Labour & Liberal Parties - What's the difference?

Some people may be new to politics and some may not have had the time to get interested in politics before so I thought that it might be worth looking at the fundamental difference between the two main political parties in Australia; the Australian Labour Party and the Liberal Party of Australia.

Now because I am lazy, I thought I would give you a kick start into understanding the difference by recommending that you watch the following videos.

The two types of political vision

Intelligentsia and the vision of left wing politics

The discussions in the videos are held with Dr Thomas Sowell who is an American professor of economics, and political and social commentator.
The discussions by Dr Sowell are in regard to the dominant US political parties of the Democrats and the Republicans.

The politcal views of the Deomocratic and Republican parties in the USA are representative also of the two views of politics which are found in the Australian political parties of Labour and Liberal.

American Democratic Party (Obama)= left wing = libertarian politics = unconstrained vision = Australian Labour Party (Rudd)

American Republican Party (McCain) = right wing = conservative politics = constrained vision = Liberal Party of Australia (Abbott)

So when Dr Sowell talks about central planning (federal control of organisations like health care, instead of state control) you will understand why the Australian Labour party is trying to do exactly the same thing as part of their 2010 election campaign. It is intrinsic to their political vision to gain as much centralized power as they can. The Australian Labour Party tells the Australian people that it wants to federalize health care and if you dig a bit deeper you will likely find that they want to federalize almost everything and do away with state governments.

In these videos Dr Sowell highlights the dangers of this type of politics with central power for the "elite" rulers.

In essence the question that Dr Sowell is posing, is this:
Do you really trust left wing politicians and the intelligentsia enough to give them as much power as they are asking you to give them, and when you give it to them do you really think that they will use that absolute power any better than previous rulers with absolute power have done?