Dr Peter White's Blog

Thoughts and comments from Dr Peter White -- political, philosophical, spiritual, musical and more

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Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

I am retired from the Uni. of Queensland, and have numerous interests inside and outside of the uni. I play classical, bluegrass, country and folk guitar (hows that for a mix?) I am a member of the Australian Labor Party and am currently branch secretary of the Mt Coot-tha branch. I'm also involved in developing virtual reality builds and websites. Never bored!

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Dear Labor Party...

Dear Labor Party

The election has been held, the people have spoken, and enough of them were aware -- as the current cliche puts it -- of the elephant in the room, viz. climate change. For a party whose former Prime Minister declared that it was an issue of highest moral importance, you did sweet bugger all with it.

The Coalition conservative forces don't believe in it. It was a golden opportunity, to capitalise on this, but, as Churchill once said while berating his generals "You have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory".

The Greens have taken the balance of power. They had a cogent, well thought out and clear message on this issue. No one else did, and that is the reason they have performed well.

While you were in government this last time, I was generally pleased at what you did achieve. Your economic management was excellent. Your messages of apologies to our indigenous people, the signing of Kyoto, the valiant attempts at Copenhagen, the sensible industrial relations laws, and all the rest. But alas, your vaunted spin merchants seemed to have singularly failed at getting these messages across, and you were left on the back foot fielding the errors.

Perhaps this was in large part due to Kevin Rudd's propensity to micromanage all of government. I don't know, but it seems that there was little love lost in the party room, most likely due to this, and hence, the ensuing coup.

You have an excellent policy and program in the national broadband network. Well done, it's sorely needed. But then you go on to stuff it up by promoting a ridiculous filter that even the people it was supposed to protect didn't want. Go figure.

I wonder, when do the pragmatics of politics take precedence over a party's ethics and its philosophical stance? I do believe you have lost your way because you have lost the latter and adopted the former as the principal driving force.

And finally, who do you listen to?

It wasn't us.

Reflect, change your modus operandi and management style, listen to the people without your own internal filters, and come back and win, dammit.

P B White

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