En Passant

The Abbott government will not reject the attacks on penalty rates, the minimum wage slow down, relaxing the unfair dismissal laws or condemn individual contracts that will undermine pay rates for all workers. It will say it is just a draft; it is really just fine tuning what is already there; in the national interest we should all work together to address significant challenges to the economy and jobs, etc etc etc. What this all boils down to is making the working class pay for the crisis of profitability gathering pace in Australia. If the ruling class get these changes through that will open the floodgates for the next set of attacks from the insatiable bosses.

I wrote this about parliamentary entitlements rorting back in October 2013. It has some interesting numbers in relation to senior Government figures including the PM and Brandis. I finish up by saying:

‘The AFP won’t investigate possible misuse of parliamentary expenses independently or systemically. They and the politicians are all part of the ruling class and won’t do anything to undermine the facade of parliamentary respectability.’

Nothing over the last few weeks has undermined my argument of almost 2 years ago. It has only reinforced it.

To read the whole article click here.

Abbott said the problem was not individual parliamentarians but the system of entitlements itself. That is a bit like blaming the bank for lax security rather than the thieves for stealing the money. Certainly capitalist politicians are corrupt. However the whole capitalist system is corrupt. Mass struggle against it in all its manifestations is the answer.

The arrest of ACT CFMEU official John Lomax for trying to negotiate better pay and conditions for workers is an absolute disgrace, according to CFMEU National Construction Secretary Dave Noonan.
Mr Lomax was told by police that he was accused of forcing an employer to enter into an EBA and that as a result the employer suffered financial loss due to paying workers higher wages. Mr Noonan said that the government was criminalising the work of unions. “The criminal jurisdiction is not the domain of industrial matters and this is nothing but another vicious political attack on unions and the right to defend and improve pay and conditions for working people.”

James Supple writes in Solidarity magazine that the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the University of Canberra (NATSEM) released modelling that did the sums [on Hockey’s 2015 Budget]. As Ben Phillips from NATSEM explained, “the overall picture is one where low income families do the heavy lifting.

On asylum seekers Labor has been hoist with their own petard. It would be laughable if it were not so serious. The time has come for Labor to abandon the stink bomb that is their refugee policy and welcome those fleeing war, rape, imprisonment and persecution. I know that will not happen. It is up to refugee activists to continue our long fight to defend asylum seekers. Instead of Labor and Liberal lies, that means, as a start and as Red Cross has shown, telling the truth about our abandoned brothers and sisters and exposing Labor and the government for the liars and criminals they are. It means pointing out too that the government (of whatever neoliberal persuasion) that is attacking workers and the poor also attacks asylum seekers. We are all in this together.

This argument that ASIS made the payments looks like a stitch up so Abbott and Co can hide behind more secrecy. It is always handy to have a secretive fall guy like ASIS who may be outside Australian law in undertaking actions which if anyone else did them would be criminal.

The next time Abbott or Hockey tell us to ‘have a go’, our response should be ‘you have to go, ya mugs.’

In framing its 12 May Budget the Abbott government is torn between its desire to slash and burn and the realisation, in light of the massive backlash against its 2014 austerity Budget, that to do so would guarantee its political death. What it will do among other things is cloak some of its cuts in the rhetoric of fairness or look for back door ways to introduce their cuts. A wounded government is a dangerous government.

Here is a  20 second video of Tony Abbott, a grog monster (his words) and Australia’s Prime Minister,  doing one thing well – being a  grog monster. Says it all about Australia today. The glass is fully empty.