It underlies everything you say, particularly in international matters.

bogarde73 wrote on Feb 27^th, 2016 at 12:20pm:


Maybe you’re right. I do think the future is regional rather than.national. In economic terms, it already is.

But in.policy terms, I’m not a fan of the sort of collectivist socialist policies espoused by some unions and those on the hard left. I’m in a union, and I disagree with most of their ideas. I wouldn’t strike or maintain solidarity with something I didn’t believe in, which is a definite impulse within the ALP. It’s how they managed to keep together

Personally, I’m not a fan of crowds. The collectivist political model is very industrial. It’s how you work a production line. It doesn’t work in the current social and political climate. We’ve moved on. Ideas have to move too.

Clamping down on free trade and migration is a collectivist tendency. This was, after all, the policy of the ALP from 1901 to the 1960s.The policy was based on labour protection. It was scrapped due to economic growth and the need for higher population. Restrictions on trade were scrapped when we saw how much better those Japanese cars and appliances were. Well, that’s shorthand of a number of competing policies, events and global economic paradigm shifts.

My belief in regional governance is about going with the economy, not against it. People trade and migrate more now than at any other time in history. You don’t manage this by banning it - this only causes war.Banning free trade caused WWI, WWII and the Cold War. Banning migration caused tens of millions of refugees to be murdered, put in gulags, or live in stateless limbos.

When these problems have been put to you in the past, Bogie, you said you didn’t care. States need to be able to erect strong borders, ban trade and migration, and arm themselves for war. This doesn’t underlie your posts, you state this.

But underlying this view is an amnesia about the entire 20th century. Those who’ve read or know something of war, don’t want it. Those who’ve read or experienced economic recession, don’t want to go there. You don’t want to lose your savings in inflation, you don’t want to lose your job and have a 50% unemployment rate. You don’t want to lose your house and become homeless. The 1890s recessions, the Great Depression, the OPEC oil shocks, the 1980s Latin American oans crisis, the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the Asian Financial Crisis, the GFC - these crises caused massive poverty, political turmoil and, yes, war.

Australia, more than most countries, is subject to foreign trade and capital. Most economic activity in Australia comes from multinational corporations. We massively rely on the global economy. We always have.

This isn’t collectivism, it’s common sense. Australia is not a closed shop. I support a similar stance in Europe, but for a different reason: an economically integrated Europe will prevent the 20th century history of bloodshed repeating.

This isn’t some collectivist globalist conspiracy, it’s the dominant economic theory from Maynard Keynes on. More trade and financial stability, less war, less povety, less inflation and liebensrsum.

Your alternative, Bogie, is not somewhere any sane person would want to go.

The USSR, the UN, and the EU are all failures. There is only one lasting unity: language.

Damn right the UK should get out of the EU.

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A very good article in support of Britain withdrawing from the dictatorship of continental European bureaucrats.



"The areas of public and private life that the EU has authority to regulate have grown relentlessly, especially since the 2007 Lisbon Treaty. In their attempts to resolve the euro crisis since 2009 and now the refugee crisis, Europe's elite have revealed that their true intention is to create a European super-state. Every call for a "European solution" is a call to subordinate the rights of national parliaments to the superior "rationality" of the supranational, Brussels-based bureaucracy embodied in the European Commission.


"True, the EU has its own parliament in Strasbourg. But only the European Commission, an unelected supranational bureaucracy, has the power to propose and draft EU legislation. The Strasbourg parliament can reject but not repeal or replace these "directives" ordering national parliaments to pass laws which they have not asked for and for which no minister can be held to public account. Commission regulations are binding on all member states with national parliaments possessing no legislative capacity to reject or amend them, though a government may bring a case in the European Court of Justice.

Somewhere between half and two thirds of the laws and regulations in force in Britain have their origins in Brussels' unaccountable couloirs. Yet government by EU bureaucratic regulation is incompatible with Britain's representative institutions".


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issuevoter wrote on Feb 26^th, 2016 at 9:50pm:


I was almost going to invest in Britain. I was seriously considering it.  I had read the prospectus and almost went ahead with it. When this Brexit referendum came along, the pound dropped like a stone just at the suggestion of exit from the EU.  My investment in GBP would have been practically worthless.   Any dividends would have been offset by the falling GBP.

So now I am in the process of transferring my funds to Australia to a similar investment (Parking) where they will be much safer.

There must be many more in the same boat.

bogarde73 wrote on Feb 28^th, 2016 at 12:52pm:


The Hague has ruled on a number of international treaties and areas of international law. Right now, the oil and gas treaty with East Timor is being heard, after it was exposed that Australia spied on the East Timorese.

You need a global form of justice to deal with these sorts of issues. Without it, the strongest prevail. We return to an era of gunship diplomacy or a Cold War network of alliances and global hierarchy.

Australia is in a good position globally because of its post-war alliance with the US. This will change. Australia can throw its muscle around with very few countries in the Asia Pacific region. East Timor is one. PNG is another.

Indonesia is one country Australia can't stand up to militarily. China is the big other. China is slowly transitioning into the new global hegemon. As the geopolitical plates shift, so too will Australia's place in the world. Given most of our trade is with China, we will become - without a doubt - China's bitch before long.

So while we boss East Timor and our only former colony, PNG, around, we can boss very few other countries. And this is why we need international forms of justice.