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August 19, 2010
The 2010 federal election is not characterized by big reform promises from the political parties, or the leaders of our political parties providing a vision for the future. As the boring election campaign draws to a close we can look back and ask: 'what has the election been about beyond the advertising, spin, manufactured images and the cautious policy announcements targeted to marginal electorates'? Can we discern what Australian citizens are concerned about?
In The west can see its future on planet Australia in the Financial Times John McTernan, a political secretary to Tony Blair and a thinker-in-residence for the Australian state of Victoria, identifies the three main issues of the 2010 federal election. These are climate change; an underlying anxiety about threats to Australia’s living standards, expressed most prominently through concerns about migration; and an underlying unease about Australia’s place in the world.
McTernan sums up the 2010 federal election thus:
Whoever wins on Saturday, these issues at first seem very Australian pre-occupations. But they represent a toxic and introspective political mix. The desire to enjoy growth while defending our lifestyles against outsiders, accepting climate change intellectually while rejecting its implications for our behaviour, and a nagging concern about the rise of China – all are issues which will quickly move up the agenda in Europe and North America. Eventually what’s going on down under could turn our world upside down too.
McTernan gives us a very different perspective to the standard business one one of poor infrastructure planning, insufficient investment in transport and ports, schools and hospitals, and water and sewerage systems. Or the economist's concerns about low productivity growth since 2002.
Or the terrors of debt or the horrors of government waste of the fiscal hawks. Or the tech head's national fibre-to-the-home broadband network, even though investment in broadband has become a significant issue in a national election campaign and, as such, is an indicator of just how important broadband is becoming in our lives.
In some ways McTernan's three issues have been expressed in the debate over a Big Australia, especially in the concerns over Australia needing to become more sustainable. However, these concerns have been pushed aside by the proponents of Big Australia, who advocate increased population and high rates of economic growth, disparage their opponents as little Australians, and launch attack after attack on the Greens.
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Well, that's the difference between outside detached and being "part of it".
But the Debt Terror marks a new development and a new low.
A step over the edge into the heart of darkness and irrational world of child's night terrors, enthusiastically driven by msm and the big political formations. It's the political equivlent of setting up museums for fundies, where cave-folk frolicked with dinosaurs.
They should hang their heads in shame, for doing this to the public.
What political p-rn hidden under this particular raincoat!