Australia’s national ALP government’s re-election campaign as compared to the Harris-Walz campaign for the US Presidency

Australia will have national elections at some stage next year. 

The ALP government has started campaigning for re-election, and seems to be focused on cost-of-living issues - to the extent of reneging on prior commitments, and trying to shut down debates on human rights issues (although this is very encouraging). 

Now, to some extent that is understandable, given the clear message from the electorate in 2019 that it didn’t want too much progressivism (and voters must accept responsibility for sending that message) and the fact that trying to make ends meet now is a struggle that is at crisis proportions (homelessness, health problems, etc are at extreme levels), but it is hard to look at the joy, enthusiasm, and proudly pro-progressive democracy being shouted from the rooftops by the Harris-Walz campaign for the US Presidency and not be envious ... 

We haven’t seen that since the  campaign  to  elect the Whitlam government in 1972 ... (the energy in 2007 was more anti-Howard than excitement about Rudd, although that was also present).

 

I want to end with a quote from   “The president we need”   https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-nomination-of-kamala-harris-for      

“We have learned that Trump cannot be beaten at his own game.    ...   The only way to beat him is by playing an entirely different game — a game that draws on qualities that are the opposite of his, that appeals to those aspects of the American character diametrically opposed to his.   Lincoln spoke of the better angels of our nature. Those better angels are still there but have lain dormant since 2016. Biden tried reviving them, but he didn’t have the energy or stamina to pull it off. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz do.”

That is something for all democracies to aspire to ... 

 

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

• this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

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Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/