En Passant

Former Treasurer Scott Morrison is the new neoliberal Prime Minister, but the right-wing reactionaries in the Liberal Party will never be appeased, writes Independent Australia’s Canberra correspondent John Passant.

  In Independent Australia I look back at the neoliberal year of 2017 and find a steady, global undercurrent of resistance for trickle-down campaigns of the kind favoured by the Coalition Government in Australia.

The s44 fiasco has highlighted the born-to-rule incompetence of the Turnbull Government and its lack of policy and action. This is a crisis of neoliberalism, I write in Independent Australia.

There is an urgent need for an organised political Left to challenge current neoliberal economic and social policy, says John Passant in Independent Australia.

In Independent Australia on Tuesday I discussed neoliberalism, worldwide rejection of political establishments and the ramifications for workers. Click here for a link to the article.

In Independent Australia I discuss Australia’s shifting political divide in light of growing global austerity and the rise of extremism. I call for unity against the rising tide of reaction. To read the article In Independent Australia click here. Neoliberalism and Australia’s political divide.

Jim Casey may or may not win Grayndler from potential Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese in this election. It is however pretty clear that the Greens will not go away and the reason for that is that the ALP is now so right wing and so pro-market and pro-capital in government that some of its previous supporters are shifting and have shifted to what they perceive as a progressive alternative. No amount of abuse from the likes of Keating is going to change that. To win labour votes the ALP should have labour policies.

This is an article by me in New Matilda on Anthony Albanese, the left, unelectability and the neoliberal Australian Labor Party. ‘The common media narrative on the ‘left’ of the Labor Party is that its leaders, like Anthony Albanese, are unelectable. John Passant disagrees, both about the electability, and the ‘left’.’ To read the article click here.

The neoliberal snake oil salesman that is Turnbull is performing the role Labor wanted to play. He has stolen their ground and unless they come up with a real alternative, a radical alternative a la Corbyn that challenges austerity, then in the short to medium term, until the reality of Turnbull’s snake oil salesmanship is revealed in practice, they will continue to rot in opposition.

Many of my readers will be hoping for a Jeremy Corbyn in Australia to move the Labor Party here to the left. There is no Corbyn in the Parliamentary Labor Party. The Labor left, such as it is, is thoroughly imbued with the logic of neoliberalism. In the main it is a tribal allegiance rather than an ideological ferment of ideas to challenge capitalism. You never hear the S word from these very models of a modern major general of capital. None of the possible contenders for Corbyn down under have the same track record as Corbyn in opposing austerity or fighting against social and political injustice. Indeed people like Albanese and Plibersek have been Ministers in Labor governments that have implemented neoliberal policies and attacked public services and workers’ rights and conditions. They are part of the very problem Corbyn is fighting against.