Most of what my grandfather told me in the 1970s-80s has come to pass:
- That the ALP would never deliver much for working Australians, especially in the wages and conditions department — and he was spot on.
- That the Liberal Party never, or very rarely, builds anything or improves anything for the general public, and that they survive as a political party by creating dramas or inventing crises that do not actually exist before blaming the ALP for whatever it is.
- That the National Party is indeed the collective of agrarian socialists they claim not to be.
I have seen the dismissalof a popularly elected democratic government; seen armed men in balaclavas with attack dogs on the wharves to intimidate workers; seen the supposed crisis, where children were supposedly thrown overboard (a claim proved incorrect after the political damage had been done); the Tampa beat-up, perpetrated by the tory government (Liberal-National) at the time. I have also seen some positive moves take place, such as pricing carbon – which Bill Gates is very much in favor of – to try to avoid climate change.
Thankfully, among the positive changes I have seen include the formation of new political parties, such as The Greens and Katter’s Australian Party, to give a voice to the changing political mood of Australians. Now it seems that everyone is represented except the 3.6 million people in the workforce who earn less than $37,000 per annum.
It’s time that lowly paid Australians had a voice and a party to represent them; hopefully I will see this occur before I die.
