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| Sink or swim | |
Superstitious sailors will tell you that rats have the ability to tell when
a ship is about to sink, and leave in the last port. So one would have thought
that an election filled with accusations about lying rodents and children
overboard, would have produced the occasional rat slinking quietly off to a
unionized dockside to avoid drowning in the political oblivion of opposition. But after a triumphant fourth victory for John ('I'm very humbled') Howard,
the ALP doesn't understand how
they could have possibly lost to a government which was so 'out of touch'. Such
bad luck - they must have walked under Mark (Maddog) Latham's ever shifting
ladder of opportunity. Seven ALP front-benchers have now chosen to waddle off to the backbenches
instead of suffering the humiliation of facing grinning Johnny, and a
perpetually smirking Peter Costello. They had to find some way to ease the
squeeze. So, after the ship has already sunk, they are leaving Maddog, who looks
like he might be a little lonely up on the front bench. At this rate it might
just be him and Peter (Lapdog) Garrett - who will probably spend most of his
time hugging trees. And didn't the tree hugging help Maddog in the election
campaign! Lapdog Peter is likely to be an embarrassment. It's a little hard to read what is going on behind the scenes, but this
could well be because they can't stomach Mark Latham's new economic
agenda. This is what happens when you elect someone with an economics degree to
the ALP leadership. Unlike most of his leftist brethren, Maddog
understands the concept of effective marginal tax rates,
and the effect they have on incentive. His colleagues can't accept the reality
that incentive is a more effective creator of wealth than 'opportunity' -
especially so called 'equal
opportunity'. Maybe they realize in a new world more focused on creating wealth than of
sharing poverty, they are
liabilities - mere fossils of a time (and a philosophy) gone by. Or maybe the
socialist old guard are plotting a bloody coup from the backbenchers - building
a new ladder of opportunity for themselves .. .. just as soon as they find someone to lead them.
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