Mark Aarons touts “centre-left” Blairism

Bob Gould and Ed Lewis

It’s fairly rare for one individual to get a run on the same issue within a couple of weeks in the opinion pages of the competing broadsheet newspapers of the Fairfax and Murdoch press, but Mark Aarons is obviously saying something that the media owners like to hear.

No friends but the voters and the trade unions

Robert Manne’s collection of essays, Dear Mr Rudd

Bob Gould

The Kurdish people, the largest nationality in the world with contiguous boundaries that wants a state but has never had one, have a saying: “The Kurds have no friends but the mountains.” That saying can be adapted in Australia to the situation of the economically poor and excluded, trade unionists, indigenous people, migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds, refugees and the more exploited sections of small business. Those Australians, who are a majority, have, in practice, no friends but the voters and the trade unions.