One of the political comics right now during the mid-term election season has a guy saying he never thought he'd wish for the good old days of drug ads as there are so many horrific political attack ads on now!

I liked the way the medical ads were neatly juxtaposed with fast food ads. It had a nice symmetry about it.

We're still about 12 months away (probably) from a Federal election, but I'm looking forward to the horror ads from the incumbent party predicting boils breaking out on our cattle, plagues of frogs and hailstorms and Osama bin Laden having his way with our daughters if the Labor Party is elected. (OK, LizF, no need to leap in and agree!)

Back in the late '80s (I think) the Australian government ran an AIDS education campaign with explicit TV ads that probably gave a lot of small children nightmares - one featured a group of terrified people cowering at the end of a giant bowling alley as a horrific figure of Death mowed them down one by one. THAT was a memorable ad.

There's only a week to go to the US midterm elections, isn't there? I'll be watching with interest.

Geez Neil Oz, I just had surgery so laughing at your posting is not helping my tummy!

Yes, a week from today. The recorded telephone polling and political ads are in full force. It's wearisome!

Well Neil the cane toads have been doing the worst in Queensland as the Premier, a Labour Party bloke, said the other day that the reason they were not going to have daylight saving in Queensland would be the increased incidence of skin cancer........UGH?
Now this Labour guy was a (*)*&%&^$$ lawyer before entering politics but even given that reason he should not show his stupidity to that degree. If the whole of Australia elects fellows like that in the next election I reckon that the rest of us will stage our own rebellion and ask both the Solomon Islanders and the Fijians how to set up a coup.

Liz, I'm glad you've acknowledged that (unlike his dozy Tory opponeent) the Labor Party leader actually has seen the inside of a university. And yes, as we're not Poms it's "Labor", not "Labour". Not that it matters.

Neil, the leader of Q'ld's Liberal Party is Bruce Flegg, a medical doctor who obviously has seen the inside of a university. I think you're thinking of Lance Springborg, who was leader of National Party, now replaced with Jeff Seeney after recent state election.

I guess this train wreck of a thread is as good a place as any to ask this question, the answer to which I have been seeking for some time: WHY is it Labor and not Labour? Just "not being Poms" can't be enough of a reason, can it? You labour in the fields, don't you? But the party is the Australian Labor Party.

Any light that you can shed on this mystery will be gratefully received.

-Steve

Steve, I could have phrased that better, I guess. What I meant to point out was that the Australian Labor Party (ALP) is not a branch of the British Labour Party (in fact the ALP is the more senior of the two parties).

The Labor Party's website explains things this way:

"It was at the 1908 Interstate (federal) Conference that the name 'Australian Labour Party' was adopted. In its shortened form the Party was frequently referred to as both 'Labor' and 'Labour', however the former spelling was adopted from 1912 onwards, due to the influence of the American labor movement."

Myself, I'm not 100% convinced. The
-or ending was actually common in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th century and was the standard in some newspapers and journals. The Australian Labor Party was born in 1891, 10 years before the then six colonies federated to become the Commonwealth of Australia, and my guess is that the spelling wouldn't have seemed out of place at the time.

The ALP was actually founded in Queensland, and the colony of Queensland elected the world's first (admittedly short-lived) labour government in 1899.

The usage of the spelling "Labor" has only been quite recent in Queensland when, perhaps it was Whitlam who eventually got thrown out, who changed over from the spelling of Labour mainly because the Labour Party in the UK was spelt Labour and they did not want to be seen as part of or attached to anything to do with the UK as they were staunch Republicans and against the continuance of a Monachy and of a Queen of Australia. I am sure that within 30 seconds Neil will be on this forum to tell me that I am talking pure cr.p but that is how the rest of us saw it. For some reason, known only to the boffins in the republican movement, changing the spelling of a word made them feel that they had attacked the entrenched Royalist views of those in Australia who are against change. For the Americans on this board though I must point out that Republicans in Australia are not of the same make up as Republicans in the US and it has only to do with the wish to rid Australia of its colonial past links with England. This also does not mean that if you are a labour supporter you are in favour ( note the same spelling of the suffix there) a Republic and the same goes for the other side of politics. However there are some of us who spell it how it is supposed to be spelt and that is that. As Neil would be the first to say, after me that is, I am a dreadful speller but I do remember how to spell labour.

Liz, where did you GET all that? In the absence of evidence to the contrary I'm happy to accept the ALP's account that the spelling was officially (and it goes without saying nationally) adopted in 1912. The idea that the alleged change in spelling had some link with republican sentiments is surely fantasy.

That aside, there's no automatic 'right' or 'wrong' way to spell a word, only accepted custom. The fact that the British favour 'labour' (a corruption of Norman French) and the Americans 'labor' (Latin) doesn't make either one 'correct' or 'incorrect'.

I think Mark Twain observed that (from memory) "There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The language has become a joint stock company, and we are the majority shareholders".

You are quite right Neil there was only the "Kings" English when you & Mark Twain were born ( though Queen Victoria reigned for most of Twain's life) & it was not until I was born that there was the Queen's English but I spent most of my time at school in Queensland where the spelling of the word Labour Party was the accepted spelling until at least I had left school. You may be absolutely right too and it could have been another Queensland Labour Party porky that the reason they changed it was due in part to them wishing to distance themselves from the "mother" country.

Further to my comments above here are the three perceived ideas of how and why the u was dropped in Labour. Be that as it may the old spelling was still used in Queensland until about 25 years ago:::::::::::::::::::::::
The Australian Labor Party and the Missing U
Of the numerous Labour parties throughout the world, only Australia's, the USA's and South Korea's are known as Labor parties, without the u.

Even in Georgia, Sweden and Mauritius, there's a u in the respective countries' Labour parties.

It's always puzzled me why the u would be missing for the Australian Labor Party seeing as we still require royal assent for all our laws. A little Google research shows however that it was once the Australian Labour Party, although there seems to be three competing reasons proferred for the change to Labor, which are as follows:

there was influence by the American labor movement leading to the spelling change in 1912 (I'd personally like to know what kind of influence and why that would induce a change in spelling, but that's all the informaiton I could find on the ALP website);
Australia's lefties wanted to associate themselves more closely with the relatively more progressive USA rather than the more conservative English homeland back in the early days of the party, and the spelling of its name was a means to do this apparently;
Australian politician and member of the Labor caucus (although not a member of the Labor party as such because it didn't exist in his home state of Tasmania at the time, interestingly enough), King O'Malley, was an advocate for spelling reform and persuaded the party that Labor was a more "modern" spelling than Labour and the u got dropped.
April 4, 2006 in Après Moi, le Déluge, Of or Pertaining to Tongues | Permalink | Comments (

That's all about as clear as I expected it to be, i.e., not at all.

The "distinguish ourselves from the British Labour Party" makes the most sense to me. Arguments based on spelling reform or whatnot make somewhat less sense, as you haven't adopted ANY of the other American spellings that I'm aware of. Colour, centre, theatre, etc. Am I right?

Still, if one's national identity doesn't involve a few mysteries, what's the point, eh?

I will refrain from adding any more indications of where my sympathies lie on the Republican-Colonial spectrum for fear of alienating the providers of half of my next trip's travel tips!

Probably most wise fnarf999 although Neil has outed me as been about as right as Attilla the Hun ( his words I think or something like it). However he is a nice kind of South Paw.
Remember though that our politics does not really follow anything like the US or the UK type, at least I don't really think so.

Good to see you getting into this with a vengeance, Liz, even if it is a storm in a teacup.

As the official language of Sweden is Swedish, and Georgia Georgian, surely whether the spelling 'labour' or 'labor' was used in an English translation would depend on who was doing the translating. Actually, as far as I can see Sweden doesn't have a labour/labor party at all - the nearest they'd have, I think, would be the Social Democratic Party. Technically, to call itself a labor/labour party it would have to have formal links with the trade union movement.

Yes, a lot of ALP and trade union figures have felt stronger bonds with US than the UK, so that could have been an influencing factor. If you look around though you can still see old signs using spellings such as parlor, harbor and the like, so I still maintain that 'labor' would not have seemed out of place at the time. The fact that King O'Malley was American-born may or may not have influenced his spelling preferences.

Royal assent is a formality exercised in practice by the Governor-General. These days the G-G is always an Australian, but it took a Labor PM (Jim Scullin) to stand up to the blustering of King George V and have an Australian (Sir Isaac Isaacs) appointed for the first time. Reportedly the King found it outrageous that he had to negotiate with an Irish Catholic over the appointment of a Jewish lawyer as his representative. Scullin would have had no support from his conservative opponents - as always, they were bootlickers to a man.

Whatever, I doubt that the spelling of a political party's name has ever been the subject of legislation, so the question of royal assent is irrelevant. Has the government stepped in to tell Krispy Kreme to re-spell its donuts, or doughnuts?

This is starting to look like an excursion into a mad version of Trivial Pursuit.

Well, our American right-wingers were accustomed to saying they were to the right of Attila, until recently when it appears that some of them were being perfectly serious. I think that's going to start to change in a few days. And I'm noticing that the Tories in Britain are now to the left of the American Democrats, which makes it all very confusing. I myself am a typical bleeding heart pantywaist mollycoddling liberal. At least that's what it says on this card here.

Australian politics confuse me even further, not just on the question of whether it's a good idea to have power invested in a nice old lady eight thousand miles away or not. I don't really know which is "right" or "left" there. I did have the opportunity to examine your Pauline Hanson on TV when we were there, and it was very rewarding. She appeared to be calling for would-be immigrants to be examined for terroristic tendencies, which she was quite certain the majority of them have, by means of some sort of special handshake or something. We don't usually see political figures QUITE that odd, outside of Florida that is. But again, I don't know if Ms. Hanson would really fit on an American left-right continuum.

Some people in Australia who are on the left are really more right than left but then again those on the right can sometimes be left - particularly at the post. Those in the middle I feel don't really know where they stand so have a foot in each camp and then those who are ( so called ) Independent are not really that independent when it comes to some issues. To confuse the situation completely I will leave it to Neil to tell you about the factions within the Labour Party which consist of the right, centre right, centre left, far left and who know what else. Anyway Neil is far more erudite than I so the explanation from him will, no doubt, take any confusion away from those of us who are of the Pleb persuasion.

Steve, the Queen has no real power these days. I think the Royals are very conscious of the fate of the last king (Charles I) to try throwing his weight around.

One of the reasons Australia isn't yet a republic is the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. On the other hand, in practice nothing much would change - the powers of the Governor-General, such as they are, would transfer to a largely ceremonial presidency.

The other reason the republic proposal was lost at referendum was that the monarchist side managed to confuse a lot of the punters with a cunning disinformation campaign targeted at the method proposed for selecting the president (i.e. election by a 2/3 majority of Parliament).

This stirred up a view that the president should be elected directly by the people. In fact a popular election model would politicise the office rather than the reverse, and place too much importance on it, but unless the voters can be educated that might be the price we have to pay to cut our last ties with the Monarchy.

Neil is a rebel Celt.

Well, if one Welsh and one Irish ancestor counts, Liz. They're all the Celts I can find in the family tree.

I remember reading somewhere some fellow complaining bitterly that if Australia became a republic they'd have to spend a fortune painting out the logos in the RAAF, RAN, etc. and so on. There's a surprisingly large amount of stuff named "Royal" etc. Though I'm sure everyone would like some nice new letterhead.

I know the queen doesn't have much actual power, but her representative did have one of your governments removed just a few decades ago. That's pretty shocking to Americans. Though, now that I mention it, these days around here it doesn't sound like such a bad idea! Maybe we should give them a call. I'm sure they've gotten over that little tiff we had back in 1776.

It still seems pretty shocking to me. That was a classic example of what can happen when you rely on unwritten conventions and it showed a fatal flaw in the Australian system - one that hasn't been corrected.

Consider: the operation was plotted in total secrecy, because had the PM (Whitlam) got wind of what was afoot he would have phoned the Queen immediately and advised her to withdraw the Governor-General's commission and appoint a replacement -advice that she would have doubtless taken. Thus, Whitlam would have sacked the GG before the GG could sack him!

Consider further - the grounds for dismissal were that the government couldn't get its money supply bills passed by the Senate. Now, each state, no matter its size, gets the same number of Senators, because in theory they represent their respective states, but in practice they vote on party lines. So, despite not being elected on fully democratic one-person-one-vote lines they can bring down a government.

And further: the government had lost its Senate majority because a state premier (Joh Bjelke-Petersen - that name again!) broke with tradition and replaced a deceased Labor senator with one of his own stooges.

It's ironic that people who bang on about tradition are often the first to trash longstanding protections in defence of their interests. But of course, Steve, you've had some examples of that in your own country in recent years, haven't you?

Consider further Neil, if Whitlam had not been sacked he surely would have be assassinated. Just think of all that beligerant grandstanding we would have missed out on then ( nice thought that though).

Well, in the US, somehow over the past decade or so, "conservative" has come to mean "bombthrowing radical hellbent on destroying our society", while "liberal" now apparently means "wants the terrorists to win". I think our country is in the grip of the national equivalent of a mental illness. But at least we're not threatening (or is that advocating?) assassination....

--
Steve

Who was it then that made the film clip about George W being assassinated? All I meant regarding Whitlam was that the maniac would have got himself assassinated had he not been sacked, he was so hated. He had more self love than Narcissis or Nero ( even Paris Hilton) could ever have been accused of and for that matter still has. If ever any Australian leader wallowed in the same self delusion as Hitler it is/was him.

Liz, I suggest you take a deep breath and then re-read your vitriolic and embarrassing posts, with particular reference to the words "nice thought".

(BTW, the movie you refer to was not advocating the killing of George W. Bush. Surely you know that.)

Whitlam certainly attracted hatred from the Establishment and their stooges, and in fairness he was sometimes his own worst enemy. Much of the vitriol came from conservatives outraged that his eloquence, intellect and commitment to economic and social reform cast their own hidebound, lazy representatives in such a poor light. His admittedly sizeable ego was moderated by a sly self-deprecation that bordered on self-parody. I met him a couple of times when he was leader of the opposition and this quality, and a withering wit, was very much in evidence, although it went over the heads of people unable to appreciate irony. He virtually laughed his Liberal opponent, the hapless and hopeless Sir William "Biddy" McMahon, out of office, and Australia's elites, afflicted as always with a born-to-rule mindset, never forgave him.

Anyway ... Steve, your comment on Pauline Hanson got lost in all the excitement.

While Hanson's attitudes are fundamentally right-wing, in the sense of being racist and xenophobic, she's a bit hard to place in a modern American context. The US doesn't seem to be fertile ground for her kind of demagoguery these days, thankfully, even if many Americans will privately gripe about illegal immigrants.

In a shrill, clumsy way she expressed the resentment of a minority of people - poor, uneducated, often elderly, mainly outside the cities, who were only too happy to find someone else to blame for their troubles - immigrants, Aboriginals, latte-sipping city dwellers and anyone else they saw as being favoured by governments at their expense. Well, she's history now, but our government is happy to exploit the same emotions when it suits its purposes, albeit a little more subtly and expressed in code.

A few weeks ago while in the US I breakfasted with two couples who proudly proclaimed themselves to be conservatives, and I was struck by their almost religious hostility to government and all its works. Your common-or-garden Australian conservative is a somewhat different breed, and the rural-based National Party in fact has been labelled "agrarian socialists", very much in favour of government intervention in the economy as long as the money goes their way. Most of the votes Hanson reaped were at the expense of the parties in country areas.

BTW, one of the funnier moments was when a TV interviewer told her that she'd been accused of being xenophobic. She obviously didn't have a clue what the word meant, and was reduced to glaring at him and snapping "Explain, please!" That reminded me of the time the premier of Queensland (Joh "Bananas" Bjelke-Petersen) was asked on TV to explain his understanding of the doctrine of the separation of powers under the Westminster system. Joh was flummoxed and it soon became clear that this was probably the first time he'd heard of the concept. He probably thought it was a Communist plot.

I'm not so sure that after reading this thread that anyone would be brave enough to meet up with a fodorite

AndrewDavid

Neil I am not going to continue with this thread, not because I agree with any of your assertions but because I would get thrown off for my arguements against the issues you have raised. Except to say this: Pauleen Hansen had only a small number of votes that got her into Government so it was not hard to get her out. Whitlam on the other hand ended up being disliked/hated by millions of Australians and there were more like me who left the country when he got into power and did not return till he was out.

Andrew, you certainly wouldn't want to expose impressionable small children to this, would you?

As for myself, perhaps after the next Federal election I'll be considering joining you and the other exiles in BC.

Darn it Neil you can call it vitriol BUT I will make one more comment in aid of clarification. Gough Whitlam is and was a Fabian Socialist to the core and if anyone does not know what a Fabian Socialist is here is a link which shows that Fabianism is about as close to
Communism you can get with an agenda which makes Marx & Trotsky trues hero in their cause. If anything is going to divide a nation is would be that. It really seems strange Neil that the Labour Party in Australia while on the one hand changing the spelling of Labour to Labor to distance themselves then went full steam ahead to emulate the style of Communism that the British first developed - that of Fabian Socialism.
http://nord.twu.net/acl/revisionism.html

Liz, if you want to know about the mild-mannered debating society known as the Fabians you'd best stay clear of websites run by people who seem to have forgotten to take their meds.

Far from being revolutionaries, the Fabians are so tame that their position has been satirised as "What do we want?" - "Gradual change!" -"When do we want it?" - "In due course!"

Membership of the British society has included such well-known Red revolutionaries as Harold Wilson, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Enough said.

well Neil you and Robyn and kids are always welcome here

cheers
A/D

ps off to Oakland to inspect for damages on Fri; bill to follow!

Andrew, I know you spent enough time here to figure out that Liz, as lovely a lady as she is, or probably is, or might be, or almost certainly would have been, if it hadn't been for those bloody nuns, reflect only a few of us. Not me, thank da Lord!

And Andrew, I promise I'll make good on the missing TV set. I had so many interesting offers while meandering up and down Oak Street that I couldn't resist. Sorry about that. Human weakness.

I will ignore your comments about me for the moment Neil but I have to say that if the "when do we want it?" answer "in due course" is the catch cry of the Fabians then Whitlam must have thought that "due course" meant "full steam at any cost" ahead. He managed in 18 months to bankrupt the country, cause no end of corruption and got himself sacked and whether or not you like it, that does not change the history of his mismanagement and corruption. Australia in 1972 could have taught the South Americans a bit about dictatorship and corruption they had not heard of and
Whitlam would have been their hero I should imagine.

poor Neil must have had a medical marijuana experience in Oakland, a hot spot of opportunity for this: there was no TV

A/D

What a relief, Andrew!

Liz, sorry, must have got carried away by the excellent homemade cookies I was able to procure in San Francisco.

At the risk of splitting hairs, there's a recognised difference between running a large but repayable deficit (a condition many mortgagees are familiar with) and going bankrupt. And I'd be interested to see the evidence of corruption that seems to have escaped the notice of other commentators.

The successes and failures of the Whitlam government, both considerable, can be argued ad nauseam. In the interests of balance, I quote Wikipedia:

"During its three years in power, the Whitlam government was responsible for a long list of legislative reforms, most of which still stand today. It replaced Australia's adversarial divorce laws with a new, no-fault system; acted to improve the position of women and the Aboriginal minority; introduced the Trade Practices Act; slashed tariff barriers; ended conscription; introduced a universal national health insurance scheme Medibank, now known as Medicare; gave independence to Papua New Guinea; made all university education free to its recipients; introduced needs-based federal funding for private schools ... and established diplomatic and trade relations with the People's Republic of China."

Whitlam's personal integrity has never been seriously questioned on either side of politics, and certainly not by the Liberal leader who ousted him, Malcolm Fraser. Indeed these two "elder statesmen" are now often seen on the same platform, expressing their concerns over Australia's recent directions.

Neil, I think the side effects of the ???? cookies are still well and truely working for you. If you are bored wittless with this then stop replying - its as simple as that.
You will not get me to say that I am a fan of Malcolm Fraser - I am of the opinion that both he and Gough Whitlam should be put in a institution, beside each other, for the old and demented. The saying "The punters know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race" apply to both of those old nags together with a host of other "has been" politicians in Australia.

You ask me "what corruption?" well here is one for you.

During 1975, the Whitlam Government attempted to raise a loan of approximately $USD4 billion. The money was supposed to be used to fund a number of natural resource and energy projects, including construction of a natural gas pipeline, the electrification of interstate railways and a uranium enrichment plant. This was alleged to be illegal on the grounds that it bypassed the requirement of authorisation by the Loans Council which was then in force.
If anyone is interested in the rest of the story a google search for "Whitlam Loans Affair" will go into the matter thoroughly.