Now here’s an odd one about Australian politics. August 24, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Reading up on the Australian Elections what do I chance across but this… the Democratic Labour Party, which is a most intriguing political entity. It’s a sort of melange of social conservatism and a rather Catholic tinged view of labour and it’s just won a seat in the Australian Senate.
It’s also a descendant of the original Democratic Labor Party, which was a split away from the Australian Labor Party in the 1950s by anti-Communist Catholics… some very anti-communist Catholics. Apparently it had a strong Irish Australian aspect to it (and for another Irish connection check out this).
Functionally, in political terms, the importance of the original DLP was to operate as a support to the conservative parties. That’s unlikely to be its current or future role, at least directly after this election given that the action isn’t in the Senate, but it’s an interesting indication of some shifts in the political undergrowth.
Monbiot has interesting background to the calling of the election and the poor Labor showing.
In a nutshell there was a significant portion of the Labor vote concerned to do something about reducing the average Australian’s huge carbon footprint. Australian governments are, to a large extent, controlled by mining interests and Big Coal is very influential. So two successive Labor Prime Ministers flunked it and the green Labor vote voted Green.