LABOR leader Anthony Albanese has sided with radical hippies as ALP unions, factions and shadow ministers go to war over weather.
With the nation’s focus firmly fixed on Coronavirus recovery, Labor has spent the past six months tearing itself apart over carbon.
Meanwhile, primary support for Labor has plummeted nine points behind the Morrison government in the latest Newspoll pubished by The Australian newspaper.
The CFMEU this week publicly urged Mr Albanese to support workers while blasting Labor MPs as being “too damned scared” to stand up for their traditional supporters – the “cream of the working class”.
DREGS
The CFMEU’s criticism was sparked by a sister union, the AMWU, publicly backing the Labor Party’s inner-city environmental wing – historically referred to as the “dregs of the middle class”.
CFMEU divisional president Peter Jordan described Labor’s policies as “anti jobs” and said the Party was heading towards “a hiding out there in the electorate” unless it changed direction.
He said Labor MPs needed “to stop running around the countryside supporting the Greens’ view on life”.
Mr Albanese, however, has already sided with his pro-Green faction after publicly criticising his own pro-worker shadow Industry Minister Joel Fitzgibbon who has wide parliamentary support.
“They’re just wrong,” Mr Albanese said earlier this year in response to Mr Fitzgibbon’s backers saying that Labor’s “fundamentalist” position on climate was a barrier to electoral success.
The CFMEU’s Mr Jordon said, regardless of Mr Albanese’s rebuff, there remained high levels of support for Mr Fitzgibbon.
SCARED
“Joel is all about setting up a better direction for Labor where they can be more competitive in the future about winning government. But Labor just appears to be pandering to some of these Left environmental groups,” Mr Jordan said.
“We support the positions that Joel has adopted, we support the positions that Joel has been out there in the public presenting to the electorates.
“We call on Albo and others to get behind and support Joel as a Party rather than leaving him on his own.
“Some of them are too damned scared to come out and support him publicly. Quietly they will say to you that they don’t want to be in opposition for the rest of their bloody lives.”
Mr Fitzgibbon’s criticism of the AMWU’s alliance with Labor’s Environmental Action Network was particularly harsh.
“We don’t need these people consistently and constantly pulling us to the far Left,” he told Sky News.
“This is the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union in bed with green left-wing groups who are anti coal … (and) we can’t have a manufacturing sector without gas.”
In the latest September 21 Newspoll survey, Labor has shed two points from its primary support with the Coalition and the Greens each gaining a point.
Two-party preferred polling sits at 51-49 in preference to the Coalition. PC
The Labour party is fast becoming the US Democratic party as it lurches further to the hard left. I hope they keep moving in this direction, so that Australian’s can see the Marxists deceivers for who they truly are, Liberal and National MPs included. They are a cancer to democracy.
How about every one takes a deep breath and consider the reality. Labor & their supporters are interested in one thing & one only ….. political power. What to do with it, who cares (I hear them cry)! The bottom line is they would destroy our country if that meant they could indulge in a short term in office. Much better Albanese starts purging his party of the looney-left and even more the looney greenie-leftists. If he did, he might have a chance, but the way he is going he is “no chance Charlie” at best. Personally I hope he doesn’t do it, I hope he stays as ALP Leader and he stays in opposition, even as I worry that Australia needs an effective Opposition, if only to keep the Government on its toes
The woke, radical green left and the more moderate, traditional working family Labor voters have less and less in common every day. This political fault line can only open up.