Thousands upon thousands of words have been written about Labor’s failures during the election, most of them admittedly by the Murdoch Press, but there are also many left leaning adherents bewildered and angered by Labor’s failure to stand firm on the left wing of Australia’s political landscape.

Among the herd of elephants in the caucus room, knocking over the furniture and leaving giant dung balls everywhere, is the one with Labor’s greatest success riding monkey-like on its back.

Labor was the party of unions, the left wing socialists whose raison d’etre was to look after the working man, protect him from the depredations of the red-faced capitalist bastards at the other end of town. And it took decades, but they succeeded. A relentless force in opposition and reforming zeal in government has changed the landscape for what we can no longer call the working class.

Working families are not the victims of corporate malfeasance that they once were. They are paid fairly, their workplaces are safe, they cannot be dismissed without cause, and were any of these things to occur they have accessible redress under the law. And for all those folk about to start squalling about dreadful things they saw on A Current Affair just last week, no of course we don’t live in a beautiful utopia where mining magnates lie down next to construction crews. While we’d all like more money and a newer iPad, the workers in Australia now do not suffer under the kind of conditions that gave the Labor party its drive in the twentieth century. Employment conditions are better now than any workers in the history of work have experienced.

Further than that, with close to full employment most people who want a job can get one; if they cant, they can find the assistance and training they need to make that possible. Housing is expensive, but not prohibitive, Howard’s battlers are eating good quality food in front of plasma screen TVs and they don’t need a whole political party dedicated to protecting rights they know are now deeply embedded in our legal, political and economic landscapes. They’re safe, they’re fairly comfortable and sometimes, they even have the freedom to feel concerned about the few people who aren’t.

So if the disenfranchised minorities powerless to fight against the circumstances that oppress them are not the workers, who are they?

They are the mentally ill, indigenous populations, refugees, addicts, criminals, the disabled and of course, the environment.

While Labor was busy throwing pies at the opposition from what it assumed was its unassailable position on the left wing of the high moral ground, it failed to notice that ground moving underneath it. Left wing defence of the needy was left lying in a puddle until the Greens effortlessly scooped it up and turned its cause into a political force.

Then, after losing ground to the left and being unable to lurch to the right, Labor started spinning around the centre, not understanding that the centre cannot hold more than one political idea at a time. If the coalition under Tony Abbott can maintain their grip on middle Australia there really is nowhere left for Labor to go.

Vale ALP, and thank you.

+ 1

+ 1