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Catallaxy Files- Labor lost the economic debateLenore Taylor in the SMH. One of the first fights inside the ALP will be about why it so comprehensively lost the economic debate during the election campaign. Very senior figures are asking why Labor didn’t talk louder and sooner about its achievements in managing the country through the global economic crisis. With the national [...]
- Open Forum September 4, 2010
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- Labor lost the economic debate
- Andrew Norton
- Graduates three years onGraduate Careers Australia has released Beyond Graduation 2009, a follow-up survey three years on of graduates they first surveyed in 2006. A few points of interest on topics of particular interest to me: * The proportion of their sample who were overseas had doubled from 3.2% to 6.8%, which means that they will not be [...]
- How well-known are think-tanks?I received a letter today from John Roskam, executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs, outlining the organisation’s recent successes (and it has indeed flourished under his leadership). He included with the letter what I think is the first ever survey of think-tank name recognition. Though as John points out in the letter the [...]
- The financial benefits of higher educationThe ABS has an interesting new publication out today on the financial benefits of higher education. ABS anlayst Hui Wei uses data from the 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006 censuses to provide estimates of rates of return for investment in higher education. In the figure below, the rates are based on post-tax earnings [...]
- Graduates three years on
- IPA news
- Government: who needs it? September 2, 2010The election result isn't all bad. If you own shares, you shouldn't be unhappy we don't have a government yet. That's...
- Gillard likely to cop expansive Green agenda August 31, 2010Julia Gillard says that neither party has convinced Australia that it alone has won the right to govern and that "our...
- The cost of fighting the cost of living August 31, 2010Despite both major parties claiming they'll fight to stop increases in the cost of living, neither are likely to deliver...
- Government: who needs it? September 2, 2010
[...] for Get Up (more failed socialist economics), but as Terje over at Thoughts on Freedom points out, they got one thing right. [...]
Pingback by skepticlawyer » Pointless populism, parts #3 & 17 | June 19, 2008 |
Get Up is just a front for Labor normally, so this is refreshing.
Didn’t they have candidates in the senate in the last election?
>> Get Up is just a front for Labor normally, so this is refreshing.
What a load of crap!
Yes GetUp are a bunch of socialists, but I think there’s room for a libertarian version of them.
It could be called HandsOff!, like GetUp! it would be non-partisan, but would campaign against givernment regulation, interference, and nanny statism.
James, you are kidding yourself if you think GetUp isn’t a labour front.
I don’t think GetUp are a Labor front, at least not explicitly. I would call them more of a socialist front.
They probably have a few Labor people in there, but I reckon many more would be Greens and Socialist Alliance supporters.
They campaigned pretty hard for Labor in the leadup to the election because they hated Howard, but now Rudd’s in he’s not socialist enough for them.
People here seeing GetUp through left-right, capitalist-socialist, lib-lab, libertarian-interventionist prisms are sprouting the kinds of C20 nonsense that has got us as far up shit creek as we are.
All we’ve seen here is rational video, timely and well-made, from an organisation that is is more issues-based than ideological and (relatively) more bottom-up than top-down.
Just because GetUp is bottom-up and issues-based, doesn’t mean they don’t hold political positions that can be identified. They have clearly and consistently supported policies which involve more government involvement and a distrust of voluntary coordination. That means they are interventionist. It is therefore not surprising that many GetUp members are Green/ALP supporters.
While a libertarian version would be nice, there aren’t enough libertarians. It’s difficult enough to fill up a few groups and one political party… let alone proposing that we spread our efforts even thinner. If libertarians want to help they should support a current group, not create yet another micro-group.
While a libertarian version would be nice, there aren’t enough libertarians. It’s difficult enough to fill up a few groups and one political party…
Comment by Temujin | June 21, 2008
I reckon you’d be surprised if you got out there and spread the message a bit more. You might find a fair few who are libertarians without knowing it.
Here you need to take a leaf from Getup’s book.
It’s ironic really, for an organisation that generally opposes the marketing practices of corporates (and possibly marketing in general as a tool of capitalism), the one thing that GetUp does quite well is market itself.
I think GetUp are probably best defined as a political activism group who aim to get leftist governments in power and keep them in power, while continuing to lobby them for their own pet causes.
This makes them in practice, if not in theory, a Labor front.
There probably is room for a libertarian version of GetUp though. I’d join that.
There probably is room for a libertarian version of GetUp though. I’d join that.
Ahem. The LDP?
How is Ben Buckley going in the Gippsland by-election, BTW?
Thanks David, but I’m thinking groups that have political interests but are independent of the political process.
In order to agitate for smaller government, and for greater responsibility by individual citizens for their freedoms, beyond the demands of the welfare state, I think it is necessary to have individuals working outside the political process. There’s no point in fighting for greater freedom from an interventionist government if no-one does anything with that freedom.
[...] at the demand for petrol, while Terje Petersen and various others love the GetUp YouTube video on Rudd’s FuelWatch scheme.Should small-l liberals defect to the ALP? Mark Bahnisch is [...]
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