Neo-Luddites

Xenophile

Make no mistake, here in OZ the Liberal party would be right at home with
your Republicans, they even have their very own hard right religious fringe,
the other main party, our version of your Democrats are called the Labour
party. Then there are a few minor parties, the Greens and the Democrats, who
are like your democrats but crossed with the greens and a few other nutcase
types, mind you they do have some good ideas but ruin it by mixing in the
crazy stuff, to the point that they are now self destructing fast. We have a
Westminster system and that means that once they party has decided on a
policy, all the members have to follow along even if they hate the policy,
vote against the party and you can lose you can be booted out. Then there is
the fact that we have just 6 states and they are in many ways (but not every
way) like mini countries in their own right and can tell the federal
government where to go, of course that means the feds can cut off the funds.
The biggest difference between here and the USA, here you have to vote, it
is compulsory and when I was younger, I thought that was wrong but now, with
a bit of experience of human nature, I think it is the best part of our
politics and just to show that Im right, most of the politicians hate it
and have tried to get rid of it, really hard to do here, changing the
constitution is very difficult and most attempts have failed.

As for the left of centre party, well, that would be the Labour party in
general but changes from state to state, your problem is that Australia is
not a true socialist nation but we are a good imitation in many ways. Other
than that there isnt any one that really fits.

Darren

I get the impression that in Australia and Brazil, the "liberals" are
much what we in the States would call "libertarians." So what are
left-of-center-but-not--to-the-point-of-being-socialists called?

Hey, it can't hurt us 'Merkans to know these things.