May 20, 2013
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The week's top five must-sees,
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Description
The Australian Labor Party is a political party in Australia. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia. In the state and territory parliaments, Labor governs in South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. The party competes against the Liberal/National Coalition for political office at the federal and state level.
Labor's constitution states: "The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields." This "socialist objective" was introduced in 1921, but has always been heavily qualified by wording which makes it clear that Labor supports private property. It has been a dead letter since the 1940s, when the Chifley government failed to nationalise the private banks. Today Labor defines itself as "a coalition that includes reformers, radicals, progressives, social democrats and democratic socialists united by a critique of the inequalities in society, a commitment to a more just and equal society, and the achieving of this aim by democratic means."
(via Freebase)
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