Party Politics

Every time an election comes round in Australia, and I think most Western countries, a form of bargaining takes place as parties make promises in order to entice the electorate to vote for them. Most of these promises get broken. The party is in power for four years or so by which time there will be totally different issues at stake.

Not only is this dishonest but in one sense all the parties are doing themselves a disservice. There is (or should be) an ideological difference between all the parties. Most people vote for a party not because it’s going to achieve some short-term bonus but because they believe that the country will be a better place to live in the long term.

In Australia there are probably three main parties that need considering: the Liberals, a right-wing leaning Conservative party; the Labor party, a left-leaning party with its roots in the trade union movement, similar to the UK Labour party; and the Greens, an extreme left wing socialist party.

Ideologically a right-wing party has certain aims:

Lower taxes and less government control
Less laws governing individual rights
Less government subsidies, either for the individual or companies
No political correctness
Restrictions on immigration

A Left wing party has the following aims:

Higher taxes, especially for the rich as a form of equalisation of income
More subsidies in the form of pensions and welfare payments
More control of companies
More political correctness and restrictions on what you can say
Liberalisation of immigration

In there extremes this would result in, for the Right Wing parties:

minimal tax
No social welfare
Little, or no, restrictions on companies.

For the Left:

huge taxes especially for the rich
Full benefits, even for those who don't want to be employed
Tight control over companies or full nationalisation

Of course who would vote for a party that said they would abolish all welfare payments or would promote 80-90% taxation? However, if parties ware to be honest then the Liberals could say they would promote an environment where businesses would prosper, welfare would be restricted and political correctness eliminated. The Labor party would say they would make welfare easier to get, raise taxes for the rich, impose restrictions on companies, and encourage political correctness. At the end of their term a voter would be able to see whether their period in office moved the country closer to their aim.

This would be looking at long-term interests rather than short-term promises and electioneering.

How the greens have become equated with left-wing politics is an interesting point. Historically, conservatism was about conservation and what is now called green issues, and left-wing parties referred to themselves as ‘progressive’ and promoted industrialisation, as opposed to being conservative, as a way of freeing the workers.

On other supposedly left-wing issues there has been a shift as well. In Australia there was an immigration policy called the white Australia policy. Basically, people from a non Anglo-Saxon background were not allowed into the country. Ironically, it was the left and the trade unions who promoted this policy as they were afraid of cheap foreign labour flooding the workforce.

The green movement is to a large extent a socialist movement that capitalises on conservation issues to promote its own ideology. In Tasmania the greens formed an alliance with the Labor party. The Labor party leader of the alliance told The Australian:

”…His searing experience in minority government in Tasmania from 1989 to 1992 makes him deeply suspicious of Brown, the Greens and their collective modus operandi.”

And continues:

Field is scathing, even now, of the Greens' conduct. "We would be left carrying the responsibility and they would just feel free to attack us whenever they liked," he says. "You couldn't argue back, not publicly, because that would have destabilised the government. From my point of view, it became intolerable."

Note that these comments were by a left-wing political leader. In fact in Australia the Labor party is deeply suspicious of the Greens as they recognise this duplicity.