Dr Falzon’s Marxist tax policy is bad but it’s hard not to conclude that his verse is worse

Lenin? A bit of fun. Troy Bramston, The Australian, July 31:

Labor preselection candidate John Falzon … (who wore) a T-shirt emblazoned with Vladimir Lenin’s face … (said:) “It was … a bit of fun.”

Marx? Tax policy inspiration. Paul Karp, Guardian Australia, July 7:

“We need to build a society that’s predicated on the principle of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’,” Falzon says, quoting Karl Marx … a tax system where “people contribute what they can … to try and achieve the collective dreams of the many instead of pandering to the demands of the wealthy few.”

Page one! Anna Pha, The Workers’ Weekly Guardian, Communist Party of Australia, January 25, 2017:

“Centrelink should not be used by the government … to achieve a deficit reduction on the backs of people who already carry the greatest burden of inequality,” Dr John Falzon … said.

Sandinista tenderness. John Falzon, Communists Like Us, 2017:

It is life that also teaches us, in the words of the Sandinistas, that solidarity is the tenderness of the people. Even if it is sometimes also the anger of the people and the courage of the people. In the end, as in the beginning, solidarity is simply love …

Sandinista tenderness? Ishaan Tharoor, The Washington Post, July 19:

July 19 happens to mark the 39th anniversary of the victory of the Sandinistas, the left-wing revolutionary movement that overthrew the … dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. Now Ortega, a 72-year-old former Marxist guerilla, increasingly resembles the tyrant he and his comrades once toppled … Until recently, he … (enjoyed) the largesse of Venezuela. “But then Venezuela cut its aid, and the government’s fiscal problems were exacerbated by corruption,” noted The Economist. Now Nicaragua faces its own Venezuelan moment, with a regime violently clinging to power in the face of vehement popular unrest.

Sandinista tenderness? Kirk Semple, The New York Times, August 6:

Something is gravely wrong here in Nicaragua … people are fleeing the country in droves … Human rights advocates contend that … as many as 450 people have been killed and thousands wounded … by the police or by paramilitary forces … The government has also used torture and arbitrary detentions to crush dissent.

Poet of the oppressed! Lina Caneva, probonoaustralia.com.au, December 15, 2016:

Dr John Falzon has responded to former prime minister Tony Abbott’s crackdown on people who receive disability support by penning a poem. “It’s that time of year; When the privileged and their proxies … Gleefully put the boot into the people; … Who; To them; Are welfare villagers; Leaning on the rest of us … But to us; (And here it’s up to you to choose your side); To us; And we are many … To us; Are simply us.”

Haven’t we heard that before? Julia Gillard, speech, December 2, 2011:

This is the Labor way. This is the Australian way. We follow it simply because we are us.

Poets are thieves. Falzon, Communists Like Us, 2017:

All poets are scavengers and thieves. I … shamelessly stole …

Was it worth stealing? Matthew Knott, Crikey, December 6, 2011:

Julia Gillard’s speech to the ALP national conference has been widely panned as a flop — not only for her use of the phrase “we are us”.