Has anyone among your parliamentary cohort noticed that neoliberalism is a failure? Has it occurred to anyone that promoting selfishness and making people insecure is a recipe for people to turn on each other and shred the social fabric? Does anyone think it might be time to stop being Liberal-lite? Time to champion the battlers and stop pandering to the fat cats? Time for a Labor party to remember why it was founded?
Geoff Davies
-
GEOFF DAVIES. The betrayal, corruption and capture of the Liberal Party
The Liberal Party has strayed far from the vision propounded by its founder, Sir Robert Menzies, to the point of being captured by special interests. (more…)
-
GEOFF DAVIES. The Independent path to effective democracy, and survival.
A way to break us out of the ossified and toxic parliamentary culture and the fearful stupor of the electorate. A way to restore fluid and functional governance. (more…)
-
GEOFF DAVIES. A central dysfunction: house price inflation, stagnant economy
The problem with the housing bubble is not a shortage of housing, the problem is an excess of money. The solution is to restrict the amounts banks can loan. The solution is a credit squeeze. But it would have to be done carefully and the government would have to be willing to spend.
-
GEOFF DAVIES. Hawke and Keating set Australia, and Labor, up for failure
Labor failed, again. It took on the most riven, brutal and monumentally incompetent rabble since Federation and still could not manage to beat them. This is a profound failure that requires a profound explanation. There is one, though it goes against decades of received wisdom.
-
GEOFF DAVIES. The myth of the robust deregulated economy.
The economic ‘reforms’ of the 1980s are supposed to have set Australia up for an unprecedented run of prosperity: 27 years, and counting, without a recession. The economy’s robustness is supposed to have saved us from the Global Financial Crisis. In fact our economy has been unstable, and its performance has been mediocre verging on anaemic. Any appearance of robust prosperity is due to a huge run-up of debt, some direct intervention, high immigration, overwork, selective blindness and over-active imaginations. (more…)
-
GEOFF DAVIES. Lest We Also Forget.
The women who tried to stop the slaughter; the vibrant young nation crushed; that a nation’s soul cannot be sponsored by arms manufacturers; the Australian war. (more…)
-
GEOFF DAVIES. Australian politics is a culture of untruths.
The Turnbull Cabinet is upset because some of its secrets are outed through incompetence. The filing cabinet papers so far reveal some hypocrisy and the untruths of Government Ministers past and present. (more…)
-
GEOFF DAVIES. Score voting: a simpler, less distorting measure of voters’ will
Score voting avoids the vagaries and gaming that are intrinsic to preference ranking systems. It is simpler and more reliably reflects the will of voters. You have probably used it if you have completed a survey. We should use it in political elections. (more…)
-
GEOFF DAVIES. The chasm between the society we are offered and the fair go we want
There is widely perceived to be a gap between our stumbling political system and the wishes of the Australian people. However those who look a little deeper into our Australian hearts see not just a gap but a yawning chasm. (more…)
-
GEOFF DAVIES. The UK election: lessons for Australian stunned mullets
The UK election result is heartening, joining a series of demonstrations that people want positive change. But in Australia we seem to be paralysed, no-one willing to pick up the torch, many still unwilling to change their old allegiances despite the manifest destruction around us. (more…)
-
GEOFF DAVIES. Brexit, Trump and a Rigged System. Part 2 of 2.
Neoliberalism let loose the anarchic forces of free markets just at the time when we most needed them to be restrained and redirected so as not to wreck our planetary home. (more…)
-
GEOFF DAVIES. Brexit, Trump and a Rigged System. Part 1 of 2.
Behind the votes for Brexit and Trump lies a simple and widespread perception: the system is rigged in favour of the rich. That perception is accurate. People may lash out at scapegoats and follow false prophets, but their disgust and alienation are quite justified. Trump promised to break up the cozy club at the top, and many people said Yes. (more…)