Paul Sheehan wrote a scare piece in yesterday's SMH. In general I like Sheehan's articles. He's right wing but not hysterically so. This piece is an exception.
Writing about the prospect of the Federal and all State governments being Labor controlled, he states ...
Australia is thus approaching a fascinating historical juncture. Amid such benign economic conditions, we may be on the brink of an unprecedented experiment in power politics - giving control of every government in the nation to a political machine with a proven record of insularity and self-serving public patronage on a large scale.This is uncharted territory. Nine Labor governments out of nine. Nine governments able to cross-fertilise each other's power base, exercising complete control over appointments to the judiciary and the senior bureaucracy. Nine Labor governments with big debts to the unions that underpin their finances. It could change Australia's political culture for a generation.
Actually, it's not that 'unchartered.' In 1969, all governments were controlled by one party, when the conservatives held all the speakers' chairs. I don't remember the country's political history being effected by that calamitous event. There have been several other periods when both sides held the Federal and all but one of state governments. It didn't hurt our democratic framework then, and it won't this time.
State governments have a lot of more pressing things to be worried about. They can't raise the funds to finance their activities. They've been marginalised to the point of irrelevancy by successive Federal governments using the Foreign Affairs and Corporations provisions to override state powers. It's hard to see how they can have any real influence in the modern era.
The fact that dodgy state governments have survived as well as they have is an indication of just how uneasy the population is about the current Federal government.
Besides, the clean sweep won't last too long. I'll make a brave (not) prediction that some of those state governments won't win another term. For the NSW government to survive another election would be a miracle.
Sheehan concludes with this ...
That is what the election on November 24 is really about. Under a Labor government, the deputy prime minister and minister for industrial relations would be a hard-left union ideologue and labour lawyer, Julia Gillard. The attorney-general would be Senator Joe Ludwig, who, in the great tradition of the Labor patronage machine, is the son of a Queensland Labor powerbroker, Bill Ludwig, the national president of the Australian Workers Union. Leaders of the machine would dominate the ministry.
So what's new? Labor governments throughout the century have been populated by ex-trade unionists. I don't need to point out the renowned Labor Prime Ministers who sport that background.
It's a pity commentators don't mention the business connections that fund and man the conservative parties.
