Steve Biddulph is a psychologist best known for his books on raising children (boys in particular). Makes him sound as if he might be a bit on the conservative side? Ha! His Wikipedia entry shows he lives in Tasmania and helps fund the SievX National Memorial Project. Not conservative markers, to say the least.
In any event, his analysis of the election result (linked above) makes for an erratic read.
First, he claims that the Liberals will die because all Western governments have become "centrist." (Well, both parties moving to centrist positions is true, although I still can't see why you can't have 2 centrist parties with sufficient differentiation to make a contest.)
Second, the environment is the future's big issue. (Possibly true.)
Thirdly, the Western economy may be about to undergo a major collapse, and this was possibly a "good" election to lose. (Possibly true, although his claim that "We are a civilisation in collapse" is a warning sign that his analysis is about to go off the rails.)
Fourthly: in the face of imminent civilisation collapse:
Labor is the right party to manage this.What? What does he base that on?:
Despite the widespread belief after years of cynical politics that politicians are all the same, Rudd and Gillard are not in power for power's sake. I am willing to stake my 30 years as a psychologist on this, but I think many observers have also come to this conclusion.LOL! (Especially for Kevin.) But Steve finds them to be altruists pure of heart:
Kevin and Julia, as Australia already calls them, want to make this country a better place for the people in it. In the coming times of deprivation, they have the value systems that will be needed to care for the sudden rise in poverty, stress, and need. They also have the unity.As opposed to Liberals who, I suppose, want to crush the coming mass of starving enviro-peasants under their heels and send them back to the workhouses again.
No, Steve Biddulph wants us to be more like a fairy tale Europe:
The big lie of Liberal supremacy was economic management. In fact, they knew how to generate income, but not how to spend it. We could have been building what Europe built in this past decade - superb hospitals, bullet trains, schools and training centres, low cost public transport of luxurious quality, magnificent public housing. We pissed it all away on tax giveaways and consumer goods.Oh come on. I suppose Paris is caught in strikes and riots because everyone decided that perfection could be just a little more perfect?
I don't have time to do the Googling to show the aspects of Europe today that do not compare favourably to Australia under Howard. But you know they are out there.
No Steve is just a Greenie dill after all.
2 comments:
Steve's a bit of a dill who the papers have been dragging out as a hired opinion for years, usually when they want to do a 'men in crisis' feature or something like that. Lately he's been getting involved in projects like that Siev-X thingo, and evidently offering his valuable thoughts on the election and the right-left stoush.
I imagine he's a bit like Hugh Mackay in this respect, skilled enough in his own narrow field, but with the patronising habit of interpreting the choices and beliefs of right-wing voters according to his own ideological convictions.
"I'm a psychologist/statistician/physicist/practictioner-in-a-narrow-field-of-expertise! Clearly, I am qualified to offer my opinion about politics!" - it's one of the war cries of the chattering classes.
(Not that I have anything against the chattering classes, per se. I'm one of them.)
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