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Notes after the 'settlement': in a shifting global context, the coming transformation of Australia will release the best and worst of us.

Article Excerpt
Every political writer sooner or later notices the way in which history will eventually offer bookends to eras--brief periods in which factors that determined political struggle and terrain for decades or longer come to an end in an appearance of symmetry with the manner in which they began. Thus it is now, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, as we approach the imminent possession of total parliamentary power by the conservative non-Labor parties, at a time when the social and ideological power of those who would oppose them is sufficiently weakened to make its deterrent effect questionable. We assumed that the focus would be on national affairs. But international events--from Bolivia to China via Denpasar--have put that national question in context. And it is not just any old context, but the context in which it was originally formulated--a country in the middle of Asia, whose politics is dominated by the hopes and fears, the demands and beliefs of its white working class (although the very nature of the current moment shows the oversimplified nature of that argument, a point to which I will return), and the cultural and political forces put in play by enormous economic and demographic movements. Let us try to summarise not only the current challenge, but also the character of the time that is ending, and its beginnings, in an effort to see a way ahead.

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The imminent transformation of the country by the political Right is not itself the problem. The virtual abolition of arbitration and labour market regulation, the further privatisation of the health system, the undermining of universities as autonomous social institutions (including the abolition of student unions), and even media ownership laws could all be reversed later by a left government that acquires a similar control. The problem is that there seems little possibility that such a government would ever be on offer again. Leaving...

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