By Situation Theatre 7/10/2018
Two nations. Two Opposition Leaders. Two exhilarating plans for the future.
Jeremy Corbyn has roused hope in the hearts of millions at the Labour Party annual conference with his promise of a future Britain with social and environmental justice at its heart.
Bill Shorten has done much the same this week with his distinction between Australian children who deserve two years free pre-school education and the children on Nauru who deserve to be tortured until they lose the will to live.
.@billshortenmp today announced a $1.75b early childhood education plan.@LaTrioli asks how he squares this commitment to kids with Labor's policy on children in detention on #Nauru pic.twitter.com/VnCjSEgNFy
— News Breakfast (@BreakfastNews) 3 October 2018
Jeremy Corbyn supports providing worker positions on company boards, offering mandatory dividend schemes for companies with over 250 staff, implementing maximum pay ratios, eliminating unpaid internships, ensuring 60% renewable energy by 2030, banning fracking, making 4000 homes available to end homelessness, scrapping student tuition fees, implementing free childcare, increasing corporate taxes, and adhering to Britain’s moral obligations to refugees under international law.
Bill Shorten has promised to stop the boats, advocated boat turnbacks, killed the momentum of #LetThemStay, refused to bring refugees to Australia who have been tortured under a regime his government established, held exclusive, expensive fundraisers for business leaders, accepted political donations from fossil fuel companies, supported new coal mines, backed a wide range of legislation transforming Australia into a police state, backflipped on opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and voted down a motion for stronger lobbying laws.
Jeremy Corbyn quotes Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelly when he calls on thousands of Glastonbury revellers to:
“Rise like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number. Shake your chains to earth like dew, which in sleep had fallen on you: ye are many - they are few.”
Bill Shorten quotes your embarrassing uncle when he calls on a Mum in the supermarket to answer the question “What’s your favourite type of lettuce?”
Come the federal election, when forced to choose between being governed by an empty vessel or a rat-infested pile of garbage, Australians will hopefully choose the vessel.
It still won’t mean we yet have a Labor Party to believe in.