The Consequences of Political Disconnect - International Social/Political

Today the former Premier of the secular State of NSW left ‘church’ with her husband and avoided all questions on her historic crushing defeat. I won’t hold it against her that she’s an American religionist in a secular Australian society; however, I will level my attack at the Corporate-pandering Labor-right faction that placed her in power in one of the most ill-conceived political placements in NSW history.

Firstly, the woman is a bloody yank complete with offensive twang. Secondly, she was inactive in policy implementation and rushed to deceptively unload (PRIVATISE) the State’s electrical energy infrastructure resource – a glaring act of manipulation and deception for a ‘church-going’ (hypocritical American) girl.

Thirdly, and most importantly, she FAILED to REFORM her PARTY and SERVE the interests of the PEOPLE instead of the Corporations!

The PEOPLE predictably RETALIATED en masse to rid their State of UNREPRESENTATIVE, CORRUPT political rule; they accomplished their objective in devastating fashion, recording a historic defeat that will not soon be forgotten. A cogent lesson for all parties that pander to minority Corporate interests and LOSE TOUCH with the MAJORITY ELECTORATE.

No doubt the ‘thud of the guillotine’ could be heard all the way to the Federal political capital in Canberra where a completely disconnected and incompetent PUPPET Prime Minister continues to push for a GOLDMAN SACHS designed CARBON TAX! [Crushing defeat, here it comes, Julia!]

So, you may well ask, why would Federal Labor continue to pander to MINORITY Corporate interests and not heed the loud message of the people? Simple, they have NO CHOICE, remember what happened when Rudd opposed Murdoch and US wishes, out on his ear by Labor puppets controlled by Washington. Now Gillard, the most treasonous (major military bases) PM in recent memory, gives the Americans everything and anything they want -- there’s a good little fellatrix! Her disgusting speech to the US Congress should never be disregarded.

Gillard, or any other Labor leader that pursues Corporatist policies at the expense of average Aussies will suffer a similar fate as that which befell the hapless yank Premier of NSW yesterday.

THE PEOPLE have delivered a very clear message to all Australian politicians. The magnitude of the defeat in NSW was truly awesome; nevertheless, puppet politicians in the capital are stuck between a rock and a hard place; they are aware of public sentiment and realise they cannot dupe the educated local population as easily as US elites dupe the uneducated and uninformed American masses, but Oz politicians are OWNED by their Corporate masters and the decision is not theirs to make! [Do you like Corporate ‘democracy’ in action, people?]

Gillard will continue to push the POLITICALLY SUICIDAL Corporate CARBON TAX policy regardless of the reality ‘on the ground’ – the ruling elite considers all politicians to be completely EXPENDABLE (puppets), hence the NEED for the people to reject the major parties and ELECT REAL REPRESENTATIVE INDEPENDENTS to OFFICE in the FUTURE.

How anyone hopes to implement a PENALTY Carbon tax on the PEOPLE while SUBSIDISING the MAJOR POLLUTING CORPORATIONS beggars belief; nevertheless, our shameless, LACKEY PM has no other choice but to try and FAIL!

Resounding defeat notwithstanding, the people of NSW failed to reject the Corporate controlled two party system; HOWEVER, when it becomes obvious that the new conservative NSW leader is full of the same shit as his predecessor, the PEOPLE may act on this new knowledge in time for the next FEDERAL election – would anyone care to make a wager on it?

Australians are not so easily deceived – failure to heed the peoples' wishes earns an appropriate response. Of course, a few decades of information control and substandard education would place the Oz masses in the same category as the dumb, uninformed yank masses, but who has a decade or two up their sleeve these days?

Gillard’s Washington masters are using American formulas in Oz – they simply do not work over here – but maybe we shouldn’t have let on. But like most Aussies we do enjoy a good fight and the challenge of taking on the odds.

Do ya fuckin’ best, you vile, mass murdering, ‘septic tank,’ VERMIN! We will fight you till the end of time.

It has taken political talent bordering on genius. The creativity of a master such as Disraeli or F. D. Roosevelt to deliver NSW Labor a defeat on this scale.

And I don't mean Barry O'Farrell, although his political tactics are wholly vindicated and his occasional Liberal critics silenced. The genius was that of the Labor Party, in turning what could have been a swing-of-the-pendulum defeat into something far worse.

In March 2007 Morris Iemma was re-elected with 52 seats in an assembly of 93. It was possible to see him being returned in another four years. Fanciful? Only if you overlook the policy successes that got him 52.26 per cent of the two-party vote.

Successes symbolised by Australia's longest urban road, the 42km Westlink M7 which carved one hour off a journey north to south through western Sydney, a prize-winning model of private-public partnership that quickly brought 5000 additional jobs into the region. Or a $100 million bus-rail interchange at Parramatta to feed commuters from new bus transit ways on to trains. Or rebuilt hospitals like Sutherland. In 2007 Iemma held seats thanks to a capital works budget bigger than all the other states combined, bigger than New York's or California's.

Then he made the silly mistake of wanting to make that huge infrastructure spend even bigger by selling the state's electricity assets.

In 2007 this was surely not too big a request of a Labor Party which had seen the benefits to living standards of the reforms of the Hawke-Keating years.

A reasonable response of a union-based party might have been, "Yeah, mate, well, can't really hold out against this one. Let's allow a Labor government a great chunk of capital so it can push even harder with public sector expansion. Nurses and teachers will be the winners. And we'll get guarantees for our members in the electricity sector."

There were precedents - and, happily, they also point to policy success during Labor's rule - the privatisation of Freightcorp in 2002 and of state-owned coal mines in 2001. Both benefited the budget and taxpayer. Both were supported by the unions because the private capital modernised the enterprises and shored up jobs.

Yet in a display of wilfulness and obstinacy, the opponents of electricity privatisation staged a public brawl at the 2008 ALP conference. It presented a hideous visage to the electorate. It was a symbolic repudiation of the McKell model, the style of NSW Labor since William McKell (premier 1941-47). McKell's moderate ethos was based on middle course policies which gave the party support in the bush as well as the city. It was possible because the machine supported the parliamentary leadership, the premier of the day. This pattern prevailed under Joe Cahill, Neville Wran and me.

On this occasion, the party tore up the script that had given Labor these years of ascendancy and ritually humiliated Iemma and then replaced him, the first time in NSW Labor history a premier had been executed. Contemplating this turbulence, the electorate started deserting the party.

The party of McKell had forgotten that, before all else, you offer business-like cohesion. Without that image of stability it didn't help that the NSW school curriculum was now being recognised as the country's best. Or that there was a Titanic $950 million reconstruction of Royal North Shore hospital, the last of the great teaching hospitals to be rebuilt under the bursting public works budget. Or that the construction of rail clearways was delivering on-time running of 95 per cent on a public transport system carrying a higher proportion of commuters than that of any other capital city.

On top of the brawl over public ownership of power plants - plants that were becoming liabilities - the party could not make up its mind about leadership. A party in government tries three different leaders in three years, making it look like it's in trouble.

Nathan Rees had the style of a potential leader but it was unfair to hoist him into the premier's job with only a year in parliament and no experience in a major portfolio. Kristina Keneally was a remarkable political asset as she showed in her campaigning but needed time in, say, Health or Education.

OK, we have a scorching row over electricity privatisation and two quick changes of premier. Both demonstrate real political artistry. But the party's collective genius was not exhausted. There comes a third ingredient: a cluster of ministerial scandals unlike anything seen in recent government experience. Demands for resignation may have been resisted in the cases of Della Bosca, Campbell or Stewart if the premier of the day had been longer in the job, less battered by crisis, an agitated media and bad polls. But, as resignation followed resignation, the public despaired and party support for the first time was exploring the 20s. Hard to climb out of a rift that deep.

The creativity of the party was not exhausted. After its first 10 years in which there was no resignation due to ministerial behaviour (a good run by the standards of Australian politics) the government was subject to the ultimate probity humiliation: being linked to vulgar influence-buying on Wollongong Council, which was appropriately given saturation media coverage and made the subject of an ICAC inquiry.

There was something seminal in this, a sea-change for a government that for more than a decade had never sustained an ICAC finding against it. Thereafter, whenever the names Tripodi and Obeid were thrust into the limelight the public got reminded of the worst of the state ALP. And (more of this collective political genius working at full steam) the two were in the news every week, portrayed as power brokers, backroom boys who made and unmade premiers.

Facing this horror the public was vowing to give the party the hiding of its life. As late as January the latest beat-up about Obeid was certain to get more space than, say, the success of the government in holding the state's Triple A rating through the GFC, or the textbook privatisations of Waste Services and State Lotteries or the declaration of new national parks over the River Red Gums.

And the government was never given credit for the turnaround in the performance of police, transformed by reforms of the Royal Commission, driving down crime in all categories.

Policy successes are hard enough to sell. But when one part of your political team is seemingly working, with what looks like malign talent, to subsume it with woeful publicity, then a fourth term government is way behind.

But it never had to be this bad. The genius never should have been this pronounced.

It now remains to harness it for constructive purpose and party rebuilding.

Bob Carr is a former Labor Premier of NSW.

© 2011 News Limited.

Good to hear from you again, Bob, you write with a passion you rarely displayed while Premier; so I'll forgive you writing for a Murdoch rag.

I still owe you one, though you prob wouldn't remember; it was just a routine political matter/intervention for a Premier at the time, but you took the time to respond personally and rectify a situation that was causing me major grief. I am in your debt, 'ol' son' -- just giving the yanks another lead to run with, I'd have found me ten times over by now, but as we know, those doodle dandies aren't real smart, they're only good at indiscriminate killing and destroying everything they touch these days.

Which brings me to Keneally; you are far too kind and forgiving of her, but at least you didn't make a spectacle of yourself like Hawkey forcing a kiss from a woman whose body language was retracting from the advance -- the cameras caught it all. Anyway, fuck Hawke and his offsider, sell-out, Keating; the nation has never recovered from being reduced to a garage sale hole in the ground for Transnational mining Companies. But to return to (former Premier) Keneally, who did have the opportunity to reform the party and serve the people of NSW -- she FAILED miserably on both counts. Plus her true manipulative, deceptive character emerged after she prorogued parliament and failed.

But you always had selective vision, Bob. And not a word of advice for suicidal Gillard, you could have at least offered her some good, solid, Labor advice -- the woman is about to 'do a Keneally' but in the Federal arena, a sad omission, Bob. But a peoples' party that no longer represents the people deserves everything it gets -- more political blood to come, ol' son.

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