chubbaraff said:
Ill give you an example, when John Howard announced spy planes off the north west shelf, Kym Beazley came on lateline he said, why dont they have guns to shoot terrorists attached to the planes. Yet he is supposed to represent many social democratics who find this concept violent and xenophobic. Its clear he is an opportunist trying to impress business, and clearly screwing the working class, who have lost patience with him. By the way, I attribute his latest rhetoric as stolen from Green Left Weekly and the anti-union campaign raged in New Zealand after their reforms, Kill the Bill and Bad Laws need to be broken are two such examples.
I agree with you that in both young libs and young labor they stand for different causes than their senior parties do. At the same time I think it's wrong to claim because everyone turns out left on the poorly designed political compass, that most Australians would be left.
The political compass has the following problems....
- It only allows 4 possible answers, with no neutral.
- In reality political issues can be much more complex than the questions it poses to people, although when presented with a question about their values in a very simple form they may sit firmly on the left. However when it comes to a situation where you would apply this value to a real-life circumstance, people may shift all over the place.
- The questions it poses are often conflicting, i.e. "Unemployment is more important than low inflation", while many people I'm sure will pick unemployment because it is of course the nicer sounding thing, when you sit down and think about it, apply economic reasoning, it is basically the same thing.