The Australian's white-anting of Australian democracy continues

Rupert Murdoch's media empire, since it successfully campaigned to bring down the Whitlam government in 1974 and 1975, has similarly abused its power all over the globe in order to ensure that only governments, whose policies are acceptable to it, will remain in office. The strategy has two prongs. The first is to support political parties and politicians who most overtly represent his interests and oppose those who don't. The second is to influence such parties, such as the Labor Party, which aren't always so inclined, to do so. This is what it has been attempting to do with Kevin Rudd since he took over from Kim Beazley as opposition leader. Almost immediately editorials and opinion pieces appeared urging that Rudd water down Labor's commitment to scrap John Howard's "Work Choices" legislation. The latest example is it's editorial "I.R. still won't win Rudd his dream job"of 3 January. In the same edition a report "Voters reject IR changes"shows that Newpsoll has found that 33% of Australians felt that they were worse off as a consequence of Howard's "work choices" legislation whilst only 14% felt that they were better off. 47% said that it would be bad for the economy and 45% said that it would not help create jobs. Nevertherless, the editorial writers have endeavoured to twist these around into an argument for Rudd nevertherless retaining these laws. The editorial claims, "Even if Australians are less than convinced by the new workplace regime, there is scant evidence they are prepared to change their votes over it." If the editorial writer gets his/her way, the public won't be given any choice in the 2007 elections on the "Work Choices" legislation that was not even put to them in 2004. If, instead, Rudd does decide to give voters a real choice, the the Murdoch newsmedia can be relied upon to do its utmost to prevent him from winning office.