How are ya? I thought your report on NZ was very interesting. We in Australia, as you would know, have had the NZ model held up to us by the current Howard Govt. You are supposed to be the success story and we are supposed to want to be like you. There has been very little countering this. As in NZ, Australian Labor is still firmly economic rationalist though it talks about gentler methods. There is no chance that this will chance unless there is mass mobilisation of the workers. Then the petty bourgeois ideologues who have such a grip on the Labor Party and Labor movement will come under pressure.
You have the problem or advanctage that your surplus population can be exported to Australia. But that is not an option for Australia. Hence I am inclined to think that the situation is potentially more explosive here.
Now I think that the working class here are just actually waking up to the fact that the Howard govt means business. I find it hard to beleive but it is true that the Union leadership did not go all out to prevent the election of a Howard govt 3 years ago. They did move heaven and earth to keep out the previous conservative leader John Hewson in 1993, because he did say publicly what he was going to do to the unions. But Howard lied and pretended that he was a conservative. Now however the truth is out and the union leadership does seem to want to fight in their very own half-hearted chicken way.
My own gut feeling is that we are in for a period of rebellion, of refusal that will lead to a genuine fight back. Perhaps my serotonin levels have come up somehow but I feel that there is a definite change on the way.
The spectacle of the Indonesian students fighting back cannot but help though of course the racist anti-Chinese element in the Indoesian resistance is to be totally condemned.
Anyway I think you might be surprised, Bill, how when the apathetic turn they can be very militant. Certainly let's hope so.
regards
Gary