Under the shade of a Barcaldine gum tree
The response to Kay Rollison’s An Open Letter to Bill Shorten was
overwhelming, suggesting that many Labor voters are dissatisfied with
Mr Shorten’s performance as Leader of the Opposition. This, of course,
remains open for debate. We follow this up with another letter to Mr
Shorten, from Damian Smith, who is not so much dissatisfied with Mr Shorten himself, but the party he leads.
To The Hon. Bill Shorten,
Mr Shorten, I’m concerned.
My concerns regard yourself and the party that you lead and
represent. Recent reports speculate that you are considering not
blocking supply to this farcical attempt at fascism masquerading as a
budget, that you would consider doing so “undemocratic”.
Mr Shorten, this budget is undemocratic. It is a stretch to even call
it a budget. It would be more accurate to call it a summation of all of
the broken promises of this government, all the brazen lies these
cretins slathered on the Australian electorate in a craven grab for
power. All of what was promised in the election has been retracted. The
opposite has been put into effect. That is not, to my way of
thinking, conducive with democracy.
This is the time when the Labor Party should be at its most vehement,
jaws locked firmly on the exposed jugular of an overconfident foe. Yet
you look set to let this injustice slide, to once again do what the
Labor Party has become so good at in the last decade – capitulate.
Mr Shorten do you even remember the light on the hill?
I do, though every day it becomes even more dim and distant, as those
of us who still strive for it are waylaid by the tyrannies of evil men
and the sheer implacability of those that would set their will against
us.
I used to be a member of the Labor Party. I believe in the values
that the party was built on – equality, egalitarianism, “a fair go”. I
believe that the measure of a man is in the quality of his work and the
strength of his accomplishment, not the money in his bank or the name on
his birth certificate. Ben Chifley’s Light On The Hill.
In those values I still believe, though I fear the Labor Party does not.
I had to leave. I left as I watched the political landscape change and not for the better.
I watched as the right-wing of Australia migrated from “right-wing”
to “crazy, backwards, religiously extreme, flat-earth, young-earth,
creationist, f**ked-up right wing” and I watched as the Labor Party,
traditionally the “left”, in an attempt to claw back any and every vote
that it could, went from being left wing to being “just slightly left of
the Tea Party nutters”.
In the most Faustian of moves you sold your soul. You sold out the
people who truly believed in the cause to try to woo those whose vote
you would never have.
You neither had your cake nor the satisfaction of eating it.
That I could not countenance. So I left.
The right controls the media and so too do they control the paradigm.
They control the lexicon and by association the minds of those swayed
by such things. Climate change “debate”. Carbon “tax”. Budget
“emergency”. It doesn’t matter that these things are not true, the lies
will be printed anyway.
You can’t compete on this battleground, you don’t have the resources
and, I would hope, lack the inclination. You can’t fight on their terms.
They’re so powerful that they have convinced a disturbing number of
Australians that our greatest prime minister was actually our worst and
that the world’s best treasurer of recent times was an incompetent
buffoon who doomed our nation. You can’t win.
No amount of bipartisanship or flexibility is going to sway those who
are not already for the cause. No amount of compromise is going to
swing the vote of someone who has been convinced by a decade of Today
Tonight that you are responsible for a fiscal crisis that never existed.
The only way for you to win is to provide a clear alternative. A
better option. To offer people a glimpse of the light on the hill.
The answer is not to kowtow to the right but to provide a staunch and
uncompromising banner on the left, one that shines high and proud for
us to rally behind.
The right has convinced the people that socialism is a dirty word and
that unions are tantamount to gangsters. The solution is not to abandon
these principles, which are the core and the soul of the Labor Party,
in an attempt to shed the stigma which has been so unfairly attached by a
corporate agenda.
The answer is to embrace them, to wear them with pride and with
dignity and to say that we are by the people, for the people, now and
forever and that we will stand firm and implacable in the ebbs and flows
of the capricious public.
That is the Labor Party I want to be a part of.
I should be your man Mr Shorten. I’m a Mascot boy, Kingsford-Smith – born under Bowen and raised under Brereton.
I’m a member of a trade union and a proud socialist. I’m at once both
an artist and a blue collar worker – a comedian and an airport baggage
handler. I AM the Labor Party.Yet I’m not a member. That concerns me and
it should concern you.
Win me back Mr Shorten. Prove to me that this great party – Chifley’s
party, Hawke’s party, the god-king-made-flesh Keating’s party, is still
my party too. Lead by example. Lead by dissent, as our forefathers did.
Lead us to the light on the hill.
And you can start by blocking this blight of a budget.
Yours?
Damian Smith
This article was first published as An Open Letter to Bill Shorten on thedamiansmith.tumblr.com and has been reproduced with permission.
Follow Damian on Facebook, Twitter, or visit his web page damiansmith.com.au.
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