VOTE THE PARTY LINE: Is there no other choice?

 The realities of Australia’s governance are hitting us hard. Stuck in the two party loop - a pseudo socialist norm. Are we starting to wake up? Do Australians actually have a way out, or are we locked into the two-party cycle by design?

A conversation with Peter Richardson

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

A law and order commentator and a bit of a political commentator and we're going to be talking about socialism, which yes, for many it's problematic. For many it's something that they they're looking forward to seeing increase and ultimately get to communism in this country. But uh so we'll be talking about the issues around that and then we'll dive into what's possible. Peter, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Hello, Cheryl and hello listeners.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

How are you today?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Excellent, excellent. Now socialism. We could say it's a problem, but for others it's a real possibility and something of merit that we need to embrace and ultimately move to communism. What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Um can I just uh divert just a sec because we'll come back to that. Uh but you speaking of the fuel issues, um it's it's all related, we'll uh we'll get to that. But um something that I uh looked into in the last week um is that the problem isn't quite as a as it appears as far as I'm concerned. Um but I'll just say about the the forty dollar thing. Uh forty dollars doesn't buy much fuel, so you'll just be driving between um uh fuel stations and people will still use the same amount of fuel anyway, so it's just a silly idea. Um but the price so the supply is one thing, but the price is another and and really they're not related. Uh and the thing that I uh found when I looked up um the oil price and I looked it up uh again under yesterday and it still hasn't gone up to anywhere near the levels that uh so we're talking per barrel price, it hasn't gone up to anywhere near the levels it did during the gr global financial crisis. Um and the price of fuel, the price at the pump, was a lot lower than it is now. So where's the problem? Uh so we've we've currently got a much lower per barrel price for oil, but a much, much higher price at the pump. So how do you explain that?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Well keep talking. Uh when you say that, have you seen all of the evidence around that, or is this from memory? Give me a little bit more context.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Um I basically just uh Googled the prices because uh it was from memory. I I just remembered that we've had prices that the uh per barrel uh oil price that we've got now, it's been common over the last few years. So we're talking about uh round about$110 a um barrel for oil. And um I've heard that price many, many times, and I looked it up. The price during the global financial crisis gone up to nearly$150 a barrel, but the price of the pump was still down around a dollar eighty.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Yes, it's uh look it this is going to be an ongoing issue, isn't it? And we're going to have to watch it very closely. What do you suggest our listeners do in coming weeks given that this crisis isn't going to end any time soon?

SPEAKER_01 3:34

As far as uh practical, so uh what I'd say is educate yourself more than anything as far as uh we we need to know why this is happening. Uh but as far as uh practical, um I think we're in a little bit of trouble. Um I re I don't see uh what's happening in the Middle East uh finish finishing very soon. So um really it comes back to um why we've been put in this situation and and keep in mind that it's uh governments of both colours that have put us in this situation where we've got um you know we've only got at the start of this uh something a little more than thirty days of uh fuel in the country. Um and that's that's craziness. We're we're a long way from anywhere and uh we're relying on ships getting here to keep um keep fuel at the bounces.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Well uh it comes back to our our topic of socialism, doesn't it, really? If government is controlling supply, and sure there is an issue overseas, but the control of supply, as you've pointed out previously, but also uh what has happened in the past, it's still a government-controlled issue, isn't it? And I my understanding is that there's an international agreement that there must be 90 days of supply available, and Australia agre has agreed to that, but they haven't fulfilled that promise. So where we are today isn't new, and as you've pointed out, we can look back uh at the past and look at the issues around pricing and availability. So we've got consecutive governments controlling how we freely move around the country.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

And I do think there's somewhat of a um climate change agenda uh happening here. Certainly um the appeal of electric cars seems to be um being its accentuated and spoken of more. Um but people need to realise if they buy an electric car that um we could they could have the same problems because ultimately if too many people get electric cars, then uh where's the power coming to charge them because we're also heading for a crisis as far as um uh uh electricity goes with um uh coal-fired power stations, etc.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Yeah, precisely, precisely. So let's move slightly from here into the the issue around socialism and where Australia is sitting at the moment from your context when you when you think about that uh type of governance.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

The thing that I can see uh and I can understand and I can have empathy for the people who um who think that socialism is a good thing. Um because on paper it it is. Uh I can understand people who believe that uh everyone gets looked after under socialism. Um and at the moment, of course, we've got governments that actually call themselves socialists. So Anthony Alba Albanese calls himself a socialist. Uh the he comes from the socialist left side of Labour. Um certainly in our state, um they're at uh they're at the extreme left of socialism. Um and in theory, uh people get an afterweight, they get a roof uh over their head. Um we are heading for being a uh society that wants to be looked after, and that's what socialism supposedly does.

unknown 7:28

The problem is that it never works.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Um and certainly when it gets to the stage of actually being communism, which is only the next uh very small step, uh what happens is the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and you have a very small percentage of the population uh that are extremely wealthy and the rest are incredibly poor.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Look, it goes a little bit deeper than that too, doesn't it? Essentially, if we're looking at at socialism, yes, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but we could say the same thing about capitalism or indeed greedy capitalism, where again these major corporations are pushing out small business and the and making it far more difficult for families to have the independence because once they get pushed out, they're either relying on government support or relying on employment from these major corporations. When we think about socialism, and you mentioned our Prime Minister Albanese, who declares himself a socialist. Socialism is about collective ownership of resources and collective ownership and control of private pro not private ownership, but collective ownership of properties and so forth. And it's all very much a around the I suppose socialist principles that manage our key services such as education and health. Yet we've got uh Prime Minister Albanese who owns a multimillion dollar home, owns several private properties. So those who believe in socialism actually believe in it for everybody else but themselves, it seems.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

There's there's really um an unholy alliance between big business and um and the socialists in this country and probably around the world at the moment. Um so yeah, the the lines have been very much blurred.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Oh, they certainly have. And what that does mean though is that I and I had this conversation yesterday with somebody, when we're talking about democracy, how is it that you've got a Prime Minister who declares himself a socialist who says, I believe in democracy? And then you have the opposition, our Federal uh Liberal Party, for example, at this point in time, saying we believe in democracy. How can two bookends have the same statement yet mean two very different things? Is it more democracy that's the issue that we need to be discussing as opposed to socialism?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Uh I think if you're if what you're saying is that um people are getting um dismayed and disgruntled with democracy, I I think that's a pretty fair comment. Uh because and I suppose that's why um society is becoming more accepting of socialism. What they uh what people are believing when they're seeing the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, is that democracy's not working. And the old saying on its uh Margaret Thatcher's was that um um socialism great until you until the socialists run out of other people's money. Um so i it's it's an imperfect system democracy and if we but if we had better leadership and we had more responsible business, uh as far as big business goes, who weren't trying to drive the little man out, uh, then people wouldn't be so dis disgruntled with democracy. But it was interesting on the weekend, uh, you're saying about the socialists and the d democ uh and the good democratic party, the the real Democratic Party being the Liberals, um, you know, people are seeing him as, as they say, the Uni Party. There's not a lot of difference there, and that's why um uh one nation did so well at the South Australian election. It it's because of that um uh of people being truly disgruntled.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Oh, look, absolutely, and the issue there though, of course, you talk about the Uni Party, one nation has done well to secure votes, but when it comes down to it not well enough to actually become an opposition or become the the party in power. What needs to change for a a complete shift, do you think, for people to actually vote these uni parties out?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

We need to get rid of the preferential system so that people are voting for who they actually want in power. Um that's but that's not going to happen. So what what truly needs to happen now is that people have to have a genuine option, socialism or genuine democracy. Um and let's face it, I mean, what's happened in Victoria at the moment really we can blame ourselves for if we keep voting the Labour Party back in. But if there was a clearer defined choice, uh so that you had a Conservative Party and a Socialist Party to to vote for, um then I think we'd make that better choice. But uh really the Conservative parties have to do what the socialist parties have done for a very long time and work together. And really we have, you know, I know I'm being very um uh partisan here, but the enemy is currently at least, and I and I don't say this across the board, uh so I'm not saying all Labour governments are the enemy, but the enemy to the Victorian people is the Victorian Labor government. The Conservative governments have to get together to make sure they are not returned. Now, to to prove I'm not partisan in this, um I wasn't at all, obviously it was uh it was always going to happen that the Malinowskis government was returned in South Australia. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think he's pretty good. I'm obviously not going to agree with everything he's doing, but also the Minnes government in New South Wales, both Labour governments, but I've they're so much better than what we've got in Victoria, and um I'd go as far as saying they've probably been better than some of the Liberal governments that have that have been in the country of uh recent years.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

So what we're saying is is that there is no consistency across the country between parties, be it federal and state. So we've got a well-functioning Labor Party in South Australia, a corrupt Labor Party in Victoria. And a self-declared socialist determined to become a communist leading the country. So there's inconsistency across parties, which is key to what you're talking about. So the goal, the positive, the upside is, is that we call this out and keep the conversations going so that people understand what it is that we're voting for and who it is that we're voting for because there is no consistency across parties.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

But the voter has to be making a a more informed choice. Um and we've got well, maybe maybe some voters are making an informed choice based on their own self-interest that um they they might be people who haven't got any great uh incentive, no great drive. Um they want to be looked after. You know, if they want to be looked after, they don't want uh better for themselves than keep voting a uh socialist government is.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Oh, absolutely, and so this is all about incentivisation. If we've got the incentive to be productive, we would all be much better off. But uh socialism leads to that stagnation, doesn't it? And that incentive goes. Peter Triffic, always good to have you on the show. Uh thank you for your commentary on this, and there's a lot more to continue to unpack. And also thanks very much for the heads up that we need to do our homework on the fuel issue and make sure that we're well and truly abreast of what's happening.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Good to talk.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Good to talk, thanks, Pete. Speak to you soon. That was Peter Richardson, and he's our law and order and political commentator talking a little bit about socialism and linking that to the discussion that we had around the fuel exercise and the problems that we have with supply.