[lbo-talk] DOP in Oz?

[Mike Ballard]

Julia Gillard is the deputy Prime Minister of Australia in waiting.  She's a
Labor Party front bencher and second in command to Kevin Rudd.  This week,
Peter Costello, the Treasurer and second in command to John Howard told a press
conference that Ms. Gillard was a "Communist" because she had been associated
with a group called "Socialist Forum" 20 years ago, during her university days.
The Liberal/National Coalition has begun their campaign with a kind of Cold War
swing.  Not only is Gillard a supposed "Communist", but seventy percent of the
front bench in the Labor Party are or have been trade-unionists.  According to
the Liberal propaganda machine, the spectre haunting Australia is that of a
"dictatorship of the proletariat", if Labor wins the election.  ;p
The election will take place on November 24th.

Mike B)

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http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22609984-5012863,00.html

BY now, most of Australia is probably aware that 70 per cent (ish) of 
Kevin Rudd's frontbenchers are militant Trotskyite unionist 
bomb-throwers.

Nasty bunch that lot.

If they weren't towing the party line for election campaign purposes 
they'd be sneaking around in the dead of night hurling Molotov 
cocktails at random acts of free enterprise.

Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey was on the money yesterday when 
he said that the role of unions in Australia was finished.

"(The role of unions) is essentially over," Mr Hockey told the ABC.

Damn right.

In fact there's a good argument for a Joe McCarthy style inquiry into 
our political candidates: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member 
of a trade union?"

Then we can blacklist the lot of them.

Unfortunately this might include a lot of the Howard Government MPs.

Depending, that is, on your definition a union.

Here's a question: Joe Hockey is a lawyer by trade. Is not law one of 
the most closed shop professions in the country run by various state 
Bar Associations and Law Councils?

Come to think of it, aren't a large number of Liberal Party MPs (60 per 
cent of the frontbench by some counts) from a legal background and 
members of their relevant professional associations?

 From memory, lawyers rank right down at the nether regions of (such as 
trade union scumbags) on the "least respected and trusted" lists when 
it comes to public opinion.

Or is a "professional association" that represents the interests of its 
members somehow different to that of a "trade union" that represents 
perhaps less-educated and lower-paid workers?

Take doctors, for example.

It could be argued that the doctors' union - the Australian Medical 
Association - is one of the most powerful advocacy groups in the 
country when it comes to fighting for the rights of its members.

Go the doctors' union. You do a good job for our medicos.

Are they, like the Bar Associations and other professional 
organisations (guilds, federations, unions, call them what you like), 
also an anachronism?

Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer." - W. C. Fields 
http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml

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