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The origins of political surveillance in Australia
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September 14, 2015
A book on Australian Political History
2 March 2013
I think I picked this book up in one of those give aways at a local library because the title interested me, though it took me some time to get around to reading it. It is not one of those reads where you sit down for an afternoon in the sun, since it is a more academic book that would be more at home in a university library to be used as a source for an essay on Australian politics and history.
After reading the book I must say to myself that I found that the Labor party have been treated very unfairly in the past, but that is not surprising because this comes out of the class struggle that Marx talks about. The parties of the ruling classes are always threatened by party that represents the working classes because it give the bulk of the people rights that threatens their abilities to exploit them. In my experience I have found that the Liberal Party (or the Republican Party) tend to be much more aggressive and antagonistic, almost as if they believe that it is their right to rule.
It is not that I consider the Labor Party to be perfect - far from it - though many have argued that Labor have moved far away from their original base. I would suggest that that is true, particularly since it can be very difficult blunting the attacks from a mostly right-wing media. I suspect that there is pressure on them from outside, with the creation of international bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF. The Keysian view of economics has been replaced by a belief in free market economics, which is the idea of a sink of swim mentality. However the problem is that there are people who, without assistance, will sink.
The idea of having people responsible for their own destiny is good in a way because humanity by nature is lazy, and if they can get something for free then they will not work for it. For instance if you make somebody's job secure then they are less likely to work hard to maintain that job. However, humanity is also by nature greedy, meaning that if you give the employer greater powers over the employees then they will no doubt exploit them. In many cases the wealthy are quite blind to the situation of the poor, but on the flip side many of the poor are poor through their own actions.
It is a sad state though that the so called democracy has to resort to monitoring and keeping an eye on people simply because of their political persuasion. In fact the fore runner of ASIO was monitoring the actions of the Labor party even while they were in government, and while we may ask how that works, we must consider the question of whether, if this party is in power, do they still have access to everything hidden in the departmental vaults.
2 March 2013
I think I picked this book up in one of those give aways at a local library because the title interested me, though it took me some time to get around to reading it. It is not one of those reads where you sit down for an afternoon in the sun, since it is a more academic book that would be more at home in a university library to be used as a source for an essay on Australian politics and history.
After reading the book I must say to myself that I found that the Labor party have been treated very unfairly in the past, but that is not surprising because this comes out of the class struggle that Marx talks about. The parties of the ruling classes are always threatened by party that represents the working classes because it give the bulk of the people rights that threatens their abilities to exploit them. In my experience I have found that the Liberal Party (or the Republican Party) tend to be much more aggressive and antagonistic, almost as if they believe that it is their right to rule.
It is not that I consider the Labor Party to be perfect - far from it - though many have argued that Labor have moved far away from their original base. I would suggest that that is true, particularly since it can be very difficult blunting the attacks from a mostly right-wing media. I suspect that there is pressure on them from outside, with the creation of international bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF. The Keysian view of economics has been replaced by a belief in free market economics, which is the idea of a sink of swim mentality. However the problem is that there are people who, without assistance, will sink.
The idea of having people responsible for their own destiny is good in a way because humanity by nature is lazy, and if they can get something for free then they will not work for it. For instance if you make somebody's job secure then they are less likely to work hard to maintain that job. However, humanity is also by nature greedy, meaning that if you give the employer greater powers over the employees then they will no doubt exploit them. In many cases the wealthy are quite blind to the situation of the poor, but on the flip side many of the poor are poor through their own actions.
It is a sad state though that the so called democracy has to resort to monitoring and keeping an eye on people simply because of their political persuasion. In fact the fore runner of ASIO was monitoring the actions of the Labor party even while they were in government, and while we may ask how that works, we must consider the question of whether, if this party is in power, do they still have access to everything hidden in the departmental vaults.
Displaying 1 of 1 review