Godfrey Grima in Australia - Part 2

Continues from yesterday's blog entry, Godfrey Grima writes:

...Australia remains unabashedly committed to making life as comfortable as politicians can promise. Few now remember Malcolm Frasier, the former premier, warning his people that ‘life was never meant to be easy’.

It certainly seems easier for some - possibly many. Chance, endevour and success are the most visible of steamheads here. In a country as blessed and as sparsely populated as this, here is no shortage of chance - takers. Building fortunes on mountains of credit is probably more widespread than openly discussed. Given the huge opportunities this country throws up - and the brazen entrepreneurial spirit it attracts, playing dice with financial disaster seems to be a popular and exciting game. Not that it hurts the economy - or the country’s social fibre. Few social and economic wrinkles seem to last - at least that’s the portrait one is encouraged to take back with him. And it must be true.

The meadows will flourish again once the rains come back. The meek coming in from Asia are creating much new wealth inheriting the antepodian world as they erect new multicultural communities and fortunes.

Under Liberal rule, Australia and its people may well continue to prosper at speeds that defy world trends. Interest rates have tumbled from a breathtaking 18% to a seductive 7% and Australia now supplies China with limitless minerals and raw materials. Tankers filled with liquid gas - for which Australians pay 45 cents a lire at home - leave Hastings Harbour for China regularly at 3 cents a litre.

Leslie Cassar, who jointly owns the recently set up call centre with Air Malta - a personal friend of Premier Howard and former US president Gerald Ford - says China is allowing thousands of people to travel to Australia on their own each year. This is a significant nod to Australia’s close ties with the burgeoning Asian economic giant given the fact Chinese are only allowed to take holidays in groups.

But could there be meaning for Labour in the haunting words of the Wilburys? Will it have something to say as it grows old and grey?

Maybe, and then, probably only in the far time horizon. Labour is a house divided and Kim Beazely, though politically and academically robust - he met Tony Blair at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar- is fast being challenged by his own men.

For the moment, the continuing love affair the middle classes everywhere are having with the featherbedded ways of liberals and conservatives might well be something of a cautionary tale of our times.

Concluded

Update 4 Dec 2006: Beazley ousted this morning from Labour leader by Kevin Rudd; Rudd Labour's quiet achiever.