As part of Gillard’s pathetic attempt to cadoodle up to the Obama administration, she has gone out of her way to present herself as a progressive while in the USA. This is in stark contrast to before the last election, from the ABC November 2007 she said the following:
I’m an economic conservative. I’ve always believed in an open competitive Australian economy. I’ve always believed in the value of hard work and I certainly believe we need to keep the budget in surplus over the economic cycle…and we should not increase taxation as a percentage of GDP.
Well the budget is not in surplus, the real tax burden will increase as a percentage of GDP and spending is at record levels. Where is the conservatism in all of this? This is what she is now saying, from a recent address in the USA:
It’s also a time of challenge for the global community, a time in which that challenge demands progressive responses.
But the success of those responses is not guaranteed. For example, we are warned and worried by the advances of the right and far right in this month’s European elections, just as we are cheered that change has come and continues to come to Washington.
So when Gillard said conservative she really meant progressive. And as for the rise of the ‘right and far right’ what exactly is she referring to, the BNP? They want to abolish the monarchy – check one Gillard – they want the government to take over businesses – check two Gillard – increase government welfare- check three Gillard – more public health instead of private - check four Gillard – tighter worker conditions – check five Gillard – higher taxes – check six Gillard. The BNP has far more in common with Gillard than it has with John Howard. As pointed out by Telegraph blogger and MEP Daniel Hannan in relation to the BNP:
As Hayek wrote in 1944 in his brilliant chapter on “the socialist roots of Nazism”, the dispute between fascists and socialists is a dispute between brothers. Labour and the BNP are, in a sense, competing for the same sort of voter: one who believes in the power of the state. The one kind of voter whom both fascists and socialists regard as beyond persuasion is the small-government Tory.
She then says that Australia’s recent economic prosperity is all due entirely to “global demand for commodities”. In otherwords, Howard/Costello had nothing to do with it. This is the ALP’s luck thesis, that economic and fiscal management is all down to luck, good or bad. She goes on:
In the last period of US politics, Australia was associated with the most negative aspects of a conservatism which is still alive and potentially powerful today – a conservatism of unrestrained economic liberalisation and narrow social morality. Of climate change denial and unilateral military intervention.
A conservatism which sought proximity to US power and tried to bank the economic benefits of globalisation, but did nothing to build a new culture of stewardship or legitimacy with which to address the huge challenges of global interdependence that this conference is discussing.
The Rudd Government was elected in late 2007 with a mandate to change that direction. We stand on the shoulders of the reforming, progressive governments which have driven progressive politics through the 1990s and into the 21st century.
Once again, so much for economic conservatism. Gillard would never speak like this in public in Australia. As for “unrestrained economic liberalisation”, where was the downside in Australia to this? And then she uses a number of left-wing code words like social mobility, denial and unilateral. Then questions the very legitimacy of the Howard government: ” did nothing to build…legitimacy.” Legitimacy is not built like some Trotsky terror guard, but is bestowed through the people via something called voting. Gillard might want to google it.
Our Government was elected just in time to form a response to the global financial crisis. Our response has been in keeping with that of the US, the UK and other economically progressive governments.
In a nutshell, massive amounts of unsustainable levels of debt to be repaid by those not yet born. Progressive, no? In an Orwellian kind of way.