Mining and energy boom should pay for sustainable manufacturing in Australia

Vanguard September 2010 p. 8
Ned K.

In Australia in mid 2010 there were over $350 billion worth of existing mining and energy projects approved or in the process of being approved.

As the federal election results await a definitive outcome, one of the biggest corporations in the mining and energy sector, BP Billiton, announced a $14.37 billion profit. (Adelaide Sunday Mail 29 August).

A few days earlier, dairy products manufacturer National Foods announced that it was reviewing its operations with likely closure of some of its regional plants such as the cheese manufacturing plant at Jervois near Murray Bridge.

Similar uncertainty prevails for workers in what is left of the car component industry as the continued existence of car assembly plants in Australia is based on an increasing reliance by the multinational car companies on imported components.

In the booming mining and energy industries in Australia, local engineering manufacturers are struggling to get a look in.

An example is the $43 billion Gorgon Liquid Natural Gas Project in the North West. According to the Australian Financial Review, only a fifth of the steel for the project is being provided by steel manufacturers in Australia. The Australian Steel Institute in April this year calculated that only 8% of all steel fabrication work required in Western Australia will be done in Australia. Consequently, steel fabrication and employment in this industry is nowhere near potential.

One of the multinationals involved in the Gorgon project, Chevron, complained that sourcing steel fabrication from Australia was too costly compared with its ‘overseas suppliers’. A familiar line of argument that manufacturing workers in Australia have heard from multinational corporations since the early 1970s when manufacturing in Australia started to decline rapidly, and big capital moved its manufacturing to cheaper labour sources in the perimeter countries of global capital.

“Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones” (Communist Manifesto Marx, Engels)

This depiction of capitalism is certainly an apt description of what manufacturing workers in Australia have experienced in the newest stage of capitalism over the last 40 years as “... in place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations” (Marx).

The “disturbance of all social conditions” referred to by Marx is reflected in the 2010 federal election outcome where the voting trends arguably indicate a real concern by the working people of Australia about the direction of the country. Central to this concern is a desire by millions of people in Australia for the plight of local industry and jobs, health, education and environment at a time when there is a mining and energy boom!

The CPA (M-L) has put forward these Immediate Demands to answer the concerns of the people.

Nationalise and build the nation
Regulate and control foreign investment
Tax the profits of the mining monopolies
Develop renewable energy production
Build clean, safe, sustainable manufacturing industries
Improve services in regional areas