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April 16, 2003
ain't going nowhere
I'm still catching up with the reading of the newspapers. I notice that The Australian reports "that internal ALP polling reveals the party is in dire shape and would lose a string of marginal seats in NSW, Victoria and Queensland."
The article goes on to say that:
"The sharp fall in support for Labor has spooked ALP figures, who are concerned that John Howard will call an early double-dissolution election to exploit his – and the Coalition's – ascendancy....Newspoll shows Labor would lose up to 16 seats, its two-party-preferred support slumping to a 10 per cent gap against the Coalition. The 55-45 per cent projection is a marked deterioration from the 51-49 per cent result at the 2001 election."
A lot of it is internal party squabbling. But there is intellectual feebleness as well since the ALP is not involved in the public; addressing the Israeli-Palestinian question debates about reshaping the Middle East; the geopolitical implications of the war with Iraq; the broader implications of the US dominance of the world orderin terms of Iran and Syria in the Middle East and Indonnesia in the Asia Pacific regions. There is a need for a positive contribution and not just ongoing criticisim of the tendency of the Howard government to join the US bandwagon.
The failure is nerve is being noticed. Thus Maxine McKew in last weeks Bulletin says in reference to the Israeli-Palestinian issue:
"....where is the ALP in this debate? The party's near-total public silence on this is bewildering, all the more so when one considers the role that prominent Labor figures such as Bob Hawke and Gareth Evans are playing on different stages. Both Hawke, through his vast network of contacts, and Evans, from his Brussels-based International Crisis Group, are talking about new parameters for a breakthrough solution."
The world is splintering into those who support the US view of how the world should be run and those who opposed to it. Where does the ALP stand? Constraining the US use of pre-emptive military force? Using the UN to place restraints on US dominance of the new world order?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at April 16, 2003 11:47 PM