By Shane Wombat
G’day … It’s Time.
If Bill Shorten wants to leave a lasting legacy and secure like Gough Whitlam his place in history – he needs to take his inspiration from Australia’s most progressive prime minister.
No prime minister changed Australia more than Gough Whitlam; and that he did it in less than three years has never been forgotten by the backward-looking Ruling Rabble. In a flurry of activity, Whitlam established universal healthcare, effectively nationalised higher education with free tuition, and massively increased public-sector salaries. He enacted an ambitious cultural agenda that has continued to shape Australia until 2013, when Bookshelves Brandis and more recently, Fifi Fifield have proceeded to gut cultural and communication funding by paying their Ugly American Piper from the public purse.
In just three years, Australia was given a new national anthem, ditched the British honours system, and abolished the death penalty and national service. He was the first Australian prime minister (and ahead of the Americans) to visit communist China and he granted independence to Papua New Guinea. Whitlam also passed the Racial Discrimination Act and introduced no-fault divorce.
In short, Whitlam brought Australia into the C20th: but the present Ruling Rabble under the aegis of The-Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe (IPA) and their secret promoters have since 1975 been desperate and, in some cases successful, in dismantling his legacy and attempting to turn Australia back into a cringing neo-liberal backwater of cultural forelock-tugging and a land of increasing wealth polarity at the mercy of a failing capitalist “market economy”.
It’s Time to redress the balance.
For Australians to aspire to something higher than base greed posing as “aspiration”, cupidity, division, fear and racism.
And all happily paraphrased and misquoted from the IPA handbook on destroying Australia: circa 2012.
Things Labor Must Do in its 1st Term
1. Re-Introduce the price on carbon. Re-fund The Clean Energy Finance Corp and all Climate Change bodies as a priority, ensuring Australia is, by re-allocating subsidies to fossil fuel polluters, specifically the Diesel Rebate, modernising its generation systems. Increase the Renewable Energy Target to more realistically meet Australia’s commitment to a cleaner world.
2. Set up an ICAC with teeth.
3. Re-nationalise Centrelink, and re-think 457 requirements to advantage Australian citizens. Re-nationalise Telstra and all Electricity services or fund community decentralised grids of mixed wind, solar, hydro and battery storage.
4. Royal Commissions/Judicial enquiries into:
a) political funding
b) ministerial entitlements 2013 – 2018 including dual citizenship whilst serving. Review all current parliamentary salaries/entitlements particularly with regard to post parliamentary employment
c) private sector Executive remuneration and Senior Public Service remuneration
d) the overseas funding of “Think-Tanks” and political lobbyists
e/ overseas media influence in Australian media/appropriateness of character/interference and-or evidence of illegal activity either here or elsewhere/suitability for licence
f) Murray/Darling mismanagement and the appropriateness of certain crops
g) the Australian Federal Police, specifically its political bias.
5. Abolish all but “per head” flat rate funding to private/public schools and remove religious chaplains from public schools.
Abolish university fees for Australian citizens and expand TAFE.
6. Cancel purchase of the F-35 and re-negotiate orders of foreign built submarines and vessels.
Compulsorily acquire Ford ,General Motors and Toyota manufacturing plants and convert to manufacture of electric/hydrogen vehicles and other public/military transport needs.
7. Gradual repeal of Negative Gearing.
8. Stricter media guidelines and strengthen Press Council sanctions for false / deliberately inaccurate statements .
9. Increase funding for the ABC/Arts bodies/Screen Australia, restore funding to National Library and the National Archives.
Remove present ABC MD and other IPA affiliated staff and board members.
10. Rescind commissions of Ambassador to US and UK High Commissioner and replace with career diplomatic corps.
11. Abolish the ABCC and restructure the “Fair Work Commission” replacing those political appointments made since 2013.
12. Close Manus and Nauru concentration camps, relocate refugees to Australia, review the excesses of Border Force and security operations.
There ya go. Not as all encompassing as the IPA’s original 75 Things Rabid the Hun must do to destroy civil society in Australia, quickly expanded (from their spurious “research”) and their foetid minds to 100 points … but a start in redressing the appalling career to the far-right and fascism Australia is currently undergoing.
This article was originally published on Shane Wombat’s Droppings.
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