Are there any positive reasons for Labour's success in Queensland (see
below) or is this like Mitterand's ability to promote the left by using the
racists to divide the right?
My other question is what future can a country of 19 million Europeans have
in a world economy in which their most important neighbours are hundred of
millions of Asians.
Presumably these shifts and shuffles within bourgeois two and a half party
democratic politics merely reflect a long economic process in which clearly
national capital has no answer for working people in Australia.
Chris Burford
BRISBANE, Australia -- Prime Minister John Howard has been dealt another
election-year body blow by discontented Australian voters.
The weekend state election in Queensland brought a massive victory for the
Australian Labor Party, which already held power there.
It follows last week's state election in Western Australia, where the ALP
was swept in to replace Howard's Liberal/National coalition.
The Labor opposition is now being tipped to win the next federal election
easily.
Discontent is being blamed on a new 10 percent Goods and Services Tax
(GST), fuel prices and free-market reforms that have hurt people in the
countryside, known as "the bush."
Howard will be seeking a third consecutive term at the helm of this island
continent of 19 million people when he calls a national election, expected
by November.
He will find it hard to resolve the voter dissatisfaction that swept the
left-of-centre Labor Party back into power in Queensland with a huge
majority, and which ousted the incumbent conservatives from Western Australia.
Labor gained an unexpectedly large swing of around 10 percent in
Queensland. In order to oust Howard from the national capital of Canberra,
Labor needs a swing of 0.6 to 0.8 percent nationwide.
Apart from a massive protest vote that gave Labor state Premier Peter
Beattie up to 69 of the 89 seats in the local parliament, Saturday's vote
in Queensland also involved a return for the anti-Asian immigration One
Nation party.
Having virtually disappeared since it won one million votes in the last
federal election in 1998, One Nation seemed set to win at least three seats
in Queensland, well down on the 11 it won at the previous state poll.
Federal Labor leader Kim Beazley said One Nation played no part in the
massive swing.
Labor's huge victory will send shockwaves through conservatives and give
Labor politicians a huge morale boost.
"You're going to see policy panic, you're going to see deal panic, you're
going to see leadership panic from the Liberal Party," Beazley told reporters.
Howard insisted on Sunday that Queensland had voted on local issues while
admitting it would be "foolish" not to heed the message.
Labor governments now control five of Australia's six states, but most
importantly have a stranglehold on the three big eastern states,
Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, which will determine the national
election. The coalition's next test is in four weeks with a federal
by-election in the Liberal seat of Ryan, a Brisbane constituency.
