An Australian mirror?: The Party Is Over. We Are a Civilisation in Collapse

[BurtWorm]

A Sydney psychologist peers into the near future and sees a major political realignment that leaves out any room for conservative, free market "solutions" to the impossible problems they've created:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112807T.shtml


The Party's Over and Liberals Will Soon Be History
By Steve Biddulph
The Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday 29 November 2007

...

Linked to this, but compounding it in frightening ways, is the imminent demise of the United States economy. In fact the whisper, the subplot in economist circles, was that this election was one to lose. That whoever inherited Australia in 2007 inherited a coming economic collapse in globalised trade that would suck Australia and much of the rest of the world down with it. For two years now the best predictions have been that the subprime meltdown would act as merely the detonator of a much larger explosive charge created long ago by US consumer debt, concealed by Chinese and Arab investment in keeping that great hungry maw that is America sucking in what it could not begin to pay for. The avalanche-like fall of US house prices will be closely followed by the same in linked economies worldwide, and presage a harsh and very different world than the one we have lived in. In short, the party is over. We are a civilisation in collapse.

Labor is the right party to manage this. Despite the widespread belief after years of cynical politics that politicians are all the same, Rudd and Gillard are not in power for power's sake. I am willing to stake my 30 years as a psychologist on this, but I think many observers have also come to this conclusion. Kevin and Julia, as Australia already calls them, want to make this country a better place for the people in it. In the coming times of deprivation, they have the value systems that will be needed to care for the sudden rise in poverty, stress, and need. They also have the unity.

So what will be the new polarity in future elections? It's the ecology, stupid. The Greens will emerge as the new opposition, though this will take probably two election cycles. By the 2010 election, 20 per cent will vote Green, simply because peak oil and climate catastrophe will have proven them right, and thinking people will see the need for austerity now for our children's tomorrow. The Liberal Party will be lucky to attract 30 per cent, which is the habitual, rusted-on portion of the community that thinks greed is good.

By 2014, we will have a struggle between a new left and right - Labor and Green - and the issue will be simply how green, how to balance the need for a much simpler and more communal kind of life, with the need to give people comfort and amenity now. This issue will continue to define life for the rest of this century.

...

The big lie of Liberal supremacy was economic management. In fact, they knew how to generate income, but not how to spend it. We could have been building what Europe built in this past decade - superb hospitals, bullet trains, schools and training centres, low cost public transport of luxurious quality, magnificent public housing. We pissed it all away on tax giveaways and consumer goods. On bloated homes that we will not be able to cool or heat, or sell, and cars we won't be able to afford to drive. A party based on self interest may evaporate along with our rivers and lakes, and have no role to play in a world where we co-operate or die.

[formercia]

1. Oz jumps ship

but will the whirlpool still suck them under?

Better start stroking now, mates.

[hlthe2b]

2. I need a country by country glossary of the parties...

especially when "Liberal" means conservative, which it does in many.... :shrug:

[Joanne98]

6. Liberal also means.. neo-liberal economic policies, which have become a curse word

in recent times!

[Blashyrkh]

8. Keep this for future references.

Left Wing:
Australia: Australian Labor Party
America: Democratic Party

Right Wing:
Australia: Australian Liberal Party
America: Republican Party

Thirds Parties:
Australia: The Greens, The Democrats (officially wiped out after the recent election), Family First Party, hundreds of fringe groups.
America: The Greens, whoever.

Being Australian, it used to confuse the hell out of me too.

[hlthe2b]

9. Thank you! Now, if someone will do this for Europe & Canada!

Bookmarked...

[Blashyrkh]

11. No problems.

Wiki is probably a good place to start.

[Selatius]

15. As far as I know, "liberal" has right wing connotations in the industrialized countries except USA

The term "liberal" was co-opted by FDR and the New Deal Democrats in the 1930s in an attempt to appeal to centrist voters of the era, many of whom were already suffering the disasterous effects of the Great Depression. Since then, the original definition of "liberal" in American parlance has been lost. Prior to FDR, a liberal was somebody who generally favored laissez-faire economic policies, a hands-off approach to managing the economy. Before the 1930s, the general catch-all term for the left in the US was "progressive."

In the UK, the Liberal Democrats are, indeed, more left wing than the Labour Party on economic issues; however, compared to the Greens, they are a center-right political party.

If you're in Europe and talking with left wingers, the general rule is to avoid calling them "liberal." For many, that can be seen as an insult because the running joke in places like France or Belgium is that a "liberal" is a false-friend of the working man.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Excellent article. Necessity will spur change. K&R

The free ride on the backs of the nature and the 3rd world is coming to end. Nature has a sometimes unpleasant way of balancing itself, and the poor of the world are weary of financing our toys.

[SCantiGOP]

4. good grief

This sounds like it could have been written by my wife. I tend to be more optimistic than her. After all, Malthus was correct in his reasoning that population would outstrip food production because he couldn't anticpate the agricultural advances that came with mechanization, genetics, fertilizers, etc. But this guy, unfortunately, is making a pretty good point.

[snappyturtle]

5. I think I'm going to have to take a break of reading at DU.

The truth doesn't set me free. It frightens me however, I was glad to give your OP the fifth K&R.

[AuntPatsy]

20. I have to do that often.

[Strelnikov_]

7. knr

[malaise]

10. Lovely read

A new deal is coming. People will soon be fighting back.

[BurtWorm]

12. kick

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. There is one force that most who write these articles ignore

RESISTANCE... those who are greedy resist what is now plain. and I fear that this resistance will lead to violence

Oh and I also fear when all is said and done our six plus billion world population will probably go DOWN by a couple billion... something about carrying capacity and the end of the age of oil... and that alone will lead to incredible levels of violence and wars world wide

[denem]

14. Fantasy Land - conservatives will always find their way back.

As for Australia, Labor won the 1929 election and fell to pieces in the Depression.

[leveymg]

16. The Conservatives indeed have a future role in Australia: PICS>

And, perhaps, a continued global role in support of the Republican Party's wars for oil:

[formercia]

17. Cannon Fodder

An IED would clear that vehicle in a flash.

[leveymg]

18. I'm sure that pic is a few years old. EOM

[GliderGuider]

19. Canadian political parties in order of popularity in 2006 election

The governing Conservatives are not the Progressive Conservatives of your father's generation. That is why I refuse to call them "Tories". Neither are they the Alliance or Reform that rose up out of the Western provinces on a spirit of grassroots activism. The official story is that they're the party that united the right. The truth is closer to a stealth takeover.
Stephen Harper's Conservatives are neo-liberal ideologues with delusions of military grandeur.

The Liberal party likes to think of themselves as Canada's Natural Governing Party(TM). They are less in flux than Harper and the media want us to believe, but perception is quickly becoming reality.
Stephane Dion won the leadership by saying all the right words that delegates wanted to hear. (The Liberals have always been good at that. Kind of like your Democratic leaders getting the vote by professing to be anti-war and then ... well, you know.) The party workers want to do good things but they're hamstrung by the sour grapes shinannigans of former leadership hopefuls who were in the race for power and not for the good of the party, much less the country.
The Liberals bend which ever way the wind is blowing. In the '60s and '70s they bent to the left. In the '80s and '90s, they bent to the right. We're in an era of change so they can't find their direction.

The New Democratic Party is going through a spiritual change. They were built on strong principles of social democracy that rose out of the prairies in the Great Depression and a couple of dynamic pastors who could no longer deal with the hardships around them by doling out soup and used clothes. Those principles are in the blood and sinews of the grassroots. But the leadership, under Jack Layton, wants power. Granted, that's the only way to get things done. But there are concerns that they are compromising themselves. (e.g. reverse onus on gun crimes; voting with the government in votes of confidence to avoid an election)
The NDP can smell victory in the mood of the people. They can taste power. Social Democracy is their backbone but Layton is playing with Dark Forces. Let's hope he's another Kevin Rudd in the making and not a Tony Blair.

The Bloc Québécois are also social democrats, but with an undeniable nationalist passion. They hold more seats in the House of Commons but got fewer votes than the NDP. That's because they are concentrated in the province of Québec. When leader Gilles Duceppe speaks about most things, he talks like someone who cares for everyone. But give him a few moments to talk longer and, well, he`s a separatist so we disagree fundamentally on his ethnocentrism.

The Green party are masters of communications. They have most people convinced that they're on the left just because their policies are about the environment. And they don't correct people when they sell them memberships. They talk a good game about being green but their platform offers free market solutions. Sorry, guys, but that's how we got into this mess. Disenfranchised Red Tories (remember, red and blue in the rest of the world are opposite to the States) would be right at home in the Green party.