Economy
NATION: Plus Ça Change in the Liberal Party …
I have recently been convinced that we are currently going through the lowest period ever in Australian politics. However … I have just come across Patrick Cook’s Fraser Country that had been lying forgotten on my bookshelves for thirty years.
The book is a series of cartoons and a commentary starting with the Dismissal in 1975 and ending in 1980. I had forgotten how bad things were then – not as bad as they are now but the pattern is distressingly similar.The Liberal party is nothing if not consistent.
Fraser is a darling of the Left today: he certainly wasn’t thirty years ago.
I found some cartoons about issues that Abbott is replaying with seed Fraser may have sown,if with many times Fraser’s ferocity: relentless negativism from the Liberals, vicious leadership battles in the Labor Party, hitting the poor and underprivileged but pandering to the wealthy, the latter showing a toadlike John Howard sharpening Fraser’s axes), pushing the boats back, and returning to the past.
Is it too much to think that Abbott may – in his dotage – repent of his merciless past and become a champion of the underdog? I don’t think so for even then Fraser showed some signs of racial tolerance and other glimmers of social awareness; Abbott has shown none.
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