Labor had some pretty good policies. They were almost visionary. In contemporary Australia, that constitutes a problem. Visionary is upsetting to OLD PEOPLE. Visionary is also upsetting to those who like things just the way they are. Being Visionary, just wont cut it in Australian Politics. That’s for the old style Labor.
You’re probably thinking, 1972? Nup! You’d be dead wrong.
We’re talking about the Labor policies of the 1890”s, full sufferage, the eight hour day, the republic, and a loathing for Toadey’s of any kind. Now you cant tell the toadies from the scum bags, the feather bedders and the aparatchicks. They’re all in line for preferment. Someone said, “Hillary Shorten” and they nailed it. 
William Lane, Ratbag visionary left for Paraguay in 1892 to found a utopian Australia. That failed. That’s the last time we trusted visionaries in this country. After the bloodletting stupidity of the First World War we returned to the smug embrace of wowserism, fear, xenophobia and cultural cringe. Except for the “Whitlam irregularity”, we’ve been cowered ever since
And on the strength of it Shorten was unelectable. His forehead was too big, and his missus Chloe,(Chloetia to her tennis playing mates) and the kids: Clementine, Rupert and Georgette, are the sort of kids names that you’d think Tony Blair would’ve had. Extras pulled from a Somerset Maugham Novel. Except everyone in U.K Labor HATES Blair. Cos he represented himself rather than the people. Bit like Bob Hawke, who till his dying day preened himself on the self delusion that he was the common man’s Man.
The New Australia in Paraguay FAILED! WHY? Note absence of chimneys, bereft of the gift of COAL!
That wasn’t gonna work.
How can you convince Queenslanders who all name their kids, Caydn, Brayden, Jayden, and Todd, to go with that blend. Betcha Morrisons kids have names like Sharon, Diedre, and Brian. His ordinariness makes him electoral GOLD.
Labor lost cos it thought too hard about everything. In Australia we hate thinkers. Unless it’s Peter Fitzsimmons who tells us how bloody good were on the field of valour, and all that.
Tony Blair, on the world stage to ensure he hung around with right minded people.
Doc Evatt was clever, and look where that got him. Billy Hughes was a clever, but a brawler, got him to the table at Versailles, so that everyone could see how xenephobic, cultural cringey and insular we really were. And it made him a BLOODY LEGEND, cos in the end he dissed Labor.
So Labor in the final analysis, Bills policies went through caucus, the frontbenchers and none ever said, “Bill this is progressive, It aint gonna cut it with the electorate”. Could’ve saved his bacon. A failure of groupthink
Billy Hughes, upholding the right for young men to waste their lives on a muddy field in France.
Why the liberals WON, is a Victory for Non think….. and FEAR!
They had no policies. They had no vision. They were bereft of IMAGINATION!
They are, whether you choke on your cornflakes or not, the shape of contemporary Australia.
They are ‘US’! We might slag them. We might loathe their craven desire to seek the lowest common denominator, through bribery corporate theft and mate-ship, but at the end of the day they ARE ‘US”!
The experiment with the “Bunyip Aristocracy” Won. We’re governed by a hierarchy of plutocrats, self interested feather-bedders, and self seekers. They like to feel smug, because though they haven’t had an original idea ever, they know where they stand on the greasy pole, And self reflection is ANATHEMA!..
And what do we say at pcbycp.
Good on em.
No group-think…just nihilism dressed as FEAR.
Electoral GOLD!