a fantastic session song - I wonder when we will hear it again!

That’s Not The Way, by Leon Rosselson, additional words by Robin Connaughton

sung by Robin Connaughton ON THE PEOPLE HAVE SONGS (2001) “I am an occasional songwriter, Tech teacher, singer and unionist. Exasperated by the rise of economic rationalism and the sustained move to the right in the major Australian political parties, I wrote new words to ‘The Plan’, a song by Leon Rosselson that I’d learned and couldn’t get out of my head. Don’t try for an exact birthday for the current version, the song keeps acquiring and losing new verses as needed!”

    That’s not the way it’s got to be
    There should be jobs for you and me
    Hiring not firing should be the master plan
    The workers shouldn’t have to pay
    Just to keep the boss at bay
    The world shouldn’t turn just to please a wealthy man

    I don’t like Keating, I didn’t like Hawke
    All they bloody did was talk
    And fight with each other while the country went to pot
    The Labour party doesn’t seem
    To know what the word labour means
    Retrenchment and recession
    They are now the workers’ lot

    We’ve got John Howard for a year or three
    Captain mediocrity
    Cutting back on welfare and the poor old ABC
    Costello, Reith and Vanstone too
    And a Labour rat to spice the brew
    Senate rat or rationalist they’re no friends to you or me

    In NSW we’ve got Bob Carr
    More like a Liberal every hour
    Fighting with his workers, nurses, teachers and police
    Who said the DLP was dead?
    The Labour right lifts up his head
    He’s just a Labour squatter
    And we're cockies on his lease

    Victoria ran under Kennett’s rules
    Closing down the government schools
    Sacking public servants and stealing their back pay
    Victoria is on the dole
    And Kennett thought he was on a roll
    If you want to help the workers mate there is a better way

    Economic rationalism, now there’s another sacred cow
    Sane as scientology, and as fallible as the pope
    I don’t like trickle-down, y’see
    No money trickles down to me
    Meanwhile me wages goes on trickling up like smoke

the first verse is repeated as a chorus.

I didn't know the original song, & found the first part of the video very confusing! The familiar words arrive at 2.14

wot a shame this old song refers to a prehistoric world ...