Labor shows its colours

ACTU boss Greg Combet has made no bones about his ambition to return the trade union movement to what he considers to be its rightful place - running the country.

The ABC has no doubts either about who should be running the government, an ultra left-wing government but, in the meantime, the ALP. Its clumsily constructed program Bastard Boys provided an interesting insight into the state broadcaster's promotion of a class warfare that has all but disappeared, except within the corridors of the nation's largest media organisation. Clearly, this spate of providential propaganda is proof that the culture war has not been won by the Howard government. It also demonstrates the bizarre lengths members of the media elite are prepared to go to in their attempt to persuade the public that the nation is not enjoying historically high employment levels, historically low levels of industrial action or the highest levels of consumer confidencein a generation. To counter this climate of abundant work, high wages and generous conditions, those in the traditional white-collar trade unions, the education sector, the public service, and the larger industrial workplaces are mounting a formidable campaign to bolster the trade union movement's multi-million-dollar advertising blitz to convince the public that things are not as rosy as they are. Opposition leader Kevin Rudd has pledged to hand over the reins of power to the trade-union movement and drag Australia backwards into the bad old days of union thuggery. Pixie is truly the apprentice to Combet's demonic wizard. His offsider, Julia Gillard, has already shown what that would mean, with her thuggish threat to businesses that might be tempted to counter the trade-union movement's dishonest propaganda with some information advertising. Threats come easily to the Orange Roughie's thin lips. But it is the vehemence of the supporting cast's lines in this performance that is truly astonishing. Fairfax writer and sometime ABC Media Watch host David Marr, never one to shy away from the melodramatic, cast himself as a pantomime dame when he joined the ABC radio host Virginia Trioli to condemn the Government's new citizenship test on Friday. Part of the test, which includes English and some knowledge of Australia, consists of 20 simple multiple-choice questions. Marr found the mere fact that the test was in English problematical, akin to a re-introduction of the extinct White Australia policy which the ALP long cherished. He couldn't even stomach the notion of putative migrants being asked whether treating men and women equally, the notion of a "fair go'', and mateship were Australian values. "This is where it gets really nasty,'' he said, adding that Immigration and Citizenship Minister Kevin Andrews also acknowledged that the Judeo-Christian tradition was the basis of Australia's value system. "That is incomprehensively wicked,'' Marr proclaimed. "If you want an orderly, dutiful, intelligent society, you can't go much past Confucianism, you know.'' Except that Confucianism has played such an infinitesimal part in shaping Australian society, that few people would know where to find its fingerprints. When Trioli attempted to make some sense of Marr's diatribe, suggesting that "no one could argue that we're founded on that basis'', he took exception, arguing that making a statement about Australia's Judeo-Christian heritage "says in a covert way that Muslims are not moral, that's what it's saying''. Marr, who says he subscribes "to other moral systems which have nothing to do with religion'', accepted that "maybe we were historically mainly founded on this" but to now make acceptance of Judeo-Christian values a question in the citizenship test was "just brutal''. Marr's concerns about offending Muslims must also be noted but, surely, is it not a fact that the fanatical followersof Islamo-fascism are almost universally condemned for their inability to live peaceably with their neighbours, particularly in Islamic nations? Coincidentally, while Marr was hysterically proclaiming the notion that accepting Australia's Judeo-Christian heritage was brutal, a representative of the extremist Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation was spamming media organisations with an open letter it had sent to Prime Minister John Howard. Hizb ut-Tahrir claimed that Howard had "ensured the public conscience's fixation with Islam and Muslims by igniting the debate on anything from the ubiquitous war on terror, to home-grown terrorism ... '' The sheer volume of vitriol spewing forth is a frightening indicator of Labor's determination to wrest control of every facet of Australian life, at every level, and subject Australians to its retrogressive philosophy. The rhetoric of the past week should be taken seriously. It may be the warning the nation needs.