Australian Labor Party

Update, 19 Feb 2014: You can watch the program on-line here. Apologies for this late notice, but after serving his prison sentence of 24 years for spying on the United States Government, Christopher Boyce will reveal all in a program to be broadcast tonight at 9.30 tonight on Dateline on the free-to-air SBS One television station.

See also: Mark Latham, who opposed "Your Rights at Work" campaign and supported Howard in 2007, says Albanese shouldn't be Labor leader of 9 Oct 2013; Labor Leadership Contenders' Views on East West Link - Albo opposes it! of 6 Oct 2013.

Update, 28 Nov 2013: No mention was made of Syria by Albanese, Shorten or the audience in the leadership debate of 24 September. (Whilst this could have been because of time constraints, it seems a surprising omission.)
On 20 April, 2013, Anthony Albanese, a candidate for the national leadership of the Labor Party by membership ballot,₁ expressed ₂ his support for Syria₃. This is contrary to how much of the senior leadership of the Labor Party has acted. ₄ For two and a half years they supported the United States as Syria has tried to defend itself against invasion by proxy terrorists armed, paid for and supplied by the United States. This war has, so far, since March 2011, cost 100,000 lives.

The Federal Parliament of Australia, a country which, in the 1960's participated in the devastating war against Vietnam and in the illegal wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and which is now participating in the ongoing war against Afghanistan, yesterday passed legislation to undermine international laws to eradicate cluster bombs. The Governing Labor Party and the Opposition Liberal/National Coalition united to support the bill. This was a betrayal of Australian international obligations, Australian Greens spokesperson Assisting on Defence Senator Scott Ludlam said yesterday after the Government's cluster munitions bill passed the Senate.

This article has been adapted from a media release by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam. See also: Australia poised to pass dubious law to implement cluster bomb ban in stopclustermunitions.org, Australian responsibility: cluster bomb carnage in Iraq of 3 March 2011 by Chris Doran in Online Opinion, Senate considers new cluster bomb laws in the SMH of 20 August 2012, Senate passes ban on cluster munitions (a misleading title) in The Australian of 21 August 2012.

In spite of much having been done by Prime Minister Julia Gillard that we should be rightly critical of, I still hold hope that there may be an outside chance that a person who has risen to the political top in her country, may have greatness and a streak of decency in her. Knowledge of past history, particularly that of the United States shows that a corrupt elite don't, on every occasion, succeed in corrupting those who rise to the top of their country's political system.

When Barrie Unsworth complained on Sydney's local ABC radio of the New South Wales Labor Party's efforts to ensure that state Labor parliamentarians vote against the privatisation of NSW's electricity assets - a policy already rejected resoundingly by the electorate in 1999 and currently opposed by 79% of the NSW public - his interviewer Toni Matthews expresssed her total agreement with the former NSW Premier: "Why - It seems obvious to me - Why isn't it obvious to these younger members that you're talking about that they're creating mayhem within the party?"