Tim Blair

Forgive me if I am repeating, but it is downright spooky what a mirror image of what is going down in the States this all is, right down to the Democrats/Labour haveing "progressively abandoned the cause of the workers and, in its place, adopted every ratbag cause that comes along. Perhaps it is because so few in the parliamentary party have ever been workers themselves."

Amazing.

Congratulations! I hope you will be offering the same to us in the States come November.

The MSM in the States is ignoring the Australian results but I do know this: if Howard had lost, the story would have been above the fold, front page news in the NYT, WashPo, and leading the newcasts on CBS, ABC, etc., etc., and Sen. Kerry would be chortling about how our "allies" were abandoning us in Iraq. God bless the Australian people.

Yes, I am a Margonaut. Love the description. It is interesting to me and it seems to you. My "love" of Mark Latham lasted between the time he was elected as leader and the Labor National Conference which was shortly after. I think it was a few days. Pretty limited interest. As soon as I heard the obsession with reading to kids and other pieces of false garbage, I knew Latham was a clown and a fake. I never, ever said I would vote for him and I certainly wouldn't have. I just believe in healthy debate and dissent. I don't want to close the debate down. I can certainly understand why people voted for Howard. For Godsake I am a Liberal and I have always disclosed that fact. Yes, a Liberal that expresses lots of dissent but that is not the same as batting for the other team. I still think Howard is going to require lots of scrutiny in this term. I mean it goes without saying. A PM with a healthy majority and a rubber stamp Senate doesnt require cheerleaders. He needs more intense questioning. But trust me, I laugh at Latham. Utter clown

Sorry one more comment. Remember my original comment has to be reviewed in a relative context. They had the circus of Beazley and Crean. I have been living overseas for 5 years and to me Latham was an unknown. He was exciting to me for 5 days. There you go, you got me on him. I do care about the actual quality of the democracy. For that you need a viable opposition. That explains my initial interest in Latham and my current utter lack of respect. Hope that makes sense. Yes and I await the games and comments from the Blaironauts. Just wanted to say that to make a point. Enjoy the new era.

And where is that damned vegemite you keep threatening us with? Hmmmm? Or, are we to believe that you not only have no weaponized vegemite, but that you've been without it since 1991?

Speaking from experience with the stuff, all vegemite is weaponized. Not that stops me from eating it when I can find it .

My wife and I were in Oz from September 1st to the 18th and had the most amazing time. Aussies were constantly engaging me in political discussions and were always very cordial and respectful whether we agreed or not. I always made it a point to say that I was a 'big John Howard fan' and when asked why, I simply stated that he is a true friend to my country, as are almost all Australians. I wanted to see him re-elected.
We went on a pub tour in the Rocks area of Sydney and it was hosted by a fine lady named Sarah who (like most other Aussies)wanted to talk a little politics at the end of the night. Being an arsty type leftie, she could not stand Howard, hates Bush even more, and we still had a fun, civil discussion of the pressing issues of the day. Sarah was absolutely sure Howard would be voted out. Sarah was wrong, turned out I had a better read on the Aussie mindset than a native. Left leaning native anyway.
I'll be back to Oz again some time because it is one of the finest places on earth due to its people and their outlook on life and their friendly and welcoming nature. True friends of freedom and lovers of liberty.

Thank you Mike. Come back

I am a Texan. I have NOT yet been to Australia, but it is one of my "have to do" life-long Dreams. I have served with Aussies and met many who were traveling here in the states. They were all Very Nice people.

Thank you for standing with us since World War One. We appreciare it.

Meanwhile, what does Philip Adams think was Latham's problem? Why, its "betrayal of left-leaning progressives", of course!

Oh but how scandalous celebration could possibly prove! The virtues of what Max Weber termed the protestant work ethic are long established ... even indubitable, right? So great that there are no ethical qualms about forcing it upon whole populations, right?

Harry does make a good point though. The sort of democracy I want to come back to does have a viable opposition, not some motley minions of Anthony Giddens. Because:

"If parliament is just there to rubber-stamp the government's mandate, what do you keep a parliament for at all? ... A debating forum? In that case, it's a pretty expensive debating forum."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11043541%5E2702,00.html

Just thought that you may not have read about another business casualty following Saturday's elections

I also would like to offer my congratulations to John Howard and all his supporters. I'm just a random American - and we really do appreciate your standing with us - both in this war, and all previous.

You did your part, now it's up to us not to let you down come November.

Is Harry Heidelberg the guy who was talking about Margo being the moon and the sun or some shit like that?

The Greens are reporting that red necks from our undemocratic democracy have been posting comments to their web site.

Andrew X: what you said also applies to Canada's NDP and the UK's Lib Dems. Boutique socialism from those who have never got their hands dirty has hijacked the left.

"The sweetest modesty of all."

You make "forcing the work ethic upon whole populations" sound like some kind of terrible crime. I suppose if you're a tapeworm or tick the idea is repugnant ... as for human beings, how exactly is it okay to "force" me to allow your filthy fingers into my pockets but not okay for me to "force" you to keep your grubby hands to yourself?

You're forcing me to support you even as you decry my wanting to "force" you to support yourself. Such a view is not only morally inconsistent but laughable.

I also happen to be an Atheist, which if anything makes me even more shocked at the audacity of self-righteousness amongst deadbeats than if I were Protestant.

At least Protestants have platitudes like "blessed are the meek" to help soften the edge of the naked truth. To an Atheist nothing disguises just how pathetic you truly are. Get a job, loser!

Tim,
Your comments on the Labor Party in Australia could be said of the Democratic Party here in the U.S. They too seem to have lose their way and have taken up the banner of every crack-pot cause that has come down the pike. Not that I'm complaining as I'm a Republican, still I find the change disturbing and I grow concerned with the level of hate that has grown during this presidentual election. Great blog, thanks Australia for supporting our President in this war.

Now there's an atheist I could drink a toast with! Except, being a good Protestant boy, mine would be tea.

Thanks for re-electing John Howard. Great nations don't shrink from their responsibilities, and Australia is a great nation. We'll do our best to re-elect George Bush next month, and finish the job of wiping out terrorism.

Rejoice sons of Australia! What a tremendous result. Thank you, Australia. I'm very proud and grateful that you have our back. Now lets keep making the world a safer place and keep kicking Old Europe's ass in the Olympics!

Astro

"The Greens are reporting that red necks from our undemocratic democracy have been posting"

It is perfectly symbolic that the Green's main page has a child on top, front and center, decrying the war in Iraq. What is this childs position on other important world issues, please enlighten us now.

Technically the war itself has long since ended, unless you count Iraq as a front in the War on Terrorism, wich many leftys are loathe to do.

So are Australia's Greens more or less like those here in the U.S.? You know, sandle-wearing, granola-munching, hemp-necklaced slackers. Just wondering.

Good job OZ! I saw Howard scowling when he was passing over the Cup to the English last year, so I wasn't sure I liked him, but I guess he was just mad because the OZ boys didn't take it.

Can't stand a cut-and-runner, and so I'm glad Howard won. Hopefully we here don't elect the cut-and-runner, and we can finish the job right and bring the boys home.

And look out for the Eagles in 2007!

Thomas - yep, that's them. Filthy godless commies, every last one.

I'm just wondering what party Dr Ivan Milat will be standing for at the next election? The Mujahadeen Liberation Front of the Sunshine Coast?

There's a great letter in the Sydney Daily Telegraph this morning that epitomises every whining leftie I've ever heard. It is authored by a Petrina Frost. A few choice quotes:

"I cannot understand how the Coalition has been returned to power"

"I only know one person who voted Liberal. I attended the polling booth with three people. We all voted Labor. I discussed the results with my workmates this morning - they all voted Labor. Everyone I talked to voted Labor"

"So tell me, how is it that Labor did not win?"

I'm not sure of her point - is she hinting that the election was rigged?

I would see the comments responding to mine as bolstering the basic proposition more than refuting it. You miss the historical transiton of the Protestant Work ethic: its transmogrification from the Puritan ideals through to the form of accumulative capitalism of the early 20th century are complex and certainly not easily reduced to mere religious ideology or practice. In simple terms, whether you're an atheist or not is irrelevant to the discussion of Weber's vision of the Protestant Work ethic.

Moreover, the presumption that any criticism of the current work ethic (however modern, postmodern or anti-modern you believe it is) amounts to an excuse for standing outside it surely shows its sheer ubiquity. (I am gainfully employed in a dynamic, challenging cutting edge firm - so your command is woefully misdirected)

The ethics of intervention in 'markets' is certainly more complex than the meagre binaries you put forward. The means of perpetuation of structures of power is the most troubling phenomenon social science attempts to come to terms with.

This certainly isn't the forum for complex social scientific debate, but I certainly was hoping to spurn some of you to go out and read classical, robust theories - of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Adorno, Popper - even if just to beat the "left" (or "right") at their own game.

"Its real preoccupation is with the interests of illegal immigrants and their rights. Its real cause is denigrating the US alliance. Its real intellectual work is invested in finding excuses for not toughening our anti-terrorist laws. Its real passion is finding more excuses for why we should not have gone into Iraq and why we should now get out. Its real tactic in the face of terrorism is to wait for an attack and have a regional conference before we respond."
Neil Brown... the Australian.

Ok just about perfect

dk.dk

While we're on the topic of doing some rational thinking, may I suggest you go and check out the work of Ayn Rand. I think the moral and ethical case for free market capitalism should be pretty clear after that.

Foist the work ethic on everyone? Not in any way. If people choose to be lazy and indolent, that's up to them. But they then have no moral right to make a claim on those who do produce and practice thrift and enterprise.

>The means of perpetuation of
>structures of power is the most
>troubling phenomenon social
>science attempts to come to
>terms with.

Perhaps they should give up on that particular leftist circle-jerk and concentrate on issues more relevant to alleviating human suffering - say, the abysmal failures of command economies versus the success of free markets.

Social scientists should stop wasting time with discredited theorists like Marx, and just, I dunno, OBSERVE HOW THE WORLD ACTUALLY WORKS. Maybe they'd notice that the poor in Zimbabwe starve, while the poor in America are fat as houses.

Memo to dk.dk; Stringing together a lot of pseudo intellectual claptrap only amplifies the fact that you Sir are A Grade wanker material.
Social Scientific Debate? Pseudo Science you mean. I bet you support the Kyoto Agreement and would ban GM crops because you are too dull to comprehend real science.

Anyway, back to topic. Mark Latham will remain Leader because no one else wants it. Several of those who aspire to Labor Leadership e.g. Rudd, Swann and Smith don't want to do the hard yards now required for the next two to five years. Mark Latham now finds himself in the same circumstances as the Victorian Liberals's Robert Doyle. Lots of hard work to do before he gets shafted.

Kevin: I was mildy attracted to Ayn Rand unto I discovered she was a particularly nasty "do as I say - not as I do" hypocrite. Not taken seriously these days now her feet of clay have been exposed.

Re Vegemite: This was 'watered down' and rendered second-rate a few years ago when Kraft caved in to the pseudo-science lobby and halved the salt content. It's rather bland these days but, we're told, now OK for weening babies off breast milk. Before, it was too strong for them.

Time and time again I have looked very hard to find some relevence in the Labor platform and time and time again they disappoint.
They have started today already bagging Mr Howard and accusing him of breaking core /non core promises.
Well I for one would be quite happy if he reviewed his promises -I feel he was forced by Labor to out bid fro this election.
One of Labours biggest problems is that for the past 8 years they have steadfastly blocked every bill that would improve the industrial and work place, just because they could, they blocked the sale of Telstra which has hurt 'Mums and Dads' who invested in Telstra for their retirement and superannuation and kept the share price flattened and income reduced because they could not function tied to 'nanny guv',all in the knowledge, that had they been in power it is exactly what they would have done to fund more wanten extravagance and would not have reduced debt, as has the Howard Costello Goverment; they have adopted a policy of obstructionism and pure bloody mindedness not because they were bad bills but because Labor could not cope with being the opposition- behavior not seen in the Liberal oppositiion. I do not like an opposition that is a de facto union party they have to shaft the unions and come up as a credible thinking party that better represents the Australia today-
The labour landscape today is vastly different to the times of Chiffly or Menzies. They also need more people who have had real life working skills' and experience in the real world of business world not just Lawyers, Law/ Politic/ economic graduates who used their times at Uni to network their way into a sinecure of a career in politics such as Natasha and who now leaves on 70k a year indexed for life and really does not have to work and I wonder did she ever?again-pretty good when compared to 40 years of Nursing full and part time, and even that part time would equal some polititians full time if taken over 12 months (and in Mal Colstons case 12 years)
and leave with 14k.
Finally give us a few weeks break from whining- give the goverment a chance to get back into stride-we all need to focus on something else for a little while

I can understand that the classic trees vs. jobs argument lends itself to broad black and white perception but, based on decades of close observation in Canada and Costa Rica, I also know that there can be more to this.

I do not know the degree to which this has been argued out rationally during the late campaign but, in general terms and based on an imperfect knowledge of Tasmania, the island is almost ideal for exploitation by nature/sports tourism. Big money. Potentially huge money.

Campaign broadstrokes aside, the jobs involved are not all dainty waitressing. Your tattooed blokes can find their fill of thoroughly butch work. Running canopy tours is not for babies. Nor rafting. Nor rock climbing. Nor kyaking. Nor fishing. And on and on.

Not only are the people who pursue these pastimes probably insane, they pay handsomely for the chance to risk life and limb. This can be the functional opposite of the high-volume, low margin travel. Tourism planning and development is what I do and this is one of the fastest growing and much coveted segments of our industry.

Left unsupervised, idiots can screw up anything but undertaken intelligently this could be a money spinner for Tasmania long into the future.

Or you can try to log the land carefully enough to get a more or less sustainable income for a relatively tiny minority. I am honestly not knee-jerk opposed to logging but it can turn out to be the least economically-minded use of the resource.

When the dust settles I hope someone will take a second look at all this to see if, in the hands of a clever government who actually understands a free market, this might be made to work. And, lastly, warm congratulations on a really good result.

Walter,

Rand certainly had her flaws. However, her body of work and her ideas stand on their own merits. Did she live by her own principles and philosophy? I certainly think so although I can appreciate your comments to the contrary.

The acid test, of course, is do her ideas work? Are they based in objective reality that we can test? Again, I'd argue that they are. The various collectivist ideologies fail on this simple test. They don't work in practice!

Discounting the ideas of Objectivism simply because of Rand's personal flaws is...well, irrational!

Derrida's corpse is hardly cold and dk is already channeling his spirit. I thought we'd get more of a break. And what is poor Karl Popper doing in with that bunch?

Anyway, good job Aussies. Congratulations.

"Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Adorno, Popper"

i.e. No-one since the Berlin wall came down. My guess is that since that event showed the fallacy of socialism, you can't read any material which may reflect a current acceptance of that fact.

Go read some of Bruno Frey's work, dk.dk

"...may I suggest you go and check out the work of Ayn Rand..."

OH GOD NO not another NuObjectivist™ still quivering from their first reading of Atlas Shrugged. I saw one of these try to get into it over on a Christian blog and it was the classic example of people talking past each other.

"Rand certainly had her flaws."

(Maniacal laughter from the shades of the many victims of Rand's unique brand of "rationality" can faintly be heard.)

All this being said her more ranty novels (Anthem, The Figurehead, Shrugged) still have a certain attraction to me, and she was a dissecter par excellence of social and intellectual parasites. It was her heroes and "good" minor characters that were less believable.

Andrea,

Long past any first reading of "Atlas Shrugged". The point is, once again, do the ideas of Objectivism work?

"Long past any first reading of 'Atlas Shrugged'."

You poor sap. Oh -- and No, they don't. And don't reply any further. You are roving off topic, and as I am the administrator here, I may decide to delete all off-topic posts.

How about this from Margo:

'It seems the undecideds woke up on Saturday in a Howard kind of mood'.

Jeez she is a dipstick.

There's a great letter in the Sydney Daily Telegraph this morning that epitomises every whining leftie I've ever heard. It is authored by a Petrina Frost. A few choice quotes:

"I cannot understand how the Coalition has been returned to power"

"I only know one person who voted Liberal. I attended the polling booth with three people. We all voted Labor. I discussed the results with my workmates this morning - they all voted Labor. Everyone I talked to voted Labor"

"So tell me, how is it that Labor did not win?"

I'm not sure of her point - is she hinting that the election was rigged?

*suck it up baby, suck it up!!!

*the election was rigged, it's a jewish conspiracy to take over the world.

Dee: concerning the letter in the Sydney Daily Telegraph from which you quoted . . .

"I cannot understand how the Coalition has been returned to power"
"I only know one person who voted Liberal. I attended the polling booth with three people. We all voted Labor. I discussed the results with my workmates this morning - they all voted Labor. Everyone I talked to voted Labor"

. . . This is eerily reminscent of a similar lament heard a number of years ago on the far side of that large ocean to your right. Miss Pauline Kael was a celebrated movie reviewer for an old magazine called The New Yorker. Following an election won by Richard Nixon, Pauline wailed rather publicly that she just couldn't understand it. Not ONE of her friends had voted for the man!

Anyhow, congratulations to you all. We are fortunate to count you friends and allies. (Now if only you could figure out a way to ship us some REAL tinnies of Foster instead of the curious stuff brewed here under its name, it would complete our happiness.)

Yup, the leftie wailings that everyone they know voted Labor only serves to demonstrate how insular and disconnected from the rest of society they are...

Michael E — Ah. Got it. The tattooed blokes can give up their jobs to become native bearers for the tourists. There's a selling point. "Oi, mates! Vote Labor and we can all go work at Disneyland!"

Michael E:

The problem with eco-tourism is that it is a service industry. That means it produces nothing of material, and is utterly dependent on disposable income. If, for some reason, the tourists don't come, the economy drops.

Further, there's only so many possible eco-tours that the ecology can handle. It's not an unlimited resource.

There's nothing wrong with eco-tourism as such, but don't depend on it exclusively. From what I've read of Latham, that's pretty much what he promised to the Greens in Australia for Tasmania.

That's a multi-based economy is a sound approach. If one part bombs, the other parts can help sustain the nation, if at a lower level, for a time.

Plus there's the human factor -- not everyone wants to be a tour guide for a bunch of adrenaline junkies.

Factoid: Alan Greenspan was very close friends, some say bed buddies, with Ayn Rand.

Yeah.. but Sir Al morphed into a Keynesian and has technically bankrupted the US.

Uh? I must have missed when Alan Greenspan got the keys to the U.S. treasury.

Hey Harry!

What you have written in your cooments and in the "Margonaut" piece TB linked to actually makes sense.

Which begs the question - why do you bother with the moonbats at Webdiary at all?

If you want to see some delightful Lefty whinging, there's a good thread on the Ship of Fools Hell board.

Michael E, where's the demand? And, who are you to tell people what jobs they can and can't have?