November 24, 2005
Neo-liberalism, championed in one or another version by both the Liberal and Labor parties, is now the radical ideology in Australian public life. Howard's Liberals and their Labor rivals tacitly agree about the broad direction of economic strategy. That leaves social issues as the only arena for partisan difference. And it played a big role in terms of the social cosequences of economic globalization in the 1980s and 1990s. Since 2001 Howard's wedge tactics has fractured Labor's core constituency, and it is the Liberals who have celebrated the capacity of ordinary people to conserve their traditional values in the face of the rapid economic and cultural change.
Will the tacit bipartisanship on the economy continue? There is a fracturing of this consensus with the IR laws. Here is Kim Beazley, the leader of the federal opposition ALP, on the IR bill that is before Parliament:
The Labor Party will be clear-cut on this. "Whatever amendments are passed at the end of the day, we're going to vote against this bill. We're going to vote against it at every stage. We will have not a bar of this bill -- no truck with it at all. When we come into office we'll rip it up.
How far will this fracturing of consensus go? It is difficult to say as we have neo-liberal radical change that undercuts the Burkean conception of making moderate reforms that are in line with existing values and institutions.
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