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Insisting there is a spooky-bad innate authoritarianism within a leftwing opposition is not so much a bold new direction for the Liberals as it is an act of projection. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

A spectre is haunting Australian politics the spectre of communism. All the powers of old conservatism have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre. By which I mean Mathias Cormann and Eric Abetz, responsible for the two legit funniest political pronouncements this week.

Cormanns announcement to the Sydney Institute Wednesday night claimed that the policies of Bill Shorten were akin to communist East Germany. The issue is not that Shortens asking the electorate to vote into existence an Australian Stasi, because he isnt, or planning to seize all private property, because he wont, nor building a wall to separate leafy, lefty Melbourne from the rest of the country. Please as if anyone would want to be trapped in with all those Greens.

Its that Bill Shorten wants to reform the Australian tax system so Coalition style $65bn tax exonerations arent given to a corporate community whose profits are already up 40% on last year. Its a situation with which East Germany was, conspicuously, unencumbered.

This is no liquidation of the kulaks. Its a basic platform of redistributive egalitarianism. And its one that the majority of Australian kulaks, proletarians and rational economic agents can get behind. At least, thats what the polls have been saying for 18 straight weeks in a row.

Its those polls that are informing the relentless and personal attacks on Shorten like Cormanns on Wednesday. The Labor leaders lacklustre preferred PM polling is all a Coalition beset by missteps, mistakes, mismanagement and majority-threatening fifth-columnist sleeper agents from New Zealand New Zealand! has left to seize upon.

But in the established tradition of this government, the strategy seems somewhat clandestine, and unwisely so. The Coalition has spent four years attacking Shortens willingness to work with employers when he was a union leader. Turnbull engages in outright mockery of his upstart temerity to maintain relations with the big end of town. Their new initiative of red baiting Comrade Bill the Workers Friend is an effective remedy to the effects of their own propaganda. As much, certainly, as Malcolm Turnbull himself spending the week making political appeals to the same people he condemned Shorten for even knowing.

Turnbull and his benches of blue-tie bunyip bourgeoisie, of course, have never met a mistake they couldnt make at least twice. Just ask Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash. Or Bronwyn Bishop and Sussan Ley.

Ive heard somewhere that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Eric Abetz has heard it, too, for, with the precision of a professional clown, Tasmanias favourite entertainer doubled down on Cormanns comments. I shit you not, Bill Shorten surely knew of GetUp! Soviet funding: Eric Abetz was an actual headline that appeared in the actual Australian actual newspaper on Thursday. Uncle Erics concern is the donation of $10,000 made to activist group GetUp! by an organisation called The USSR Australia Friendship Society.

2006. A full fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Is this like the time the banned anarchist society at Macquarie Uni named itself The Bert Newtown Club, but in reverse? Are they the same guys? Theres a certain kind of former campus radical who maintains both left wing politics and a wacky sense of humour into their productive relations in later life ahem! I cant help but wonder if The USSR Australian Friendship Society of 2006 might be it. The alternative is a political movement whose moment has past, whose activist opportunities have shuttered and whose last grasp at relevancy was a handout of cash to their last remaining allies.

You know, sort of like the Coalition and the business community.

Insisting there is a spooky-bad innate authoritarianism within a leftwing opposition is not so much a bold new direction for the Liberals as it is an act of projection. Its the Coalitions George Brandis whos building the Australian surveillance state. Its Peter Dutton whos leading the Security Super Mega McMinistry. The building of walls is a current fetish on the right side of politics, not the left.

Not to mention that judging the intimate lives of others, allowing different laws to govern minority groups and giving license to propaganda hate campaigns that demonise sections of the community sounds a lot more like well, Eric-Abetz-and-friends personal achievement in enforcing the loathsome marriage equality postal survey debacle.

Wherever Turnbulls people may individually sit on this specific issue, the brand portrayed is now so poisonously illiberal, theyve enabled Shorten to stake a claim on Australias centre even as leftward zeitgeist that flowed behind Corbyn and Sanders is allowing Labor to articulate in its own words not the totalitarianism of East Germany, but the best traditions of its own democratic and inclusive leftwing heritage.

And this is the problem even Cormann admits he has. The Berlin Wall came down 28 years ago, which means roughly 18% of Australians enrolled to vote were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he said Wednesday night. Cold War propaganda doesnt work on diverse-media Australian generations who can see the inequality increasing around them and with sober senses just arent satisfied with the politics of more-of-the-same.

Dont Labor know it, too. Bill Shortens acting as if hes already won the next election! Cormann wailed to his comrades. Jesus, if sabre-rattling at the invisible armies of a dead empire is all youve got left, Mr Cormann why wouldnt he?

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Is sabre-rattling at the spectre of communism all you've got left, Mathias Cormann? - The Guardian