BILL Shorten was right about one thing yesterday. It wasn’t Tony Abbott who threw the Labor Party into opposition, it was the Australian people.
Problem is, Shorten still hasn’t figured out why.
Delivering what was billed as a historic, reforming speech in Melbourne yesterday the Labor leader declared he was going to rid the party of union domination and open it up to the “grassroots”.
He vowed to transform Labor into a “membership-based party”.
That sounds all noble and democratic but what it means in practice is handing the party over to the lunatic Green Left.
For all his talk about a new moral purpose, Shorten was just drawing from the old well of politically correct poison which has brought his party to its knees.
More affirmative action to increase numbers of women MPs was a clue.
So was the fact Shorten raised “the rancour over the recent Western Australian process (which) shows that in the future we need a method that provides a local voice.”
That “rancour” between Labor running mates Joe Bullock and Louise Pratt in Western Australia over Labor’s abysmal results in the latest re-run Senate election encapsulates Labor’s dilemma.
Bullock, who won Labor’s only Senate seat in WA, is a socially conservative member of the powerful shoppies union, which is headed by the outgoing right-wing faction leader and social conservative Joe De Bruyn.
Pratt, No. 2 on Labor’s Senate ticket, is an openly lesbian gay rights activist and Labor staffer, backed by the left-aligned United Voice union, who has been involved in Labor politics since her student days.
The pair are typical of the Labor Party’s increasingly schizophrenic nature.
Pratt and her union have been attacking Senator Bullock as an old homophobe since it became clear she wasn’t going to win the sixth Senate spot in WA.
Smearing him as a homophobe and bigot is a classic tactic of the dictatorial intolerant Left to shut down someone with opposing views, or someone who simply gets in your way.
Conveniently lost in all of the excitement over Bullock’s supposed homophobia were the killer truths he imparted.
He branded the Labor Party’s membership “mad”, and warned uncoupling from the common sense “ballast” of the unions would leave Labor open to every “every weird lefty trend that you can imagine, and there’d be no party left.’’
That is the inconvenient truth about the past six disastrous years. Labor saddled Australia with two hopeless prime ministers, who left a trail of destruction that will take decades to repair.
On climate policy they were wrong and deluded to try to lead the world. Cosying up to the Greens was a mistake. The only industry they boosted was people-smuggling.
Yet there has been no mea culpa, no soul searching, or apology. Just business as usual, as if making Labor membership a one-click process on the internet will save the party.
Of course the union movement is sick too, but instead of embracing the royal commission into corrupt unions as an opportunity to clean house, Shorten railed against it as a “star chamber”.
The fact is that, in the struggle for the soul of Labor, no one has clean hands.
In the end, the Left is using union corruption scandals for factional advantage to seize power for themselves.
Their beloved “grassroots” is code for GetUp style fringe-dwellers who will ensure the party remains unelectable.
Labor’s WA Senate result last month, the worst in its history, will be the new normal.
Really, if Labor wants to go further down that path, they should recruit Scott Ludlam as leader. At least he knows what he believes in.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/loons_and_ra...
k7bQ~~60_7.JPG "the_hawk*"){kind=avatar}
when they start backing these unfounded claims with hard evidence people apart from rusties may take some of it seriously. otherwise the constant chipping merely turns the public off. people tire of the same broken record on repeat, it may turn opinion the other way if anything.
"Loons and ratbags to run Labor".....
