Yeah probably not. There’s a view extant at least in the US service that ordinary Joe Sixpack soldiers aren’t worth the trouble. We’re more likely to go the way of the Americans. Highly trained elite military personelle backed up by megatechnology.

This raises the issue of cost which will be substantial. If Metal Storm bears fruit however we may find ourselves catapulted into the forefront of arms industries. (Altho’ I’m not sure to what extent the US military, the main investor, will own the results.) However if we do become a leading hi-tech arm manufacturer this will probably bring up question viz the influence of the military-industrial complex as it has in the States from Eisenhower’s time.

With any luck in the event we have to have that debate one hopes it will be one more characterized by sobriety than that we’ve seen Stateside.

Fred, the conscription issue is precisely dated to a period from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s. The point is to track downstream from that time to see the lagged consequences of changes in political orientation on the part of a large number of (then) young people involved in political activity and commentary.

I appreciate the view offered by AdrienSword, but I cannot imagine conscription getting up for national defence, simply offering better pay and conditions in the armed forces would probably work better. The ethos of conscription lives on in the trade union movement.

It is important to note that the provisions for conscientious objection to military service have been cleaned up, although conscription should never be an issue again it is good that objectors will not be offered impossible choices if it does arise again.

What I was trying to say is that the only real difference between Labour and Liberals is basically around the size of government and the labour market. The Liberals have now conceded in both cases: there is now hardly any difference between the two parties on these two issues, other than rhetoric.

This means that, anytime a Labor government gets into a real jam or seems unable to obviate the threat of recession, it will be replaced by a conservative government. That is the pattern of the past. We don’t need to look any further.

Is it?

The future of Australia’s defense is increasingly precarious. The United States on which we depend will change its foreign policy stance markedly over the next little while and it’s a long standing axiom of foreign policy thinking that competition with China may lead to some kind of armed conflict.

In that even will we be forced to choose between our greatest ally and our greatest trading partner?

And considering the cost of the Iraq/Afghan wars and the current financial strife will the US be able to maintain its military supremacy? If not we will be forced to take responsibility for our defense which we’ve thus far been able to avoide doing because of imperial arrangements casual or otherwise.

How will we do this? We have a standing defense force of some 40 000 people. A small population, a large territory blah blah. If we are no longer under the umbrella of global hegemony, what will we do? Can we rely on people to rediscover their civic duty and join the forces en masse. Will we acquire nuclear capabilities? Or will we reintroduce national service?

There is currently very little difference between the Parties. It did look likely at one stage that the Opposition was going in strongly on the issue of tax cuts rather than expenditure increases (and Malcolm is still having a bit of a go). But the Opposition has been arguing the case for broad based pension increases, more assistance to homeless etc. for a long time. This leaves them with very few differences in policy.

The two Parties obviously have different radical ideologies (libertarian – or classical liberal – and social democrat). But when values are tempered, to make them more acceptable to the public, they add up to nothing.

I think far too much emphasis is placed on what happened in Australia here — the change you saw in Australia was replicated in many places in the world, including many countries that didn’t go to Vietnam, especially in terms of places becoming more liberal, and Labor was simply there to capitalize on it. Other factors like the decline of religion (which has also happened in many places) seem more likely to have lead to more liberal values.

Have you seen any evidence over the last few weeks that there are any votes in this?

The previous Government lost office because they spent 12 years promulgating policies that annoyed Gen-X, while their baby-boomer support moved to the left and their grey-power base died of old age. In the last election, hardly anyone younger than 40 voted for the Coalition, and they have a long-term demographic problem on their hands as they try to reacquaint themselves with the voting public, seeking forgiveness from angry Gen-X’ers and working out how to appeal to Gen-Y’s. It’s probably going to take a while, and I figure the ALP will win the next couple of elections while the coalition works themselves out.

That’s Howard’s legacy, by the way: Complete dissolution of the core of coalition support.

So look at the ALP: Who are they annoying by proposing these policies? The Internet-connected under-40′s, and ESPECIALLY the jacked-in under-30′s.

They can piss these people off at their peril. These people have more disposable income, better interpersonal networks, more political awareness, longer memories and longer life expectancies than any other significant voting bloc in history.

The ALP went out of their way to attract them before the last election, but now the country’s first YouTube prime ministerial candidate hasn’t updated his Facebook page since the last election and is trying to censor everyone’s Internet connection.

Having spent so much effort attracting this voting bloc, what kind of reception do you think the ALP will get when they betray their newly hard-won voters?

Have a think about that, ALP number crunchers. You’re killing your new base, and you’re less than a year through your first term. How stupid are you?