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It's the economy ... and the culture.

Article Excerpt
Modern labour parties around the globe now routinely act as though questions of economic management are beyond politics. Questions of how the economy is organised and run are regarded as having been settled in favour of the self-regulating market. Economic management is viewed as a purely administrative affair. All that remains is to ensure that that the economy keeps humming along and fight running battles over where money is spent. It is here, and around symbolic issues, that significant differences between the ALP and the Conservatives begin to emerge.

The ALP has been at the forefront of this trend, influencing Blair's New Labour to adopt a similar approach. Eager to re-establish their credentials for responsible economic management in the wake of the Whitlam Government, the Hawke-Keating governments in the 1980s and 1990s pursued an approach to economic management that reduced politics to the continuation of business by other means.

Labor did not, of course, achieve this feat alone. Such changes were part of a more general pattern repeated around the world. But neither did they offer any real resistance to or buffer against them. On the contrary, Labor leaders revelled in their newfound...

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