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September 27, 2004
let the good times roll
I missed the Liberal campaign launch in Brisbane on Sunday. By all accounts it was a very staged managed affair with a warm-up act called The Nationals, who whipped up the crowd with their 'I can see the Green Devil everywhere' routine. From what I hear from the whisperings within the media flows the Nats need to lift their act.
John Howard's speech said he was everybody's friend (well tradespeople, home-makers, "micro-businesses" and parents) and here is $6b cash for my latest stick-on policies to prove it. And I will ensure stability, security and reassurance. Trust me.
Leak
My gosh. The man sure has reinvented himself. He is no more the 'I will destroy Medicare' ideologue of the past. The one we were told who poured over Hayek for bed time reading in the 1970s and hung out with those who took their bearings from the US Heritage Foundation. You know, the one who believed in small government, deregulation state rights, budget surpluses, supply side economics, prudent economic management and no middle class welfare. Howard now stands for big central government, middle class welfare, business sweetners and subsidies and social conservatism.
It all sounded like an ALP launch----the Big Spend, raiding future budget surpluses and being low on funds. What has happened to The Road To Serfdom and competition policy? Poor old Peter Costello.
Ours was to be a nation united by mateship and achievement. The political enemies were those caught up in class, were full of envy wanted to take away individual choice by trying to control people.
What sort of society is envisioned? An editorialist in the Australian Financial Review has a go. They says that it is:
"...one based on freedom of choice for families, workers and individual business people and reward for individual enterprise and effort, all within a secure and compassionate conmunity built around strong families and dynamic small business."
They have forgotten about the conservative conception of the sovereign nation-state. The nation is united by mateship and assimilation, whilst the state is big, centralized and not very democratic.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at September 27, 2004 02:09 PM
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