Saturday’s socialist speak out
Posted by John, July 7th, 2012 - under Saturday's socialist speak out.
Oh FFS! Stop this disgraceful ‘turn back the boats’ rhetoric.
It says much about Australian politics that now the carbon tax has come in and not much has happened yet (apart from some businesses like Brumby’s Bakery being caught out wanting to use it as a fake justification to increase prices) the Opposition has shifted its focus from a great big new tax to stopping the boats.
They think they’ll get more resonance with that slogan at the moment than with their attacks on the carbon tax.
Both campaigns are lies.
Turning back the boats is a cruel, inhumane and deadly venture. Even within the context of the racist debate about stopping refugees both major parties are engaging in, it won’t work, as the former Defence Chief made clear on Friday.
I have a suggestion. Fly the 4000 refugees in Indonesia to Australia for settlement in the community. Bring the 100,000 in refugee camps in Malaysia here for settlement in the community. End of problem and the beginning of a new and exciting Australia.
It won’t happen because border security is an important part of capitalism’s control over workers and because the radical and revolutionary Left in Australia is weak, too weak to lead any sort of big campaign involving hundreds of thousands to pressure the government through demonstrations and strikes.
Speaking of strikes, 10,000 construction workers went on strike on Thursday against the Victorian Government’s new Construction code and its new Compliance unit.
The strike was illegal.
I hope when the Australian Building and Construction Directorate in Fair Work Australia (or whatever the old Australian Building and Construction Commission is now called) and Victoria’s Compliance Unit begin to prosecute building unions, the unions pull the plug completely on work until the penal provisions and the construction unions’ watchdogs become dead letters and are repealed.
In Perth workers and unions demonstrated against Gina Rinehart’s exploitation of foreign workers (good!) but did so in nationalist if not racist terms of putting Aussie jobs first (bad!). Give permanent residency to all 457 and EMA visa holders and allow unions to police their workplaces and conditions. Let them join unions and give access to unions to recruit them.
The ALP is distancing itself from the Greens, with Labor in Melbourne preferencing Family First before the Greens. The head of the party machine in New South Wales has called on Labor to put the Greens last, calling them extremists and likening them to One Nation. One Nation – a racist reactionary organisation!
Labor is more like One Nation in its treatment of refugees and indigenous people than the Greens could ever be.
There is a real logic to Labor preferencing the Coalition above the Greens, which is what putting the Greens last means. The two major parties share similar politics – the politics of neoliberalism.
It also shows you how out of touch Labor are that the Greens, an expression of social equality and environmental concern in a neoliberal strait-jacket, are pilloried for their caring approach.