"It's hard to appeal to an underclass anymore when there isn't one save for those who get themselves into such a position by their own deliberate actions eg. gambling addicts,drug addicts,alcohol addicts etc."
Gobsmacked! Is this really what today’s labor voters really think? It was commented in a casual way, you know? You know?
Dubbo, NSW, - how could new police powers invented for Sydney beaches so suddenly find a market out there? Labor planning? I was thoroughly enjoying the lentils right up till this cobbler. All those little guys in all those little country towns with no petrol to work with, tsk, those stupid peasants, what a laugh, eh? While we’re on the topic, what about those useless blackfellas, shoulda chose white parents, the hopeless indigents!
I'm truly pissed that the thinking is about maximising advantage rather than getting the nod for a job well done. It's a house of cards and it's getting Kim’s breezy arse all over it. Zero vision.
Rex, if you consider the conditions that grow folks who deliberately destroy their own lives, you may also see a huge block of votes going to feral Evangelicals who, like socialists before them, actually thrive on poverty and ignorance. Transport costs in outer metro and rural backwaters will create a growing market in underclass votes. Ignoring that is to affirm, and dutifully emulate, Howard's Plan. It is, above all, lousy strategy.
I don’t know if you’re aware of the grip the babbler churches have on rural NSW, if you want to understand just how to capture an electorate you need to study the relentless faith they’ve shown in the losers. At first they trained their own workforce from the displaced rural labourers that the “green Revolution” left stranded. They turned them into plumbers and electricians and gave them jobs building houses which they were given to live in whilst they built more houses for export bucks, all the time recruiting and supporting whole families.
They’ve been nearly invisible as a political force until now, but they’ve been making friends for 40 years. Labor, on the other hand, has done bugger all for this mob since Whitlam. While it continues to throw this baby out, it will continue to be just so much bathwater circling the drain.
Urbanization began when moving workers was cheaper than moving factories. When road freight begins shifting to private rail infrastructure then the likelihood of a drift back to the regionals becomes possible. With metropolitan land prices, water shortages, crime and pollution, the serfs might get the idea that small communities that look after themselves may have more to offer. Zero-tolerant rednecks are the norm in this environment, they don't vote Labor. The Church owns their houses and dictates their public morality. (To beat up on Groucho: I wouldn't vote for any politician who could win in this electorate!)
Politically, I suspect Barnaby clones will begin popping up in all sorts of electorates and the Episcopalian/whatever Jesus freaks will continue to developed institutional power in many of our pov regionals - it’s gonna take some planning and a lot of leadership to get any advantage from a mob you think of as untouchable. If Labor doesn't save the underclass, the Adventists will - with new IR laws and higher transport costs the numbers will soon be legion. Could Dubbo’s future be Melbourne’s in microcosm? There is no effective substitute for petrochems in the Australian Economy. None. Can you build enough razorwire paddocks for all the petrol addicts? Put ‘em to work chipping cotton when Auscot runs low on diesel?
"Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit." - Abbie Hoffman
