En Passant

So although Thatcher and Gillard have or had seemingly very different approaches to industrial relations, their goal is the same – to shift wealth from labour to capital to address falling profit rates. They use different strategies on occasion to get there. Thatcher tried to manhandle unions into a strait jacket. Labor in Australia asks workers nicely to try it on and compliments us on the fit. The way to fight the neoliberal Abbott is to fight the neoliberal Gillard.

We have come of age, and our politics have come of age. Aboriginal people can manage our own affairs, on our own terms. We are ready to treaty…can you Close that Gap Julia?

It is because Labor’s policies have been the policies of neoliberalism, of kowtowing to the rich and powerful, with occasional rhetorical flourishes of class war merely showing how far removed we are from it, that it offers no class analysis of society and the way forward for workers that Tony Abbott will be the next Prime Minister.

Rather than this being a rupture it is a continuation of Labor’s politics of neoliberalism. As Hawke and Keating led to Howard, so Rudd and Gillard are now leading to Abbott.

The solution for workers seems clear enough. Fight both brands of neoliberalism, not with television advertisements but with strikes.

Without class struggle no alternative working class political ideas can prosper, can break through, can shine, let alone lead. So enjoy your reading about Ricky’s retirement and Ralph’s rort, about Abbott’s allegations and Gillard’s gadflying. One day politics, real class politics, will burst forth and we will be able to say, like Marx, well grubbed old mole.

Instead of taxing Gina Rinehart, the world’s richest woman, Labor is attacking single mums, some of the least well off women in Australia. Maybe it’s time for the social media crowd to defend them in a massive campaign against Gillard.

Inspired by Julia Gillard condemning the peaceful Muslim demonstration against racism in Sydney on Saturday, and her comment these were not Australian values, I have gone in search of Australian values.  Are these the Australian values you mean, Gillard? ‘A NATO airstrike killed eight women and girls in eastern Afghanistan, local officials reported …  The women were [...]

We all know Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspaper is big on free speech. (Its own, if no-one else’s.) And investigative journalism. And making sure our leaders are people of integrity. So I thought I’d post the letters I sent to The Australian in the last few days that it hasn’t published.

If you were serious about representing ordinary working Australians and not big business, Julia Gillard, you’d join the Coles’ picket line at 6 am on Friday morning and mobilise the ALP and its members in Melbourne to be there to support these ordinary working Australians in their just fight against two greedy and very tough companies.

You could get a lift and an ear-bashing from Trades Hall at 6 am with Socialist Alternative.

See you on the picket line, Prime Minister.

The Slipper scandal will drag on for a while. Labor could well survive with his support and that of Craig Thomson till an election in 2013. Then they will get annihilated because of the Slipper syndrome, power without principle, rule for the rich.

Maybe we could find a more fitting eulogy. How does this sound? This is the way Labor’s world ends, this is the way their world ends, this is the way their world ends, not with a bang but a slipper. Labor are indeed the hollow men and women.

Just when you thought Labor couldn’t get any lower, you remember Bob Carr exists. He’s a worthy addition to the Gillard cabinet, where he’ll fit right in with all the other neoliberal scumbags.