Re: [Marxism] Australia's new Labour PM

["gary.maclennan@xxxxxxxxx" <gary.maclennan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Walter

This article is typical crap.  Where to begin? Rudd himself denies that he
is anything of a leftist.  He has stated clearly that he rejects the labels
right or left.  Like the Australian Green he is "out in front". To
understand Rudd and to see what one will get from him one needs to look at
the Qld Labor Govt of 1990-96.  Rudd ran the Premier's office and  was the
leading intellectual force behind the government. They passed some
administrative reforms attempting to undo some of the worst excesses of the
long running conservative government they had replaced.  But there were by
and large a government of arrogant alpha males who administered the system
as rational bureaucrats and modernizers and the devil take anyone who stood
in their way.

Rudd' great weakness is that he is administering a system which is
inherently irrrational, never more so.  He has also inherited the hopes and
high expectations of the Australian people who have sleep walked through the
mind numbing Howard years. However his government has quietly gone along
with the plans of the reserve bank to plunge the economy into a recession by
raising interest rate and insisting on government cuts.

In foreign affairs he is I think attemtping,very cautiously to distance
himself very slightly from the "all the way with the USA" position of the
Howard Govt.  That is because within his party there is still a strain of
left-nationalism that finds the relationship with the USA to be
humiliating.  But Rudd himself shares none of that, I strongly suspect.

What happens next depends probably on the economic crisis.  The Murdoch
Press has assured everyone that Australia will be ok if China is ok.
Perhaps,,,

regards

Gary
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