Home » AGW and climate change » Because of two naughty boys in the party a messiah needed to raise Labor from the dead, even it makes them into political zombies

Because of two naughty boys in the party a messiah needed to raise Labor from the dead, even it makes them into political zombies

I reckon that the toughest political gig at present is the one one of the common man who supports the Labor party Its damn tough having to find reasons to endorse or explain the policies of party that is doing so badly in the opinion of the public that Ivan Millat is close to being considered more trustworthy than the current PM. Ok, sarcasm aside, we may well be on the cusp of that Rudd revival that Ray has been banging on about for ages as even the Canberra press gallery has turned on Gillard and even the carrot of “compensation” for the hated carbon tax that is greater than the expected price rises won’t give Gillard any electoral joy. Anyway Ray may like this scenario of a Rudd revival published today.

Click for source via google

Can it work to win government at the next election?

Personally I don’t think that it would claw back that much trust and faith of the former true believers but it may give just enough of them enough hope that they don’t totally abandon the party and deliver a Queensland like thrashing to the federal party. As wise and audacious as this plan may be I suspect that those currently at the tiller of the Labor party are too arrogant and too stupid to do what is necessary to stop their party ending up a total unelectable wreck for a generation at least.

Cheers Comrades

Tags: Australia, Australian Labor, Australian Labor Party, Canberra Press Gallery, carbon tax, Gillard, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Queensland, Rudd

By Iain Hall in AGW and climate change, AGW true believers, Australian Politics, Carbon Trading, Federal Election, Federal politics, Global Warming, Leftism, Living with Nature on May 3, 2012.

25 Comments

Ray Dixon says:

May 3, 2012 at 8:58 AM

For once I completely agree with something Andrew Bolt has said. He’s right on the two key issues – Gillard’s leadership and the carbon tax stuff-up. I just wish he wouldfn’t go on with that “conservative commentator” vs “lefitist” ones bullshit. Laurie Oakes is a leftist? Michelle Grattan? Well, to Bolt, anyone slightly less extreme than he is a lefty I guess. Anyway, Andy has nailed it better than a stuck clock does twice a day.
alan says:

May 3, 2012 at 9:07 AM

“anyone slightly less extreme than he is a lefty”

100% correct.
Iain Hall says:

May 3, 2012 at 9:22 AM

As I see it Ray anything less than the Bolt prescription is bound to fail at the poll that matters. As for Oakes and Grattan well I think that they do lean more to the left than to the right but its just Bolt’s shtick to cite them as “leftists”
Craigy says:

May 3, 2012 at 10:21 AM

It is interesting to read the ways Iain and others in the Murdoch and even Fairfax press are seeing the current problems facing the ALP. As someone who finds little of interest (or benefit) in most conservative politics, it has been interesting to sit back and see how conservatives eat themselves alive. Two broad observations:

1. The ALP has done a good job with the economy and in getting their agenda up, in spite of having to try and keep the Greens and independents happy. But they have totally failed to sell this politically and have let Abbott run the political conversation about that, instead of it being about their positive achievements.

The fact that pundits like Iain and Bolt can get away with just repeating that this is a ‘Bad Government’, purely by pointing to their political failings, is a change to the way most people view Government achievements. Some minor problems or a failure to sell a policy or decision doesn’t make it a bad policy. BER and HIS are examples of this.

2. The very political mistakes that pundits use to attack the competency of this Government are only available because the ALP leadership caves in, again and again, to the extremist bleatings of a few high profile media stirrers and extreme, right wing business lobby groups and fails to defend good policy. The ALP is failing politically because they are pandering to conservatives.

The back downs to the mining and carbon lobbies, rather than pushing back hard, the failure to explain how the stimulus spending has kept our economy the envy of the world, the failure to stand up against the xenophobia aimed at people trying to come to this country and a public lack of compassion for refugees, are all examples of how following the conservative agenda, or at least not standing firm against it, has cost the ALP core support.

I am sure Bolt would love to see Rudd back and the ALP move even further to the right, as this would continue its long term demise.

The good thing is the Greens are looking better and better. The mud isn’t sticking to them and the more good policy they are a part of, the less impact the ‘Greens will destroy us’ meme will have.

They are the centre-left party of the future so people like Ray should forget the ALP, grow up and vote/join the Greens. Some mild conservative input from people like Ray would help them to be accepted by those that don’t buy the scare campaign and encourage those at the top to push back against extremists from both sides. What do you think Ray?
Craigy says:

May 3, 2012 at 10:30 AM

This comment from Fran at Pure Poison puts it all very well….

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/purepoison/2012/04/30/outraged-that-the-pm-hasnt-exercised-a-power-no-pms-have/comment-page-1/#comment-79487

Fran Barlow
Posted May 1, 2012 at 10:32 am | Permalink

I’m not persuaded that blaming the media is either helpful or accurate. The media is what it is is and given that there’s little way of changing it, even if this analysis were right it would be self-defeating. The starting point for a way out of this is to understand how we got here.

It’s true that the regime faces the richest and most powerful producer of unremitting self-serving bloviation on the face of the planet. But that’s a given. That was true in 2007 when they got elected. They knew that then. Their failure was to ignore that — to imagine that it could be their friend and to frame their politics with this mountain of sub-intellectual filth and its malodorous groupies in mind instead of immediately driving a wedge between them and the public.

They managed to achieve power. They ought to have assumed that as soon as they tried anything remotely positive that infringed on big business that these folk would turn on them. They had been working up to it all through 2008, so it wasn’t a complete surprise either. Thy could have been out there from Day 1 putting it out there on YouTube — announcing where they were going and what they hoped to achieve and how what they were doing now fit into that. They could have been exposing the trolls and memes and slapping down Murdoch’s minions and refused utterly to give the time of day to those “writing crap”.

So I blame them. Maybe if they’d done all the right things they’d still have lost, but in least in that case, they’d have something to show for the struggle. The footsoldiers would have been battle hardened and keen on turning the tables — willing to go out into the fields in hard times and recruit for a noble cause. But when the leadership abandons the troops and hides under a rock somewhere and declares that the enemy is too powerful and mewls and begs for pity, the footsoldiers quite rightly melt away, or find better leaders elsewhere.

Really the rot started seriously in late 2009 with Rudd’s attempt (well it may have been Sussex St’s attempt, bu all the same) to play politics with carbon pricing instead of just going with Garnaut’s proposal and having done with it. He could have presented the Libs with an ultimatum — pass it or we go to a double dissolution in November/December. Rudd could have run on that and having to have continuity to see through Australia’s response to the GFC. They would have caved or been obliterated. At the time even Abbott was advocating caving.

The problem was that the ALP treated this as a piece of triangulation. They wanted a carbon price that we Greens would spurn as a polluter pay day — allowing the ALP to differentiate themselves and take all the credit. They also wanted a deal that would wedge the Turnbull-led Libs between the deniers and the accepters of climate change. They fancied business being lined up on both sides. It was all much too clever, and so when the final shabby deal was done, the deniers in the Libs knew that they only had to roll the leader to forge a senate bar to the program and hand the government a defeat. That tide in the affairs of men that Brutus spoke of so eloquently in Julius Caesar was lost. The regime had lost its nerve despite having an impregnable position.

Similarly, Rudd went to water on asylum seekers at the time. Instead of claiming the high moral ground — we are better than this — he pandered to the xenophobes and bigots, calling “people smugglers” the “scum of the Earth”. As bizarre as it sounds, he thought that this would put him ahead of the curve and that hordes of ignorant reactionaries would be added to his polling. All this did of course was hand the LNP — which has always had a lock on this demographic — a stick with which to beat the regime senseless. They became the examiners of the regime on this issue, and unsurprsingly, they were marking hard. Every arrival was a story and with Rudd’s words, it went to the heart of the regime’s competence. Yet the regime never had a chance of “stopping the boats” or even turning them around except by resort to measures that it could not contemplate. So this was a massive own goal.

During the new year Rudd proceeded to accept the meme that HIP and BER expenditure was a farce. He sacked Garrett and then declared that they’d “get a whacking in the polls”. He predicted right. This Peter Beattie strategy didn’t work. Rudd should have pushed back — arguing that both HIP and BER were good programs —part of what softened the blow from the GFC and likewise amounted to “nation-building” — and accusing demanding why the LNP wanted to deny kids quality infrastructure and householders cheaper electricity bills. Instead, he went to water.

When Rudd finally announced the indefinite deferral of the ETS this was another bitter blow. Now what he’d referred to as a defining moral issue had been dumped in an apparently panicked attempt to halt sliding polling. He was handing Abbott the rails run here. When, aghast, he saw that this too hadn’t worked, he wheeled out the RSPT from The Henry Review and with almost no warning, wore it like a badge of honour. Unsurprisingly, Big Dirt which, alongside, Big Filth smelt blood pulled out all stops to hobble the regime with even more rightwing populist trolling. Even here now the regime was still ahead. It had blundered badly but the RSPT was at least something it could run a left-populist campaign on.

Then came the killer blow. Sussex St was now in full retreat and when they dumped Rudd in favour of Gillard it was clear to most who was really running the country. It was no longer the ALP but a nasty cabal of Big Dirt, Big Filth, Big Print and their playthings which now included the spivs from Sussex St. Confidence in the ALP declined still further. Gillard’s rewriting of the RSPT to the MRRT gave up about $70bn in revenue. Abbott wanted to forsake the lot. This was the ugly dutch auction that the regime had authored — a government of the rich, for the rich and perhaps soon enough, by the rich — one whose most unambiguous animus was not at them but towards — asylum seekers. They had dumped a winning first term PM to prove that they too were a bunch or ignortant cowardly reactionary clowns. They would go to an election spitting on the only worthy things in their record.

And from there, things scarcely got better. Gillard ran what was possibly the most inept campaign by a government known for decades. “Real Julia”? It was almost crafted to be mocked. Instead of slapping down Oakes at that famous press conference — challenging him to reveal his sources — she let him troll her. She allowed her folks to imply that Rudd was leaking against them, when there simply was no evidence at all of that. She pulled the “East Timor” solution to asylum seeking from her nether regions and was embarrassed when that didn’t survive the campaign. In the end, she was probably lucky to get as close as she did, but the truth was that the ALP had snatched near defeat from comfortable victory.

Nor did the ALP do better post election. You might have thought that they’d have been chastened, if not by the near death experience then by the reality that they now had to work with Independents slightly to their left. They might have embraced change and set their course in a decidedly new and more progressive direction — on asylum seekers, on the mining tax, on fiscal policy, on carbon policy, on Afghanistan, drug law reform, gay marriage, the Murray Darling, on media convergence and accountability and on g@mbling. Instead of appearing to have been forced into it, they could have declared their enthusiasm for it and pressed forward. They’d have offered a clear policy difference from the Liberals. Abbott would have been reeling if the game had been played like that.

Instead, they remained timorous, continuing to embolden Murdoch and the reactionary hordes. They continued to swear by fiscal austerity and “the surplus” — which, like asylum seekers in 2009 was well outside their effective ability to control. You can’t wave a wand and increase revenue so they were promising to cut programs — to please those who would never vote ALP and alienating many who would. Gillard went out of her way to abuse us Greens as inauthentic inner city elites — parroting Costello and Blot and the Murdochracy more generally.

When in February she was asked why she was introducing “a carbon tax” despite having disavowed it — instead of repudiating this troll and dressing down the reporter as incompetent (this was no carbon tax) — she allowed it to run — and in one stupid moment endorded the biggest challeneg to her regime yet — the Juliar meme. She could have used this moment to push back, but she wilted. This is the measure of the woman.

She also sympathised with reactionaries who regard asylum seekers as queue jumpers and ill-deserving of welfare and devised the egregious “Malaysian solution”. She covered the regime in odium. Yet there was more odium to come.

Just as Big Dirt and Big Filth had spooked the ALP in 2010, so too in 2011 Big Spin running the same ignorant populist campaign that Big Dirt had done managed to spook the ALP again. Instead of honouring the deal with Wilkie, she tried a tricky manoeuvre to evade it. All this did was raise again the troll she’d given aid and comfort to in February 2011 over carbon “taxing”. Of all people, to have picked Slipper — someone with an embarrassing history with expenses was really asking for trouble. It beggars belief that she could have been so stupid — but that is what panic will do.

And in the middle of discussion of Gonski, she decided that this would be the moment to invite a leadership spill and have a knock em down drag em out fight with Rudd.

It’s often said that good government requires good opposition — but it’s often forgotten that the reverse is also true. Oppositions need only be as good as the government requires, and this inept and cowardly regime has demanded hardly anything of its rivals. Never once has it forced the coalition to pick a side in a debate, but rather, has allowed it to be all things to all people and to keep the focus on the government’s tenuous grip on office. Never once, when they might have, has the government confronted the Murdochracy but rather allowed them to run their own agenda. Nowhere have they attempted to bypass the media and communicate directly with the public a positive agenda. Nowehere have they pushed back. They have achieved political ineptitude on a grotesque scale.

Gillard spoke of people perceiving a “dark cloud” over parliament but the truth of the matter is that the author of that cloud has substantially been the ALP. The coalition are repulsive hucksters and backed by the big end of town, it’s true, but they have been enabled by the ineptitude of the ALP, who have had ample opportunity to lear from their mistakes but have declined to do so.

It wasn’t rocket science. They just needed to to do the right thing and let the reactionaries please themselves. If they’d done that, even if they had not achieved a winning position, they’d have achieved things that simply could not be reversed — and that fact would sustain them even after a loss. Now, if they lose (which seems likely), they won’t even be able to say they went down swinging, fighting the good fight and hoping in the longer term to be vindicated. It really will be the worst kind of loss.

And people on the left will simply be scandalised at the chance they spurned.

Quote added to comment by Iain
Iain Hall says:

May 3, 2012 at 11:15 AM

Thanks for the citation from Fran Barlow Craigy, there is a great deal in her observation that I tend to agree with but I don’t think either you or Fran are right to keep claiming that the problem for this government has been the way that it has marketed itself to the public. The problem has at its heart some really bad decisions and strategies that it has been using way beyond its use by date. The constantly invoking the name of Tony Abbott as if he were an incarnation of Satan is a good example, sure it may play well to the Greens voters like yourself Craigy but it just sounds desperate and lame to the average voter and ot makes the government look desperate, Further it reminds the average punter that Labor have no faith in themselves (so why should the voters have faith in them?)
As for the Greens well I think that they have bled the ALP of most of its Uber lefties and after the way that they have had Labor by the balls in minority government I think that many Labor voters of the centre will go coalition rather than Green next time. Likewise i expect that neither of the majors will preference the Greens next time so they will lose Bandt in Melbourne and not win any other lower house seats. Essentially they have peaked and its all down hill from here for them.
Craigy says:

May 3, 2012 at 11:30 AM

Yes Iain, Fran nailed it for me, I wonder what poor ol’ Ray thinks about this? (Got to laugh at his call to bring back Rudd, something supported by Bolt….ouch!).

Thanks again for your views on the Greens Iain, but like most partisan political commentary, it doesn’t reflect whats really going on at all. People have been claiming the end of the Greens and that they would win no more seats since they first arrived in Tasmaina back all those years ago, yet they keep on gaining support… What makes you think your right this time? What big stuff-ups have they made? (There’s a free kick for you…)

When it comes to Tony Abbott, he may win this next election but he is not popular, even with many conservative voters. Why do you think this might be? Would you rather see someone else in charge?
Ray Dixon says:

May 3, 2012 at 11:35 AM

They (the Greens) are the centre-left party of the future so people like Ray should forget the ALP, grow up and vote/join the Greens. Some mild conservative input from people like Ray would help them to be accepted by those that don’t buy the scare campaign and encourage those at the top to push back against extremists from both sides. What do you think Ray?

Have another read of Fran’s diatribe, Craigy. That explains why I could never join or vote for the Greens much better than I could. The Govt should have marketed themselves via YouTube? Seriously? The Greens rejection (three times) of Rudd’s ETS was his fault? Seriously? The ALP should have adopted every Greens policy? Seriously? Look, she’s over-complicated it; here is the reason for the ALP’s current woes:

In June 2010 some backroom ALP faction-leading idiots conspired to dump Kevin Rudd as PM and install Julia Gillard, who subsequently proved to be: inept, unlikeable, untrustworthy, two-faced, of-no-substance, a flip-flopper, no conviction, visionless and a straight-out phoney. The electorate don’t like her and that’s reflected in the harranguing her govt gets in the media (it’s the egg that comes first, not the chicken, Craigy). Rudd would have won the 2010 election with a reduced majority, but still a majority, and would not have been beholden to the independents. Furthermore, his decision to put the ETS on the backburner following the Copenhagen non-event (ie following the rest of the world not supporting it) and following your beloved Greens thwarting of it (3 times!) actually is now proving to be the right one, given how unpopular Gillard’s carbon tax is electorally. Have another read of Bolt’s article today (the full article, if you don’t have access to the paywall I can show you how to get around it) because this time ol’ Andy is actually 100% on the money. And if the ALP follow his advice they can make a fight out of the next election yet.
Ray Dixon says:

May 3, 2012 at 11:54 AM

Hey Iain, are you on a commission from News Ltd or something? You’ve got the ad linking to the paywall ‘sign up’ in your extract!
Craigy says:

May 3, 2012 at 12:05 PM

I did read Bolt’s full rant this morning Ray in the Hun on the train, it made no sense as usual.

Your support for the ALP to move further to the right is why your party of choice is going down the drain. You can’t see it and for some reason neither can they. Kind of explains your problem don’t you think?

As happened to the Democrats when they supported John Howard, they miss calculated how non-conservative their voters were and I think you do the same with ALP voters. Rudd won the first election with strong policies which he allowed himself to be talked/frightened out of by the noisy right and its well supported media pundits. It’s not about following Greens policies, they just need to work out who they are and stick to it. Get some progressive back bone.

40% of people will still vote ALP on the 2PP polls, that’s still a large vote but they will bleed more if they keep trying to be ‘Tory light’. They need to stand for something and we already have one conservative party for the big end of town, we need a strong workers party to push back hard…….Workchoices is only an election away again, are you suggesting they put Rudd back in and cancel the mining tax and carbon tax and state support for Australian workplace agreements and ‘turn back the boats’……This is not the ALP of old, you won’t be able to tell them apart from the Lib/Nats and they do conservative support for the big end of town much better.
Iain Hall says:

May 3, 2012 at 12:07 PM

Craigy
Adam Bandt only won his seat on Liberal preferences and they won’t preference him again so he won’t win the seat next time. The Carbon Tax may be killing the Labor party but it also has a negative effect on the Greens because the ordinary folks actaully don’t like the fact that they made Gillard do the back-flip to get into the lodge. Further now that the “soft and cuddly” face of the party has been replaced by the glaring zealot of Christine Milne with a possibility of Lee Rhiannon making a power play the greens have lost their safe environmental mantle and taken up the militant socialist banner instead which is far less attractive to their well meaning demographic.
Ray Dixon says:

May 3, 2012 at 12:13 PM

are you suggesting they put Rudd back in and cancel the mining tax and carbon tax and state support for Australian workplace agreements and ‘turn back the boats’

No. It’s only the carbon tax they need to dump. As for the mining tax, I reckon that’s actually a vote winner not a loser, In fact the current one (engineered by Gillard) is actually a much watered down version of Rudd’s proposal so, on that basis you and the Greens should be supporting a Rudd return too. And did you forget that it was Rudd who threw out the Libs’ WorkChoices?
Iain Hall says:

May 3, 2012 at 12:15 PM

Craigy
What Bolt is suggesting is that the ALP move back to the centre (not to the right as you claim)a position it moved away from to woo the Greens anything less than that will mean their desolation, not just at this coming election but for the next few at least. They don’t have to be “Tony lite” they just have to prove that they are no longer going to let the independents and the Greens wag them like they are a compliant Labrador. Its time for Labor to those overblown bit players that back us of back Abbott but don’t expect us to dance to your tune. Gillard is incapable of doing this (despite her reputation as a negotiator) so maybe Rudd will.
Iain Hall says:

May 3, 2012 at 12:16 PM

Ray It went to the piece when I did the google trick 😦
Luzu says:

May 3, 2012 at 12:17 PM

What Australia really needs is a party that actually has sustainable development as its core policy, without all the social engineering that the Greens feel Australia should endure. That’s why I despise the Greens – they have taken a worthy cause and hitched it to dead-end socialist utopian rejigging of society, basically beacause they are against the capitalist, Christian basis of our society more than anything else.

“Utopia is not under the slightest obligation to produce results: its sole function is to allow its devotees to condemn what exists in the name of what does not.” – Jean-François Revel

Now tell me that that doesn’t exactly encapsulate the Greens.
Ray Dixon says:

May 3, 2012 at 12:23 PM

Your link is to the H-Sun article, Iain, which only takes us to the heading and the login page. So that your readers can access the full article you need to link to the Google search of the H-Sun article’s url, which in this case, is this one:

http://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&gs_nf=1&cp=100&gs_id=4&xhr=t&q=http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/my-advice-for-labor-bring-back-rudd/story-e6frfhqf-1226345126857&pf=p&safe=off&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&oq=http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/my-advice-for-labor-bring-back-rudd/story-e6frfhqf-1226345126857&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=fbfa53bcc7ff6d03&biw=1440&bih=717
Iain Hall says:

May 3, 2012 at 12:34 PM

fixed the link Ray
Craigy says:

May 3, 2012 at 2:21 PM

“Adam Bandt only won his seat on Liberal preferences and they won’t preference him again so he won’t win the seat next time. “

Says you Iain, he is doing a great job and should win in his own right. We will see who’s right. Do you want a box of Twinings on it?

“The Carbon Tax may be killing the Labor party but it also has a negative effect on the Greens because the ordinary folks actually don’t like the fact that they made Gillard do the back-flip to get into the lodge.”

The Greens didn’t force the ALP to do a back flip, that was the voters who came up with the hung parliament, the Greens always had a carbon price policy.

“Further now that the “soft and cuddly” face of the party has been replaced by the glaring zealot of Christine Milne with a possibility of Lee Rhiannon making a power play the greens have lost their safe environmental mantle and taken up the militant socialist banner instead which is far less attractive to their well meaning demographic.”

Ah the ‘Greens will destroy us’ and they are SOCIOLISTS no….no…. COMMUNISTS, who want shrines built to chairman Mao……Don’t you think this smear is getting a bit stale Iain, the Greens have been around a long time and I am yet to see a policy to dismantle capitalism and subject us all to a totalitarian communist system……. If that ever happened they would lose all their support in a free market country like ours, don’t you think?

“That’s why I despise the Greens – they have taken a worthy cause and hitched it to dead-end socialist utopian rejigging of society, basically beacause they are against the capitalist, Christian basis of our society more than anything else. “

Bloody hilarious Luzu, is it no wonder sensible debate isn’t possible with so many christian conservatives when they make statements like that. And people think Bob was mad for talking about “Earthians”, your statement boarders on the bat shit insane.

Oh and it doesn’t even come close to encapsulating the Greens, go and do some research, you are sounding foolish….
Craigy says:

May 3, 2012 at 2:30 PM

Ray,

“As for the mining tax, I reckon that’s actually a vote winner not a loser”

I agree, but watering it down has lost them votes. Imagine what they could have done with the 70 billion they have given up since it was first proposed.

Rudd was his own worst enemy Ray, he should have stood up for, well for….um….whatever it is he believes in. By the way, what does he stand for again??

The Greens shouldn’t take sides. So far they have done a good job of maintaining their integrity whilst being stuck with the ALP, a position not of their making. And a bloody good job of it.
Iain Hall says:

May 3, 2012 at 2:30 PM

A box of Twinings sounds fine Craigy, Earl Grey of course and I prefer the tea leaves rather than tea bags if you don’t mind.

The Greens didn’t force the ALP to do a back flip, that was the voters who came up with the hung parliament, the Greens always had a carbon price policy.

Come off it, a carbon tax was the price for the Greens support and the numbers to govern you can’t blame the voters for the way that Labor played the cards dealt to them, that was all Gillard’s decision and I think I showed what a poor negotiator she really is. She got a deal alright but it was just on such unfavourable terms that it has ham strung her government form the get go.

Don’t you think this smear is getting a bit stale Iain, the Greens have been around a long time and I am yet to see a policy to dismantle capitalism and subject us all to a totalitarian communist system……. If that ever happened they would lose all their support in a free market country like ours, don’t you think?

The truth never gets stale and I predict that the Greens are going to be riven by internal conflict between their socialist and environmental factions in the very near future.
Luzu says:

May 3, 2012 at 3:44 PM

Gee, Craigy, what a gentleman you are. The Greens are utopian first and foremost. Do you actually understand the quote I posted?

And sensible debate from you? Don’t make me laugh. Whatever you disagree with or anything that denigrates your beloved Greens elicits a response categorised by bile and nastiness.
Craigy says:

May 3, 2012 at 4:13 PM

Okay luzu if you are not just spouting nonsense, please provide a link to the Greens policy on creating a socialist utopia. Or any claim by a Green that states that is their aim. If not i stand by my claim that Christian conservatives like yourself are B.S. insane.
Iain Hall says:

May 4, 2012 at 8:59 AM

What Ray wants to hear 😉

here

I can hear him now muttering “if only it were true”….
GD says:

May 4, 2012 at 9:48 AM

Good speech. Unfortunately it makes too much sense. Possibly because it was written by Andrew Bolt. Where are the usual ‘Ruddisms’?

detailed programmatic specificity

fair shake of the sauce bottle
Iain Hall says:

May 4, 2012 at 10:45 AM

Yes GD it all makes too much sense and I expect that Labor will do a good job of snatching utter political genocide from the jaws of mere total defeat, given the results in NSW and Queensland they have real form for it