He needs to be stopped

Any low to middle class earner who votes for Howard in this years up and coming election are only going to be voting against their own self worth.

I found an Op Ed in today's Age I want to share with my readers. Of course this is nothing I didn't already know, but there are people out there who just don't get it, and don't read the newspapers.

PM of ulterior motives

John Howard is a brilliant politician and part of his skill has been to ruthlessly use economic policy to wrong-foot his opponents. Howard has taken credit for Australia's prosperity, but the truth is that many of his economic policies have been more about entrenching conservative power than about improving the economy.

Take industrial relations as an example. You won't hear Howard admit this, but one of his key motivations for the WorkChoices reforms is the tangible prospect that the new rules will hurt his Labor opponents by crippling their financial backers in the union movement.

It is no secret that the electoral strength of the Labor Party is dependent on the financial strength of the unions. Unions make a massive contribution to the ALP, bankrolling the party's operations through donations, loans and affiliation fees totalling about $7 million every year. And that doesn't include the considerable support in kind regularly provided to Labor candidates, including paid staff and materials for campaign offices.

*snip*

From his first days in government, Howard wanted to reshape Australian universities. His first budget contained dramatic cuts to higher education, and he has since gradually starved universities of public funds. The effect has been to force universities to rely on the foreign and full-fee paying students, who have filled up economics and business faculties. In doing so, Howard has tilted the balance away from the progressive intellectual side of the university sector towards the prosaic conservative side. By gutting the nation's arts faculties, Howard will successfully stunt the development of the next generation of Australian intellectuals.

*snip*

Howard knows that the more people rely on public health care, the more likely they are to support the political party that they associate with strong public services. That is why the growth of private health care is good news for conservative politicians. By weakening public health, Howard weakens the ALP.

Link: The Age: PM of ulterior motives

And I strongly suggest any Aussie reading my blog read the article in full. If we don't want to see Australia turn into something worse than what we have already become, then we need to make sure the conservatives of Australia don't hold government power for a long time to come.

Of course I realize that the ALP hasn't been all that different from the right wing of this country, especially since they helped Howard right discrimination into our constitution which went against the right of every citizen of Australia being able to enter into a marriage. And I will be holding my nose on election day as I vote for Labor. But the only reason I am voting for Labor is because I realize it is either that or face another Howard election win. One in which part way through he will hand over the top job to someone even more right wing than he is.