Nick G.
On Wednesday November 24, a jubilant Ark Tribe emerged from the Adelaide Magistrates Court pumping the air with both fists and shouting “We got ‘em!” Then he added, “This is a victory for working Australians!”
Charges brought against Ark Tribe by the reactionary ABCC had just been dismissed. Rudd and Gillard had given protected status to the ABCC – a fascist-like entity set up under Howard. They call it a watchdog, but the circumstances of its birth reveal it to be a mongrel outfit that needs to be put down as quickly as possible.
Ark’s victory is a result of a mass movement for the scrapping of the ABCC. Tribe’s lawyers had successfully argued that the charges had not been laid by a duly authorized person, but the scale of the victory can’t be dismissed by claiming he got off on a technicality.
(Above: Ark speaks to supporters prior to entering the court) Ark got off because tens of thousands of workers had left their jobs to attend rallies every time he had appeared in court – seven times over eighteen months. The word about the ABCC and Ark’s resolute stand in the face of threats and intimidation was spread far and wide. Public meetings, petitions, articles in union and community magazines, support from civil libertarians nad mass organisations galvanised wider support. Unions warned of national strike action if Ark was found guilty.
He got off because the giant multinational building and property corporations, and their minions in the ALP, sensed the scale of struggle that was ready to explode if Tribe was sent to gaol.
A technicality can be a wonderful thing for a ruling class that needs an excuse to back down. And this was no ordinary technicality. As Ark’s lawyers succeeded in arguing, the ABCC had delegated the powers, but not the functions of the ABC Commissioner to a Deputy Commissioner and that it was the latter person, and not the Commissioner, who had determined that Ark was “capable of giving evidence relevant to an investigation”.
The ABCC notice to Ark that he was required to attend an investigation also erred in not identifying the person before whom he was to appear. In other words, whilst purporting to investigate an illegal act by Tribe, the ABCC itself had acted unlawfully.
When we speak of creeping fascism, we refer precisely to the use of coercive powers, (unregulated and unsupervised), that shows no respect for the laws of the land, even as bourgeois and anti-worker as they may be in their essence. Powers of the type exercised by the ABCC which are allowed to thrive under their own direction and at the exercising body’s own interpretation are an abuse of the so-called “safeguards” of capitalist democracy.
(Above: workers wait outside the court to hear the verdict.)As thousands of workers burst into chants of “The workers, united, will never be defeated!” South Australian Secretary of the CFMEU Martin O’Malley warned that the laws that Ark had stood up to were still in place and waiting to be used against any construction worker around the country. “The CFMEU is determined to overturn the laws which have spurned this evil situation,” he said.
His comments had the full support of the ACTU Secretary Ged Kearney who described the decision as a “nail in the coffin of the ABCC” and of SA Unions Secretary Janet Giles who said that “Prime Minister Gillard must now adopt Labor’s policy pledge to scrap the ABCC”.
And it’s not only these laws and this organisation that have to go. The whole apparatus of the state (police, courts, prisons), together with the restrictions of the bourgeois parliamentary system, stand opposed to the workers and compel their daily sacrifice of the surplus value created by their labour power.
The dominant social ideas - shaped and maintained by media and “entertainment” – prevent people from thinking and analyzing and challenging. So when a victory like Ark’s comes along, we celebrate its significance and add it to the exceptional acts of defiance that characterise the resistance of the working class in the face of imperialism and capitalism.
Scrap the ABCC!
Guarantee workplace rights!
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