Six Easy Pieces on Australian Politics from Malcolm Fraser

[saithkar]

Last year I had the pleasure and the privilege to talk with former Prime Minster, Malcolm Fraser for a couple of hours thanks to taking a subject coordinated by former federal MP and Fraser's former chief of staff, Petro Georgio. Fraser served as the Member for Wannon for 28 years and was prime minister of Australia between 1975 and 1983. He sadly

Comments

[carminalizarin]

When people in the U.S. use "the government" as a pejorative, it basically means whatever the speaker wants. Typically conservatives use it to mean "The Internal Revenue Service, Democrats in Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Association, and whoever is responsible for handling WELFARE!!!" (i.e. things that interfere with the right of rich people to do whatever is necessary to become richer and then gloat about how they earned it by working harder than all you lazy fucks), while progressives use it to mean "the military-industrial-prison-police-state complex", which they then are forced by their various sub-cults to tie to a bunch of far-left buzzwords like "white privilege", "patriarchy", "heteronormativity", "cisgenderism", and other terms they learned in sensitivity-training courses at Skool. In America, everyone hates "the government." If you're a conservative, your duty is to despise the "bureaucrats" who manage the day-to-day affairs of the country you profess to love, as well as labor unions, despite the fact that much of the conservative base consists of people in blue-collar jobs who have traditionally benefited from unions. If you're a progressive, your duty is to constantly criticize the police and military personnel* who deal with dangerous and stressful situations on behalf of your right to get a progressive education without criminals and armed fundamentalists killing you, and also to disavow the achievements of past progressives if they belong to the wrong demographic group.

*(In the U.S., it is absolutely verboten to express any open negativity towards the military, hence the convoluted systems of indirect criticism that have been developed to denounce military actions without provoking massive retaliation from legions of mouth-foaming Army Wives and retired veterans with really nice lawns.)

ANYWAY, Australian politics has always been pretty easy for me to comprehend even though I lack a full frame of reference for all the issues; it helps that my stepdad is from Scotland so I hear a fair amount about British-Commonwealth-style politics as well.

[saithkar]

As usual, both the extreme right and left get it wrong. Good summary.

Incidentally it is usually the case that the US military is above criticism, but I notice that on the far far, post-Glen Beck right there is suspicion of the army precisely because it is a government institution. Many tea baggers are convinced that a recent training exercise was cover for an "invasion" of Texas:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/29/jade-helm-15-a-military-simulation-draws-scrutiny-and-wild-speculation-in-texas/

Australian politics is similar to the UK, but also different in key areas. We have an elected senate which is often described as the second most powerful upper house in the world (after yours), this is in contrast to the House of Lords in the UK where peers are appointed along party lines along with 30 odd bishops and a bunch of hereditary peers who get to sit there because a distant ancestor once won a battle or gave a lot of gold to a king. The role of the senate adds a different dimension to how governments function and how policy is advanced. Additionally, we have a constitutional system so commonwealth/state relations (also known as federalism) dominates a lot of political debate. Finally there is the sheer brutality of the political culture here; under performing leaders are torn down by both the party and the media, often after amazingly short periods of time, something that is shocking even to those who play hardball (to use Chris Matthews' term) in other countries.