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General Discussion >> Federal Politics >> Is Labor now the permanent Opposition Party ?
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Message started by juliar on Nov 10th, 2019 at 2:08pm

Title: Is Labor now the permanent Opposition Party ?
Post by juliar on Nov 10th, 2019 at 2:08pm
The road ahead for Labor is filled with pot holes, washed out bridges, sink holes, river crossings, poisonous snakes and of course Chinese Bribes etc.

The obvious thing is for the 2 dead parties Labor and the Greenies to amalgamate into the new super Garbo Party!!!





Working-class woes: ALP strategists blamed
GEOFF CHAMBERS OLIVIA CAISLEY 12:00AM OCTOBER 28, 2019


Opposition leader Anthony Albanese at the Norton Street Italian Festa in Leichhardt, Sydney, on Sunday. Picture: AAP

Queensland Labor veteran Robert Schwarten has launched an ­assault on ALP election strategists and senior MPs, accusing them of losing touch with voters and leaving “working-class” candidates ­exposed in seats the party should have won.

Mr Schwarten, a former Queensland minister and leader of the house, said the Labor election review would be another “sanitised, workshopped” document ­ignoring the realities facing ­regional communities and failed tactics that damaged “working-class ­candidates”.

The Queensland party stalwart, who represented Rockhampton for two decades and supported the ALP campaign in the key federal marginal seat of Capricornia, said he knew Labor was in trouble when lifetime supporters were asking him why they were “robbing older people and closing coalmines”.

Mr Schwarten’s intervention came after Nick Dyrenfurth, executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre, called for a working-class quota system to weed out staffers, union officials and apparatchiks from ALP parliamentary teams.

In his new book Getting the Blues: the Future of Australian Labor, to be launched by opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers in Melbourne on Thursday, Dr Dyrenfurth also attacked “progressives” in the party ­obsessed with identity politics.

Anthony Albanese, who will deliver the first in a series of “value statement” speeches in Perth on Tuesday, rejected claims Labor was moving away from its working-class roots, saying it was a “progressive party of change”.

“The fact is we are a broad-based party; I want to see more people of whatever background join the Labor Party … but the Labor Party is a party of change, we are a progressive party,” the Opposition Leader said.



An audit of Mr Albanese’s 22 frontbench members shows most were political staffers, union and party officials before entering parliament. Nine frontbenchers were former political staffers, and 10 have union backgrounds.

Mr Albanese, himself a former NSW ALP official and Labor staffer, said his party “doesn’t just ­occupy space” and sought government in “order to change the country for the better”.

He said there was no rush on unveiling the party’s policy agenda and Labor would “do things on our own time”.

“You don’t win an election in 2022 in October 2019,” he said.

Mr Schwarten said there was too much intervention in grassroots regional campaigns by Labor headquarters and warned there was a problem when a coalminer, Capricornia candidate Russell Robertson, “can’t get coalminers to vote for him”.

He said the “Big Brother” tactics of campaign committee members in key electorates, including the central Queensland seats of Capricornia and Dawson, had delivered “total dysfunction”.


Robert Schwarten. Picture: Jann Houley

Mr Schwarten, who doesn’t agree with working-class quotas, said they were pushing for an on-the-ground campaign visiting workplaces but faced resistance from party strategists who adopted a “phone” strategy, harassing local voters at “meal times”.

“It was a rerun of a campaign handbook that has failed three times over … these campaigns were smothered by the party mach­ine,” he said.

“We had excellent candidates hampered by a centralised campaign that was irrelevant to these regions and which meant they weren’t allowed to speak and be themselves.”

Mr Schwarten said Labor’s inability to sell its policies on coal and franking credits triggered a situation where the Liberal Nat­ional Party filled the void.

“I think Chris Bowen telling people to vote against us … was full of arrogance, hubris, it was a smart-ass comment that earns you the result that we got.”

He said the election review was a “factional balancing act” led by former politicians who had “no idea” about Rockhampton or coalmines.

“People are not stupid, people do evolve, we are nation of thinkers, but if you talk about phasing out coal without having a proper intellectual discussion about it, it is not only stupid but also arrogant in suggesting you know best.

“The electorate told us they know best.’’

Too good to miss this obituary of the dying Labor Party continues overleaf

Title: Re: Is Labor now the permanent Opposition Party ?
Post by juliar on Nov 10th, 2019 at 2:09pm
Too good to miss this obituary of the dying Labor Party continues...


John Curtin Research Centre executive director Nick Dyrenfurth. Picture: Supplied

Former Labor senator Doug Cameron, a prominent left-wing figure, launched an attack against Dr Dyrenfurth following an extract of his book appearing in The Weekend Australian, labelling him a “pseudo-intellectual of the right”.

“The right-wing, conservative embrace of neo-liberalism by some in the party is a major impediment to engaging with ­working-class Australians,” Mr Cameron wrote on Facebook.

“Dreaming up reasons to move more to the right will not restore Labor’s credentials with dis­affected and disadvantaged ­working-class Australians. The policies we took to the last election should be defended and promoted. Capitulation to neo-liberalism will not save the ALP.”

Dr Dyrenfurth said “if persistently calling for workers to be represented on company boards is right-wing, I plead guilty”.

Dr Chalmers, a right-faction MP, welcomed “all contributions in the aftermath of what was a pretty devastating election defeat”. While not agreeing “in every way” with working-class quotas, he said Dr Dyrenfurth’s book was part of a process for supporters to put forward ideas.

[url]https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/labor-hero-blasts-poll-strategists/news-s

tory/2975ea8001bcd87bfc97cedbf468d8cf[/url]


As always the COMMENTS in the Australian are priceless and just so TRUE cutting Labor to the quick.


How Dare You! 1 WEEK AGO
Whilst the ALP is in coalition with the Greens (by any metric a coalition exists) the traditional base of the ALP will be alienated. Btw, what shocking resumes for our “Workers Party”.

Paul 1 WEEK AGO
Aspiration, the only word The  Labour Party cannot spell, pk.

Kevin 1 WEEK AGO
Me thinks the Labor party could be in for some splintering.

DM 1 WEEK AGO
You look at the LNP frontbench and it's no different with staffers, stooges and no one who has ever seen a callous on their hand. The big difference is they can fake sincerity very well. Marketing man Morrison plays the part to perfection.
Likethumb_up1
Jim
1 WEEK AGO
Albo worked for a bank. Hilarious.

Paul 1 WEEK AGO
Anthony needs to tuck his shirt inside his trousers.

Timothy 1 WEEK AGO
As far as I could tell, not a single Labor pollie has ever run a business. And yet they pose as business-friendly! Most have never been off the teat of government income.

Tallulah 1 WEEK AGO
Fitzgibbon appears to be the exception.

maree 1 WEEK AGO
Did his trade as an auto-electrician before succeeding his father as MHR. Brother Mark is CEO of NIB Health funds. Very working class, you have to be that on the Cessnock coalfields.
Nice bloke, but.

Paul 1 WEEK AGO
Nice blokes don’t do well in the party, pk.

Alan 1 WEEK AGO
As the pithy words that I used to describe Doug Cameron failed to pass the moderator perhaps it will try again with better phrasing.
It is good to see one so versed in the socialism of his Glasgow roots keeping up his commentary. It will all help to keep the Liberals in power for longer.

Philip 1 WEEK AGO
Why would any sane coalminer vote Labor.
The loonie ALP / Greens want to make them unemployed and destroy their lives.
Only a complete "nut-case" would vote for the destruction of their lifestyle

John 1 WEEK AGO
This coal miner didn’t and will campaign against Labor at every opportunity. They planned to sell out blue collar workers.

Roy 1 WEEK AGO
"robbing older people and closing coalmines" remains Labor policy

Jason 1 WEEK AGO
Don't know about being a good local candidate. When Russel was challenged about losing his own job under labor policy with mine closures, he said it wouldn't be his problem as he would be in Canberra by then. Or something to that effect.

Colin 1 WEEK AGO
Oh, please. As if the faction and union bosses are ever going to allow "working class" candidates who aren't already aligned to their groups! Quotas for women hasn't produced better candidates nor would this.

David 1 WEEK AGO
Good old Doug who during his tenure as National Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and and subsequently an ALP MP oversaw the biggest closures of manufacturing industry in Australia, certainly a successful career I would have thought and an amazing success for the workers that he represented. 

VIC 1 WEEK AGO
The (majority) work experience of the Labor front bench is embarrassing. These are the people who claim to be capable of running the nation?

John 1 WEEK AGO
Replace Albo with Jimmy Barnes. At least his command of the English language is marginally better.

Max 1 WEEK AGO
Attitudes like that of Doug Cameron will ensure the Labor Party stays exactly where it now is. Keep up the good work, Doug.

John 1 WEEK AGO
Doug Cameron is the evidence of job for the boys.


Title: Re: Is Labor now the permanent Opposition Party ?
Post by juliar on Nov 10th, 2019 at 2:21pm
And the carnage continues.  It is enough to make a Lefty feel suicidal!!!


Howard 1 WEEK AGO
The problem for Labor is that it’s policies pretend to represent too ‘broad a church’.

In a nutshell, how do you reconcile the views of Dr Dyrenfurth and Senator Cameron?

They might have some overlap of views but Cameron probably has a bigger overlap with the Greens and Dyrenfurth a significant overlap with the ‘small l’ liberals.

From this Labor spokespeople tell us ‘CO2 is a poison/shutdown all coal fired generation’ on one side and ‘we need coal for baseload electricity and manufacturing jobs’ on the other.

Of course they are completely irreconcilable positions but with the public knowing from actions in parliament that the ‘green’ position holds the whip hand. 

If there is a hope for Labor, beyond very patiently waiting & hoping for the conservatives to implode, then Albo must cut out all the contradictions and state clearly what modern Labor stands for in his ‘headland’ speeches.

But don’t put the house on it - a much safer bet would be more weasel words.


Jason 1 WEEK AGO
The prime example of their predicament - so far - was when Latham went off script about forestry jobs in Tasmania in 2004, handing John Howard two extra Tasmanian seats, control of both houses of parliament and a standing ovation and back-slaps from 2000 CFMEU members.

Title: Re: Is Labor now the permanent Opposition Party ?
Post by juliar on Nov 10th, 2019 at 2:34pm


Sag grapes by the bag full.

Title: Re: Is Labor now the permanent Opposition Party ?
Post by juliar on Nov 11th, 2019 at 5:54am
Since he beat Setka, Albo the Schoolboy is cooking with gas and full of beans as he believes NOTHING can stop him now that he has become a disciple of the people's Messiah ScoMo.







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