En Passant

This is a Queensland Labor Party ad in the run up to the Queensland State election in 2015, when they were elected. The Party, in government, approved the Adani mine.

A social democratic desire among workers for improved living standards and services is both systemic, arising from the forced sale of our labour power to survive, and historical. The reality that workers’ living standards are falling relatively, and may have to do so from capital’s point of view in real terms, conflicts with the very real yearning of workers for a better world of full employment, improved wages and conditions and good schools, hospitals and transport. In Australia at the moment that yearning finds expression not in strikes and demonstrations for these outcomes – strikes are at near historic lows – but in the yo-yo of electoral change from neoliberal Labor to the neoliberal Liberals to neoliberal Labor.

Rebecca Barrigos writes in Red Flag:

To enable mass arrests, the Magistrates Court will be open 24 hours a day from 10 November. Magistrates will preside via video link at a special “G20 Offender Processing Centre” at the Supreme Court. There will be a presumption against bail in order to keep those arrested detained for the duration of the summit.

The real threat in Brisbane is not violent protesters, but the increase in the state’s powers.

To read the whole article click here.

With nearly 80% of the vote counted the swing against the Newman government in Queensland in the Stafford by-election is 18.6%. If replicated at the election in March next year the Liberal National Party government would be wiped out, much as the Labor government at the last election in Queensland was. My thanks to Daniel […]

Dozens of Brisbane Murri community leaders gathered on Tuesday night in the southern suburb of Logan to organise support for Sheila Oakley, who was viciously tasered by police on the doorstep of her home on 6 February write Kaye Broadbent and Sarah Jean in Red Flag. A rally has been called for Saturday 15 February at 11am, assembling at 26 Jacaranda Avenue, Kingston. Speeches will be followed by a march to the Logan police station. After the rally there will be a BBQ fundraiser to support Sheila and her family in their time of need. Everyone who wants to stand in solidarity with Brisbane’s Murri community needs to be there.

The lack of a real union fight against the Bligh government laid the groundwork for a vicious anti-worker Newman government. The same lack of a union fight against the Gillard government is laying the groundwork for a vicious anti-worker Abbott Government.

The time has come to stand up against the Bobbsey twins of job slashing wage cutting neoliberalism, Labor and the coalition.

The rebellion in Tunisia continues. Moderates have welcomed the dictator’s easing of repression and his commitment not to re-contest elections in 2014. It’s not enough. Only his overthrow can begin the next chapter in the Tunisian struggle for jobs and freedom. There was a general strike on Friday. If workers and peasants force Ben Ali from […]

Make the rich, not us, pay for the cost of the floods.

With the BlighBorg going to an early election and winning in Queensland, Rudd must be tempted to do the same thing and for the same reason – to avoid losing in 18 months’ time when unemployment is over 10 per cent.  If the HowRuddistas hold strong to every detail of the Emissions Trading Scheme after […]

Working class voters decided Premier Bligh in Queensland could protect and create jobs. She can’t. Politics is about to get very interesting.