Last September, while campaigning for the position of Lord Mayor of Newcastle and a ward councillor, I bumped into an NSW Labor Party officer at a coffee shop.
“Comrade”, he said, “You’ve got some great policies”. “Feel free to borrow any of them,” I relied cheekily. “Our housing policy, for example, is based on Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton's work in Moreland, Victoria.”
The next day the local papers reported that ALP candidates were talking up “affordable housing”.
It says a lot about the state of politics today that the worst thing following the Murdoch-owned Sky News interview with neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell on immigration earlier this month, was not that a media outlet was giving a fascist a platform. The worst thing was that Cottrell’s comments were indistinguishable from those of other mainstream media outlets and elected politicians.
New South Wales is now officially in drought and parts of Queensland have been in continuous drought for years. But the climate denier federal government has its head in the sand.
Before the “super Saturday” byelections on July 28, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was saying the outcome would be a “test of leadership”.
Then he lost all five contests and changed his tune.
