Mea culpa; National Party discover cause of financial crisis.

National Party Senator, Barnaby Joyce has a home page on “Agmates,” a social networking site, and has a thread going railing against the dominance in Australia of Coles and Woolworth’s in the supermarket business.

Not being a great fan of regulation I got involved, resulting in the following comment from one of the members of the forum:

“Jim, your views are as near as I can tell at the extreme end of the spectrum and you certainly have been caught up in the free market view of the world. Sadly we have followed your path for much too long and the world is now reconsidering its axioms as a result of excessive freedoms given to huge banks based on your very ideas.”

Barnaby tends to have a fair sort of fan club going for him, probably because he bucks the system and the party line on occasions. Because of these stands he tends to appeal to those who are disillusioned with the current Tweedeldums and Tweedeldumses style of government and opposition. With the major political parties we have in Australia, elections are a case of “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Regrettably I have serious doubts that he will make much of a difference in the long run as while he is more independently minded than most members of his party, his philosophy is rooted in the big government, nanny state camp.