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| Not a Toothless Tigerr | |
Winners are grinners and Simon (Union Basher) Crean had
more to smile about today than his dental work. His long term push that he had
staked his leadership on, was accepted 121 to 69. The unions will only have a
50% voting power within the ALP. Simon is a clever policitian. He wants to
become the next Prime Minister, and knows that that a rapidly de-unionizing Australian working class
won't elect a union-run Labor party. But his detractors are also clever. They realize this is the beginning of
the end for the Labor party, which is about to be cast adrift in the political
quagmire just like the Australian
Democrats. The Greens have taken
the loony left, the Liberal party has taken
the right, and the two middle-left parties will just wallow around squabbling
about asylum-seekers
and Telstra privatization. The ALP has given up its raison d'etre. They used to be in favor
of the nationalization of the main means of production, but having sold Qantas
and the Commonwealth Bank, they could hardly call themselves
anti-privatization. This didn't matter if they were still pro-union - they
could still claim to represent the union-worker whether the industries were
privatized or not. But now they can no longer make that claim. Longer term, the ALP could have survived as a union-force if it had kept its
union soul. It would never again have won office, but it would have remained a
political power. But now,
the long term for the ALP is irrelevance. Things are different in the short-term though, if the Liberal party make
some dreadful mistakes (like appointing Peter (Smirky) Costello as leader),
Simon is still in with a chance in the next election. Simon doesn't really care
about the long term future of the ALP. He has one shot at becoming Prime
Minister, and destroying the ALP is a small price to pay for that chance. Tony (head-kicker) Abbot (one of the other Prime Ministerial
contenders), is also basing his main strategy on bashing Simon's former
employers. The similarity between Tony and Simon here is, well, striking.
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