‘Something is badly amiss when Qld bushies embrace Green Left Weekly’

Farmers join with environmentalists to oppose CSG drilling at Jondaryan Qld on February 21. Photo by Max Reithmuller.

“Something is badly amiss when Queensland bushies embrace Green Left Weekly, and the opposite ends of the political fringe, the Greens and Bob Katter’s Australian Party, find a common cause” began a February 22 editorial in Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, the only national daily newspaper in this country.

The Australian was ranting against the growing urban and rural alliance that has come together against coal-seam gas mining which is spreading like a cancer in many parts of the country, especially in Queensland and NSW. This is a broad alliance that Green Left Weekly strongly supports.

As Liam Flenady, a Socialist Alliance candidate in the coming Queensland election explained in a February 24 media release:

“The Queensland coal industry is already massive and is expanding rapidly. CSG companies are planning to drill 18,000 wells across the state.

“What this all means is that our food and water security is severely endangered. Farmers are mobilising against the incursions of the giant corporations onto their land and environmentalists are alarmed that precious natural habitat is being destroyed at a furious pace.”

In last week’s issue, we published an article by Jess Moore, a leading activist in the Stop CSG Illawarra, which refuted the lies being told by the CSG mining companies through its multimillion dollar advertising campaign “We want CSG”. Moore is also a member of the Socialist Alliance.

On February 23, Moore was on Channel 10 news exposing the latest approval of a CSG drilling site in Sydney’s main water catchment.

“This approval advances a project that risks the drinking water of 4.3 million people in NSW,” said Moore.

Murdoch’s hacks were horrified to report on February 21 that at an anti-CSG protest at Jondaryan on Queensland’s Darling Downs the previous day, “An old bushie who’d brought his own chair leaned back in it and perused a copy of Green Left Weekly, a publication he was unfamiliar with.”

If it horrifies The Australian it must be a good thing!

There are quite a few “bushies” who subscribe to Green Left Weekly and have become strong supporters of this fiercely independent media project. But there is always room for more. If you know a “bushie” (or indeed a “townie”) who might appreciate getting a Green Left perspective every week, why not buy them a gift subscription today?

More and more people from all backgrounds are beginning to stand up against the corporate-profits- at-any-cost madness that Murdoch’s media empire relentlessly promotes through systematic lies, manipulation and character assassination. By supporting independent media projects like Green Left Weekly you can make sure an alternative voice continues to be heard (and continues to alarm the Murdoch editors!).

You can donate online to the Green Left fighting fund here. Direct deposits can be made to Greenleft, Commonwealth Bank, BSB 062-006, Account No. 00901992. Otherwise, you can send a cheque or money order to PO Box 515, Broadway NSW 2007 or donate on the toll-free line at 1800 634 206 (within Australia).

Jondaryan protest demonstrated the broad front against CSG mining. Photo by Jim McIlroy.

Rudd v Gillard: Is there a political difference behind their spin?

If changing the f* leader would change f* government policy to support the f* 99% instead of the f* 1% then we’d be f* interested in this f* soap opera!

This tongue-in-cheek Facebook status I posted last Tuesday ended up sparking a lot of political discussion.

It expressed what a lot of ordinary people were thinking as Round 2 of Kevin Rudd v Julia Gillard came to a head this week.

But is there a significant political difference, apart which of the two might have a better chance against Tony Abbott’s Liberal-National coalition in the next election?

OK, some people will say this is the only political difference that counts, both in the vote in the federal ALP leadership spill on Monday and to those who fear a right-wing blitzkrieg should Abbott become PM. But if there are political differences beyond who has the best chance against Abbott,  it appears that most journalists not interested in finding out.

Not one of the questions posed by the journos at the press conferences of Rudd (in Washington)  and Gillard (in Adelaide) on February 23. Check for yourself (see here and here). There’s not one effing question about their political platforms! The journos have embraced the soap opera lines (some of which they themselves scripted) and they are deliriously spinning in the spins.

Yet at these two press conferences, Rudd and Gillard each claimed a political record and staked out a set out a political platform.

Rudd’s platform

Before Rudd got to his record he cued the main themes in his campaign:

1. His claim to be the “best prospect” to “save the country from the ravages of an Abbott Government”.
2. Tapping still strong public revulsion by the alleged “faceless men”, the ALP faction chiefs.
3. Tapping strong public aversion to “politics of division” associated with Abbott and the internal party feud in the ALP.

He then claimed credit for Australia’s escape from the GFC:

“Remember it’s through that period of Government, when I had the privilege of being Prime Minister, that Australia got through the global financial crisis without going into recession and without generating mass unemployment. A single achievement among all the major developed economies. And not only that, but we emerged with among the lowest debt and lowest deficit rates of all the developed countries in the world.”

All the work of Kevin07? Not true. Every developed government bailed out banks and tried to stimulate the economy when the GFC struck – and many are now facing debt crises as a reward. But Australia, “escaped” this mainly because it was a major supplier of raw materials to China and other industrialising countries in Asia.

Rudd then summed up the rest of his record as :

• A “massive new investment in education”;
• A “massive new investment” in the public health and hospital system”;
• “The launching of a National Broadband Network”;
• Dealing with the “challenges of climate change” (well he talked a lot about it);
• The “apology to the first Australians”  -though Aboriginal people are saying: You said sorry , and then?

Finally, Rudd set out his program of action should he win the leadership spill on Monday:

“Business generates jobs. It’s fundamental that there is confidence in the business community to invest and to continue to create jobs. That is critical. And a policy area where I want to see new work for Australia, by the continuing Government of Australia, is in the area of small business and what we do to encourage directly small business to invest in their businesses’ future and turn them into the big businesses of the future. And that means changes to the way in which we deal with them on tax.”

We are clear about this. Labor will help the corporations make big profits and the rest of us will have to hope for the fabled trickle down. Labor’s corporate profits-first policy is reaffirmed.

“Second, a big policy challenge for the future is manufacturing.

“I have said before, five years ago when I first contested the leadership of the Australian Labor Party, that I never wanted to be Prime Minister of a country which didn’t make things any more – that remains my enduring passion. I do not share the view that manufacturing is somehow old fashioned and belongs to the old economy. It’s never been my view. We have to be smarter about manufacturing, but can I say loud and clear, I believe fundamentally in the importance of a strong Australian industry for the future and as a result a strong industry policy for the future as well.”

He expects large claps from the car company bosses and the union bureaucrats who tail behind them.

Then he added a few more vague promises:

1. Continuation of health reform because Gillard had “squibbed on some of the hard decisions”. But no detail.
2. Reinstatement of his policy, axed by Gillard, to “halve the HECS fees of maths an sciemce students going to universities” and halve them agains if they purue a career in these areas.
3. An emphasis on teaching Asian languages.
4. Reform of the ALP to make it a party that is “not governed by the faceless men”.

Rudd went into rhetorical overdrive about the “faceless men” of the ALP — “the future government of Australia is not about the power of factions, it’s about people’s power” — but he was vague on detail about what he would do. And “people’s power”? By rights, an egotistical autocrat like Rudd who has shown no respect for his own party policy, its ranks let alone the 99%, should have choked on those words!

Gillard’s case

Gillard laid out her case for retaining PMship at her Adelaide press conference about an hour after Rudd’s press conference.

First, she too sought to tap public aversion to the infighting, promising that if she lost the vote on Monday she would go to the backbench and “renounce any further claims to the leadership”. She pointedly asked Rudd to make the same commitment, underlining his undermining of her leadership.

Then Gillard claimed credit for:

1. The “carbon tax” and gradual introuction of a carbon emissions trading scheme.
2. The Mineral Resource Rent Tax (of course, she didn’t mention the estimated $100 billion in potential taxes forgone through her deal with the big miners!)
3. The health reform agreement withn states.
4. The deal with Telstra to get the national broadband network going (which, she didn not explain, will also create a massive new communications monopoly to be privatised in the future).
5. Education reforms (which teachers and education experts say will set back education in schools).
6. Tax cuts for low-income workers.
7. Plans to deliver a budget surplus in 2012-2013.

Gillard’s promises for future action included:

1. “Work flowing from” (she was careful not to say implementation) of the Gonski review into school funding , which urged a major increase in school funding directed according to need (instead of the 82% increase in funding to rich private schools for profit that Gillard and Rudd Labor helped deliver).
2. Giving school principals more power (including to sack teachers).
3. A vague priomise to preserve a “diversified economy” (I guess this refers to more subsidies and tax breaks to manufacturing and other non-mining corporations).
4. Unspecified promises to help people with disabilities and the “older Australians”.

Finally, rather timidly came to Rudd’s big argument about being a better protection against an Abbott government.

“Now I note that Kevin Rudd in his media statements yesterday and today has very consistently referred to the need to defeat Tony Abbott at the next election.

“I want to be clear about this too. I believe that we can win the next election and defeat Tony Abbott. I believe I can lead Labor to that victory, provided that the Labor Party unites and we get on with the job.”

So all up what is the political difference between Rudd and Gillard’s “platforms” for Monday’s leadership spill?

Not much, beyond a bit of emphasis on this or that program. Both are firmly committed to a corporate profits-first agenda and both seek to assure the non-mining corporations that they will help spread more of the profit from the mining boom to them. The 99% willl just have to hope that some benefit trickles down to us.

There is no real vision to tackle the climate change crisis from either of them. There is not a whisper of difference between them on Aborginal affairs, refugee policy, same-sex marriage rights or on the ongoing imperial wars.

I guess my tongue-in-cheek Facebook status holds.

For freedom’s sake, look behind the veil of private property

A string of banks, airlines, car manufacturers and aluminium refiners – all big corporations which have profited for years while extorting billions of dollars in public subsidies – have spat in the face of our society. They have begun mass sackings of workers, even while Australia supposedly escaped from the global capitalist economic crisis. The big banks have refused to pass on interest cuts to families struggling to service huge home mortgage even while posting huge profits.

In this context, Green Left Weekly has run a number of opinion pieces raising the idea of nationalising the mining, banking, car and aluminium industries. As a result we’ve been called “extremists” and even “vermin” by a few people posting anonymously in the comments box.

Some less hostile and reactionary responses have asked if nationalism was possible, considering that the plant and even technology used by these corporations is “private property”.

But in these times of crisis, we are all given serial lessons on how selectively the corporate rich apply the rule of private property. Indeed, we have seen entire peoples condemned to the collective punishment of forced economic austerity just to implement their rule: Privatise the profits, socialise the losses.

In the case of the car and aluminium industries – as Geelong Trades and Labor Council Secretary Tim Gooden explains in an exclusive interview in this issue [insert link] – the public has been subsidising the profits of their private owners in times of economic boom as well as in times of recession. They have been on a lifelong gravy train. They have been worlds-best corporate welfare extortionists.

So the public should not be terrorised into submission with the words “private property”. Indeed we should look behind the veil of this thing called “private property” more often. I am not referring to what most people count as their private property: their clothes, their bicycle, car or even a home, but rather to the private property that is used to systematically enslave others and grossly distort the social and environmental choices our society makes.

Private property of this nature can often be traced back to outright theft: the stealing of land of indigenous and colonised peoples, brigandry and piracy, etc. But such ill-gotten gains have then been multiplied through systematic exploitation of people who have been left with no choice but to sell their labour power to the owners of private property that serves as capital.

The stupendous profits that amass and concentrate under capitalism don’t appear out of thin air – nor out of the hard work of the owners of private property. They come out of exploitation. No exploitation, no profit. This is an iron law.

“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks,” observed the famous German socialist Karl Marx.

If we want to free society from the dead end that capitalism has brought us to, then we need to be prepared to look behind the veil of private property and see the real relations of power that lie behind it. “Freedom is the recognition of necessity,” Karl’s best mate noted.

OK, another red has come out from under the bed and he’s urging you to defy the J Edgar Hoovers of today by chipping into our fighting fund this week. You can donate online to the Green Left fighting fund. Direct deposits can be made to Greenleft, Commonwealth Bank, BSB 062-006, Account No. 00901992. Otherwise, you can send a cheque or money order to PO Box 515, Broadway NSW 2007 or donate on the toll-free line at 1800 634 206 (within Australia).

Remember T J Hickey 1986-2004

I took these photos at a march in Redfern NSW on February 14, 2012 to commemorate the killing of T J Hickey during a police pursuit eight years ago and to protest all Aboriginal deaths in custody.

There have been more than 400 Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1980, one death in custody per month or more than 13 deaths per year. Less than a third of the 339 recommendations handed down in 1991 by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody have been implemented.

The number of imprisoned young Aborigines (between 10 and 17 years of age) increased by more than 20% in 2009-2010 compared to the previous year, according to a recent Productivity Commission report, and the average detention rate of young Aborigines is 25 time that of young non-Aborigines. What’s happening to these youth points to the future. It’s indicating the likelihood of more deaths in custody and more destroyed lives to come unless there is a radical change.

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This obscenity is unacceptable

By now we all know that the rich get richer under capitalism? But many are astounded a the incredible pace this takes place.

This week it was reported that young Aussie billionaire James Packer celebrated a 560% increase in his casino investment in Macau. Great reward for making totally unproductive, indeed socially and morally destructive, investments.

Then there was the incredible account of how the $75 million in mining assets Gina Rinehart inherited in 1992 from her mining moghul father, Lang Hancock, has multiplied into $17-20 billion in just 20 years making her wealthiest woman in Asia, according to Forbes. She’s on the path to becoming the richest woman in the world after her wealth doubled through a single deal.

Meanwhile on the other side of the global tracks, Greek pensioners, already struggling to get by with a pittance, will have their pensions cut by 20% under the terms of austerity deal agreed to by a Greek government appointed by the world’s bankers. Workers will be forced to take a 22-23% pay cut. And in return, the world’s bankers will increase Greece’s debt (and in the process protect bad and corrupt unpayable loans made by those same bankers).

Greece is being fleeced and sent to hell to years to come to save the system that makes the rich even more obscenely rich.

Our moral stance can only be to reject this as obscene and unacceptable. Green Left Weekly gives full solidarity to the Greek workers, pensioners and students who are continuing to fight this austerity to bail out a sick and corrupt world capitalist system.

If you agree with us, please support this independent media project by donating online today to the Green Left fighting fund. Direct deposits can be made to Greenleft, Commonwealth Bank, BSB 062-006, Account No. 00901992. Otherwise, you can send a cheque or money order to PO Box 515, Broadway NSW 2007 or donate on the toll-free line at 1800 634 206 (within Australia).

Left-Green unity is an objective necessity

Greens MLC David Shoebridge giving greetings to the Socialist Alliance conference on January 22. Photo by Peter Boyle.

[Submitted for publication in Green Left Weekly]

Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, The Australian, has been on a campaign to destroy the Greens because it is a major – and growing – electoral break from the “Lib-Lab”, two-parties-for-capitalism, system that has dominated politics in this country for more than a century. In the last two weeks this campaign has hyped into McCarthyite Cold War hysteria.

Lurid headlines like “Secret past of Greens senator Lee Rhiannon”, “Rhiannon’s secret rendezvous with ‘agent-running KGB officers’” and “NSW Greens ‘riven by branch warfare’” sought to vilify progressive Greens MPs.

Senator Rhiannon has answered the latest red-baiting attacks on herself, noting the Australian appeared to have been given access to material that had been blacked out from her released ASIO files on a trip she made to England as an 18 year old. The Australian‘s Christian Kerr “attempt to associate my departure on a Russian cruise ship to potential spy activities is ridiculous. I left on the MS Shota Rustaveli as at that time it was the cheapest way to get to England, and unfortunately quite boring as we were at sea for six weeks.”

Then on February 2, progressive NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge was attacked for giving greeting to the recent national conference of the Socialist Alliance in another Cold War-style piece, “MP’s visit to far-left meeting roils Greens”.

Shoebridge’s “cameo appearance” at a “meeting of a far-left group” was said to have “raised eyebrows” in the Greens.

Shoebridge has nothing to be ashamed of. His greetings to the Socialist Alliance conference were open, frank and delivered with humour, as readers can see for themselves on the Socialist Alliance website.

He joked “I haven’t come here to join the Socialist Alliance but I have come here to give you a sign of enormous goodwill for what you are doing here over these two days as a political project.”

“It is a strong call unity in progressive politics,” said Shoebridge. “We do face challenging times. I think many people in the broader populace see the market ascendancy as inevitable, total, complete and absolutely hegemonic. I personally don’t believe that.

“We are seeing a globe where market hegemony in other parts of the world , in Europe and the United States is being seriously questioned. We see it here in the streets with Occupy Sydney. We are seeing a market economy facing extreme pressures and partial collapse. That gives progressive politics an enormously broad space to start talking over a couple of years about what can replace it, what can empower individuals and communities, how we can re-order our society and our economy in order to deliver for people, in order to deliver for the environment.

“I know that is what you are talking about and I wish you well in your discussion from myself as a Greens MP. Good luck, goodwill and let’s strive to work together as we can to get those progressive outcomes.”

Shoebridge summed up the situation well. Capitalism has taken the world to an unprecedented crisis point. The global climate change crisis, which The Australian regularly denies, and the new global economic crisis means that there is an objective necessity for the left and the Greens to work together against the powerful forces that oppose the real changes that are urgently needed in our society.

Every genuine capital “G” or small “g” green knows this is an objective necessity – if we are to rescue our common future from corporate greed.

At its latest conference, the Socialist Alliance reaffirmed that it “seeks the greatest possible political collaboration with the Greens”. The powerful enemies of political change have an equally strong resolve to destroy the left-Green cooperation that saving the future requires. Sadly, it is clear, that right-wingers in the Greens are helping the corporate media.

Peter Boyle and Susan Price were elected national co-convenors of Socialist Alliance at its 8^th national conference on January 21-22, 2012.