? as if they somehow had something to do with the matter, whereas it may be that they felt they had nothing to say about themselves!)
The other stratum are the advantaged who feel guilty for not being born disadvantaged. In a collective attempt to apologise for their sheer good fortune these sons and daughters of the advantaged suspend their intellectual capacity and turn to the
ALP to salve their conscience.
The
ALP, of course, cannot assuage their angst because it has no more a
monopoly on social conscience than any other political organisation. These people quickly forget that it was the
ALP who designed the White
Australia Policy, reintroduced fees for teriary
education during the Dawkins administration, sold out the worker via Keating's "level playing field" giving the Australian worker a whopping
19% rate on their mortgages, and rushed off headlong into the Gulf War when Hawke sent warships without discussing it with parliament.
Labor voters often cannot spell correctly.