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Australian politics is much taken up with a struggle inside the ruling Liberal Party. Deposed former Prime Minister Tony Abbot is working feverishly to undermine the leadership of the man who deposed him, Malcolm Turnbull. Is there any political significance to the spectacle of one ambitious Tory dog savaging another ambitious Tory dog? Possibly. Abbott is attacking from the Right while Turnbull tries to crab his way out of the bucket that neoliberalism has dropped the political class into. The other crab Abbott is determined to drag him down into the pit. It is exactly the same dilemma the Tories in England face. The 1% ceiling on the public sector has cut wages and lowered demand and trapped the economy in the cycle of low growth. Even those who are totally convinced that the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall is at the heart of the crisis must see that the demand crisis is serious. But those who rule us cannot get out of the prison house of neoliberalism. Thus this week here in Australia, in a savage blow to the low paid, weekend penalty rates were cut while at the same time the governor of Australia's reserve bank, Philip Lowe, pleaded with workers to rise up and demand higher wages. The mechanism for doing that is of course the union movement and that has been so badly weakened that unions feel in no position to follow Lowe's battle cry. The Australian Labor Party meanwhile looks at the polls and they generally led by 6%. They seem to think they do not have to do a Corbyn and can stay with the Austerity Lite program. The alternative on the Left of the Greens is led by an idiot who understands nothing of the pressure facing the working class or of the need to end neoliberalism. His party is waging an internal war against the only Green Senator, Lee Rhiannon, who has a grasp of what needs to be done on the economic front. So we stagnate in Oz and look on in envious wonder as Corbyn promises to end neoliberalism. Here youth unemployment is rampant, wages are low, housing unaffordable and student debt crippling. But the Labor Party will not promise to end any of this. Maybe if Corbyn were to break through then we could have a change here. A word about Trump as seen Down Under. Chris Uhlmann a right winger, who works for the public broadcaster here, has put together a savage attack on Trump from the Right. The gist of his critique is that Trump is not leading the West and is making way for the Rise of China (or is it Russia?). The Right seemed to be gripped by Cold War nostalgia and the good old days of the unchallenged leadership of the the POTUS. Life was so much better for white settler colonies then. Comradely Gary MacLennan _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
