Election Results, Political Dispositions, Other News

[tcpip]

So there was an election on Saturday; and as predicted the Labor Party was victorious over the conservative coalition. caseopaya, imajica_lj and I spent most of the day at the Werribee Open Zoo whilch, whilst a very unusual activity for me on polling day, was a thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless - even if I ended up slightly dehydrated form the experience. In the evening ended up at the Town Hall Hotel in North Melbourne, calling the results quite early in the piece. Overall, I was somewhat disappointed; whilst the 6% swing to Labor obviously resulted in a change in government, it does mean a wafer-thin majority - although Rudd has "hit the ground running" with Kyoto, indigenous reconciliation, Workchoices and Iraq. The Fairfax papers, both in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have suggested that the Liberal Party try to move towards the political centre. Some suggest that Labor is now the "natural party of government".

Which brings me to my second topic, of political dispositions. I am a self-confessed "Howard Hater", and quite proud of it; it is not just his racism, or his propensity to lie for power which are abhorrent in themselves. But I also suspect it is a dispositional-political approach. Howard, I believe, once described himself as a "radical conservative" meaning that he would be accepting of a radical and rapid transformation of society to ensure the adoption of his conservative social and economic values. My disposition however is as a "conservative radical"; a fundamental political and economic transformation but without a blustering, reckless and destructive approach. I would aspire more to what the great Labor left leader Jim Cairns once described as "The Quiet Revolution", or the Quebecois described their life in the 60s révolution tranquille. Likewise when a well-paid member of the chattering class Andrew Bolt expresses his great support for "democratic capitalism", I instantly feel revulsion - because this axiomatically is interpreted as "majority rules" in terms of civil issues and "capitalism" in terms of economic one's. Again, I stand in antithesis to this - rather than democratic capitalism, I am an advocate of "libertarian socialism"; a principled commitment to individual and consensual civil rights and democratic and public management of our economic resources.

On a related topic my letter to The Age on Howard's lunatic drug policy was published. My review of the 1978 AD&D module Hall of the Fire Giant King was published on rpg.net. Last Friday played HeroQuest, where the players met the local mouse God, which was pretty cool and on Sunday completed the second session of Legend of the Five RIngs: The Ainu Nezumi. In work-related news, I've been struggling with distributed client installs of MATLAB on Windows clients with a Linux license server, and still have to work on getting a certain beast called Rosetta installed on the clusters, along with LAMMPS; seriously, scientific computing installs is hard...

Comments

[stawberi.livejournal.com]

Myself, I tend to base my dislike for Howard on his eyebrows. A man who cannot control his own facial hair surely cannot lead a nation. :P

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Oh, eyebrows have been requisite for Australian politicians for many a year. Consider those of Bob Hawke, Gough Whitlam - and especially Robert Menzies!

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Yep - if you didn't have eyebrows, you were done for!

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Disregarding my complete opposition to any economic system which wants to determine the details of my underwear usage in a village committee, and my general sense of peevedness against the broad Left, I'm actually rather pleased Labour carried this one. The Liberal Party has been calcified and corruption-ridden for some time now, its general illiberality and social conservatism galls me, and its long stint in government hasn't really helped things along. Labour, though, seems to have succesfully centrified itself a long time ago, if you pardon the pun, and seems like a potential success story in my books.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ah, comrade, determination of underwear usage would only occur in a war economy....

'Centrified' is a very good word..., although as the article on libertarian socialism indicates even Blair's government of the centre included a great number of "left" initiatives.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

For me there was only one result worth bothering about - that Howard lost his seat. If that didn't get the message across, nothing would!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I suppose it would have been interesting if Howard lost his seat, yet the Coalition retained government.

If that did happen however I can imagine there would be at least another two terms of Costello as Prime Minister.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I've long used the "conservative radical" description in regards to my own political disposition, in stark opposition to Howards radical conservative, and frequent contrast to the radical radical stance of those like _fustian who share the same ideal destination, but have radically different ideas of what to do to get there.

Howards tendency to corrupt and undermine the institutions of society that a true conservative would preserve was one of the things that made him so much more obnoxious than predecessors like Frazer -- things like the use of constitutional powers to push through WorkChoices, the politicisation of the AFP and military, corruption of public service autonomy.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The only problem with the "conservative radical" orientation is that we run out of time :-)

"Radical radical" is pretty good in certain circumstances. I don't imagine anyone wanting to live in a society which is constantly in a state of upheaval.

[demonhellfish.livejournal.com]

I've never before heard the phrase "conservative radical". I like it. I also love the idea of a libertarian socialist, but that's not really all that radical, at least in the US. It's just actually conservative, of both American ideas of liberty and of American trends in economy. (*Sigh.* I hate political jargon.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahh, "libertarian" in the rest of the world has no semblance to libertarian in the American sense - least of all in relation to economic management.

[cluebyfour.livejournal.com]

Blame it on the American left for hijacking "liberalism", which in the Yank idiom also doesn't resemble how the rest of the world uses it (as evidenced by your own Liberal Party).

Although a lot of American libertarians (like me!) aren't social conservatives, either. I guess I'm a "radical radical"!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Actually the Liberal Party of Australia was initially a liberal party in the American sense; like the various Christian-Democrat parties in Europe. Sort of centre-right, but aligned to Ordoliberalism.

What has happened to the Liberal Party here is that the social and economic conservatives (factionally known as "the Uglies") had nowhere else to go.. But eventually they took over.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

no semblance

Make that "little" rather than "no".

[evil-genius.livejournal.com]

Did I call this one or not.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/29/ap/canada/main3557120.shtml

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Although there are some positives in the referendum proposals perhaps an opportunity for reflection wouldn't be so bad!

[seanr.livejournal.com]

Of no relation to this post: you may be interested in Erepublik, which is in its beta stage but could become an internet phenomenon in a few weeks time.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Reminds me a little, at first sight, of Jennifer Government which was interesting for a while, but quite limited.

I rather like the idea of doing economic and political simulations, starting from real conditions.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

No.