Palestinian cultural day in SA

Written by: Ned K. on 7 April 2025

 

Above: Just days ago, Torah Jews and other anti-Zionnists in the US rolled out a scroll containing the names of 50,000 Palestinians killed by genocidal Israeli Occupation Forces.   Photo source: ILPS)

On Sunday 6 April, the Palestinian community in Adelaide held their annual Palestinian Cultural Day organized by Palestinian Australians at the suburban beachfront of Semaphore. Hundreds of people attended the Cultural Day. There were activities for children, Palestinian live bands and solo artists, and plenty of Palestinian food. 

Notable political attendees were one state ALP Upper House MP, the first Moslem MP in SA Parliament, a Greens Party MP and an Australia's Voice Senate candidate for South Australia, Jordan Shane. Australia's Voice is the Party started up by Senator Fatima Payman from Western Australia. 

There were also several organizations supporting the Day, including AFOPA and Health Workers for Palestine.

Australia is home to First Nations Peoples on whose land many people from many different backgrounds and cultures have come to start a new life. Cultural events are held by many of these diverse communities.

What made this Palestinian Cultural Day of 6 April 2025 so special was that it expressed values of solidarity, optimism and determination by Palestinians despite the continued attempts by the US backed Zionist regime to destroy all remnants of Palestinian culture and Palestinian life itself.

 

Support for the people’s war in India

 Written by: Nick G. on 7 April 2025

 

Today, April 7, marks the beginning of an international week of solidarity with, and support for, the Indian revolutionary movement and the people’s war led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

The CPI (M) and its armed forces, the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA), have waged armed struggle for years against the Indian ruling class and established a zone of conflict often referred to as the “Red Corridor”.

They have based their mass work on the “untouchable” Dalit villagers and on the tribal peoples, the Adivasis, of the forests and jungles who, despite certain Constitutional rights, have been threatened with dispossession and forced exile so that the big corporations that have state power on their side, can move in and exploit the timber and mineral resources on Adivasi lands.

The key to corporate conquest of Adivasi lands is the crushing of the Maoist insurgency,

It was tried and failed during Operation Greenhunt, which began a decades-long campaign of extra-judicial killings, faked surrenders, forced displacement and attacks on civil liberties.

Now, the fascist Modi government has switched to an even more murderous assault, known as Operation Kagar, deploying more than one hundred thousand paramilitary forces, backed by drones, helicopters and satellite surveillance.

The CPI (M) claims that more than 400 people, including Party leaders, members of the PLGA and local Adivasis, have been killed over the past 15 months.
In response to the increased repression by the Modi government on behalf of Indian finance capital including Adani, Ambani and the big landlords of India, the CPI (M) has offered to join the government in a ceasefire providing it calls off Operation Kagar.

CPI (Maoist) Central Committee spokesperson Comrade Abhay said on April 2, “We welcome the round table organized by the ‘Peace Talks Committee’ in Hyderabad on March 24 on the topic – the Union Government and the CPI (Maoist) should announce unconditional ceasefire and hold peace talks, in the present scenario.”

“We are always ready for peace talks keeping in view people’s interests. Hence, putting forward these proposals to the Central and State governments to create a conducive atmosphere for peace talks. If the Central and State governments positively respond to these proposals, we will immediately announce a ceasefire,” Comrade Abhay said in the statement.

Comrade Abhay further declared in the statement, “The Hindutva fascist BJP-led regime at the Centre launched a military offensive against its own people in the name of Operation Kagaar undermining the lives of tribal people and fundamental constitutional provisions. This brutal offensive is aimed at crushing the revolutionary movement for Jal, Jangle, Zameen rights of Adivasis, promoting corporate interests to allow plunder of the natural resources, eventually decimate the federal system in the country and establish an autocratic unitary State.”

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) salutes our Indian comrades, and calls on all Australians, including the Indian diaspora here in our country, irrespective of caste or religious identity, to support the call for an end to Operation Kagar and for a ceasefire on the terms offered by the CPI (Maoist). 

 

Only a genuinely anti-imperialist independence will protect our people.

Written by: Nick G. on 4 April 2025

 

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s recent address to the National Press Club, in which he called for Australian politicians to “get up off your knees and stand up for Australia,” represents a further strengthening of the movement for Australian independence.

Turnbull said that there should be a retaliation against Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Australian exports to the US, and that the Albanese government “could start with the $3bn or the $2.5bn left being handed over to support the US submarine industrial base.”

Attacking the AUKUS arrangements, he said “Australia was unlikely to ever receive submarines from the US given production challenges in America’s shipyards and there was a bipartisan lack of transparency about the risks to Australian sovereignty and defence capacity from the deal.”

He also said the government should consider withdrawing American access to naval bases in Perth.

He called on both Labor and the Coalition to stop being so timid and deferential, and said that “Australia needed to be more independent in the new world of brute power politics and reclaim sovereignty from the US.”

Of course, there will be some on the Left who will reject Turnbull and remind everyone of his role as Coalition PM between 2015 and 2018 when he did nothing to reclaim our sovereignty from the US, or make any reference to the need for Australian independence. 

He was then, and is now, a supporter of the so-called US-Australia “alliance”.

A person’s background and political record must not be forgotten, but whether their change of heart occurs sooner or later, the important thing is that it does occur.

The same may be said of former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser who was the beneficiary of a US-managed parliamentary coup. Whitlam had ruffled US imperialist feathers by talking of revealing the CIA role in Pine Gap, so hatchet man Marshall Green was despatched as US Ambassador to Australia to lay the ground for Whitlam’s dismissal.  Fraser secured the Australian state within the hold of US imperialism and launched attacks on the working class.

Yet in his later years, he had his own “road to Damascus” awakening and wrote the book “Dangerous Allies” in which he criticised the US hold on this country, warned about US plans to make us take Virginia class submarines, and called for the closure of Pine Gap.

Some on the Left extend their rejection of new-found allies on the Right to those progressive persons who try to establish an alternative to the US stranglehold.

The various Trotskyite groups, for example, have blasted the Greens for proposing a defence policy based on rejection of ties to the US and the development of a policy of armed neutrality, limiting Australian armed forces to the defence of Australia’s territorial integrity.

One Trotskyite organisation pilloried the Greens for “suddenly positioning themselves as defenders of the realm against an undefined enemy”.  The organisation conceded that the Greens had called for the scrapping of AUKUS, but criticised them because the demand “is not particularly progressive”.  It accused the Greens of “floating with the tide when every left-wing organisation ought to be swimming against the current.”

Another group which emerged out of the Trotskyites went further, slamming the Greens as “imperialism’s left-wing”.  

This group aimed its attack at the independence movement, in which it lumped the Greens, saying “Support for an “independent Australia” policy is not anti-imperialist in practice. Rather, it seeks to facilitate an independent Australian imperialism, liberated from its sub-imperial status under the American nuclear umbrella… An independent Australia would simply be an imperialist Australia.”

As long-time supporters of an independent Australia, we know that the question of Australian independence is fundamentally a class question.

Which class will win the right to lead the movement for independence will determine whether it moves in a genuinely anti-imperialist and socialist direction, or whether it suffers defeat and the strengthening of the grip of imperialism and reaction.

We are implacably opposed to bourgeois nationalism. But we are not opposed to strengthening and widening the anti-US movement and do not support sectarian rejection of allies who, whatever their shortcomings as firm anti-imperialists, are nevertheless welcome participants in the movement in which we are trying to establish a proletarian revolutionary main force.

Kiribati and China deepen ties

Written by: (Contributed) on 2 April 2025

 

(Above: Chinese and Kiribati leaders in Beijing in 2020   Source Xinhua)

Moves by Kiribati to negotiate a deep-sea mining deal with China have closely followed similar moves by the Cook Islands. The moves have taken place against a backcloth of underlying trends in the global economy and a changing balance of forces, with far-reaching implications for US hegemony. The two tiny Pacific Island countries have, for example, geo-strategic significance for US-led regional military and security provision.

In mid-March, Kiribati, a tiny Pacific island with 130,000 residents, announced it had initiated high-level diplomatic talks with China about securing a deep-sea mining partnership of a vast area surrounding the country. (1) The seabed deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper are regarded as 'key minerals for the global battery industry'. (2)

Kiribati, furthermore, has a huge Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covering 3,437,132 square kms, in comparison to its total landmass of only 811 square kms, ensuring the former is 4,238 times larger than the latter. (3)

In fact, concerns have been expressed in US-led commentary that by switching their diplomatic allegiance to China from Taiwan, small Pacific Island states have provided China with diplomatic access to about 80 per cent of the Pacific Ocean. (4)

Many of the small islands also have a significant role in US-led regional defence and security provision; the Pentagon began a six year and $27.4 billion upgrading plan in 2021 to establish a network of precision-strike missiles along island chains in what was described as the 'Indo-Pacific theatre'. (5) The US-led military plan has also included provision for a 'fielding of an Integrated Joint Force with precision-strike networks … and integrated air missile defence'. (6)

The fact that Kiribati is half-way between Pine Gap and the US Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii reveals its sensitive geo-strategic position. (7) The Cook Islands, likewise, rests on similar sensitive arcs between US military facilities.

Decades of relative neglect during the previous Cold War by the US toward the Pacific sland nations and neo-colonial relations, however, assured they were 'sovereign and independent in appearance only'. (8) It was the golden age of US imperialism; in fact, the official position of the US during the period was stated clearly by John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State, 1953-59, as 'there are two ways of conquering a foreign nation. One is to gain control of its people by force of arms; the other is to gain control of its economy by financial means'. (9) That US hegemonic regional position has now become history.

The rise of China, particularly in the Pacific region has already seriously challenged US hegemony; even US analysts in Washington have concluded that the US is no longer the dominant power in the Pacific. (10) The US have been quietly pushed aside.

The changing balance of forces has been verified with economic data from within the corporate world itself; figures quoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2008 noted that while the US held about one-third of the world's financial assets with $56.1 trillion and the emerging market economies held $23.6 trillion, the latter were growing at twice the rate of the former. (11) The economic growth of the latter has also taken place with a multiplier effect.

Trade bodies, including the BRICs, have emerged as strong contenders in the global economy, particularly as they expand their membership into other areas of the world, including the Middle East. Studies of the expansion have concluded the emerging markets were collectively averaging nearly six per cent growth rates, with China and India together with 28 other countries, leading the way. (12) ASEAN, likewise, has also emerged as an influential trade bloc, with strong collective growth rates.

The US, however, has failed to reach the same growth rates; in fact, following a high-spot in the mid-1960s, their economy has hovered around two per cent growth rates for decades. (13) The problem has become a major factor behind the recent political turmoil surrounding the Trump administration and their financial advisers; they are in panic mode and frantic to deal with China, by whatever means they regard as warranted, including real-war scenarios.

The move by Kiribati to foster stronger links with China, therefore, is best assessed in the context of a subsequent changing balance of forces away from traditional US hegemonic positions. Chinese social-imperialism, in pursuing a policy promoted as supporting mutually beneficial trade and financial support, has presented a credible challenge to US diplomatic positions with tiny, and seemingly, forgotten countries, previously assessed by Washington as barely significant.

As a result of Kiribati pursuing closer links with China, its link with regional partners, Australia and New Zealand, have been noted to 'have become strained … there has been a … tectonic shift in the region'. (14) The fact that Australia's aid budget for developmental assistance has now dropped from 1.2 per cent of the federal budget to a mere 0.68 per cent remains a factor when studying the Pacific Island countries. (15)

Governments across the Pacific are now clearly looking at alternatives to traditional US-led support. More are likely to follow the lead of both Kiribati and the Cook Islands.

It is important to note that moves by the Kiribati government have also fostered some economic development in favour of the more vulnerable sectors of society in recent times. A recent government study noted poverty rates amongst the elderly, unemployed and disabled had been slashed by seventy per cent. (16)

1.     See: Kiribati floats Chinese deep-sea mining deal, Australian, 19 march 2025.
2.     Kiribati explores deep-sea mining deal with China amid global regulatory talks, The Investing News Network, 20 March 2025.
3.     China now controls 80% of the Pacific EEZ; US v. China, Japan Forward: Politics and Security, Rieko Hayakawa and Jennifer L. Anson, 14 February 2020.
4.     Ibid.
5.     US to build anti-China missile network along first island chain, Nikkei, 5 March 2021.
6.     US Indo-Pacific Command proposes new missile capabilities to deter China, RFA., 5 March 2021.
7.     See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size.
8.     See: The plunder of the poor nations, Why are they poor? in The Enemy – Notes on Imperialism and Revolution, Felix Greene, (London, 1970), Chapter 4, pp. 135-151.
9.     Quoted, ibid., page 139.
10.   Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Paul D. Shinkman, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
11.   Davos salutes SWFs in a celebration of global capitalism, Australian, 29 January 2008.
12.   'Nearly 6% growth', The Economic Times, 25 April 2024.
13.   US GDP growth rate, 1961-2025, Macrotrends.
14.   Pacific nation of Kiribati explores deep-sea mining deal with China, Radio Free Asia, 17 March 2025.
15.   Marles' $1bn snub for Trump, Australian, 25 March 2025.
16.   Kiribati's targeted support slashes poverty by 70%, The Tarawa Times, 19 March 2025.

More on Imperialism and Religion

Written by: Duncan B. on 1 April 2025

 

In 2022, during a Papal visit to Canada, Pope Francis apologised many times for the abuse that Indigenous children suffered at Catholic-run residential schools, as well as for the Church’s adoption of policies that stripped away Indigenous culture. He said that “taking away the children, changing the culture and mentality, and erasing an entire culture was effectively a genocide.”

Indigenous Australians would welcome similar apologies from the heads of the Catholic, Anglican and all the other denominations that did the same thing in Australia, for their part in helping to destroy Indigenous culture and languages.

In Canada, as in Australia, Africa and everywhere else in the world conquered by imperialism, the invaders had a firm belief in the superiority of Christianity as a religion over all other religions. With their strong racist views, they believed that the indigenous inhabitants were members of an inferior race with inferior cultures and religion.

In Australia these racist views made them blind to the fact that they were dealing with a people who were deeply religious, with a culture profoundly influenced by their spiritual beliefs. The invaders could not comprehend the strong ties the Indigenous people had with their Country. The invaders believed that their actions were ordained by God and therefore justifiable. They saw themselves as the rightful inheritors of the land and were entitled to take it from a lower form of man which was destined to die out anyway.

Indigenous leaders are calling for churches to go beyond merely apologising for the harm caused by their past actions, but to deliver justice to Indigenous Australians. Some have called for the churches to pay reparations. Among these is Professor Anne Pattel-Gray. Professor Pattel-Gray is an Australian Aboriginal theologian and author.  She is a Bidjara/Kari Kari woman from Queensland, and the first Indigenous person to obtain a PhD from the University of Sydney. Her books include The Great White Flood: Racism in Australia. 

In 2023 Professor Pattel-Gray wrote, “Reparations are another critical part of decolonising the church, as this is where Indigenous land is given back, or Indigenous peoples are compensated for its theft. Colonial invaders stole this land from the Indigenous peoples and the collusion between the Australian government and churches has given churches  great wealth, power and privilege. It is not enough to say “Sorry”. It is important for Australian churches to act on delivering justice to Indigenous Christians. Now is the time for “Voice”, “Truth-telling” and “Treaty.” And now is the time for churches to atone for the sins of their forebears and pay reparations to the Indigenous churches and nations for the theft of land, for slavery, cultural genocide and the stolen generations.”

The call for reparations is a just one which should be supported. However, given the way churches have used every legal trick that they can to try and avoid paying reparations to the victims of sexual assault by priests, there is not much hope of the churches ever paying one cent in reparations to Indigenous people without a struggle.

 

VALE Wallace McKitrick: cultural fighter (1950-2025)

Written by: Nick G. on 1 April 2025

 

Wallace McKitrick, perhaps still known by some by his birth name, Peter Hicks, was an advocate for, and creative artist of, progressive Australian culture.

Wallace worked for most of his life in community-based artistic and cultural activities.

He began writing poetry while at high school, enrolled for a short time at Flinders University. He then worked at odd jobs while helping to develop a street theatre collective with Margot Nash. Wallace wrote many of its scripts and performed them alongside Margot and others, not just at rallies against conscription and at Moratoriums, but also outside car plants, other large factories and schools.

Wallace was arrested in 1968 during an anti-conscription sit-in at the Department of Labour and National Service offices in Adelaide, and created an uproar in July 1969 when he announced his intention to burn a dog to show people who were not awakened to the horror of the US use of napalm against Vietnamese civilians just what was involved. “Student to burn dog as protest” was splashed across the newspaper front page, and although it was just a media stunt and never intended to do harm to the dog, Plato, it resulted in death threats for the Flinders student.

Wallace chose not to apply for conscientious objector status, and refused to register for the conscription ballot. When police summonsed him to appear on charges related to the offence, he went to New Zealand for a year and subsequently to the Spanish Canary Islands, returning to Australia when his mother sent him news of Whitlam’s election and the end of conscription.

He worked at various labouring jobs and then re-enrolled at Flinders, having heard of the Politics and Arts course offered by the Philosophy Department as part of the Marxist-Leninist course offered by Prof. Brian Medlin and Greg O’Hair. Wallace had known Medlin since the Moratorium days when Medlin was its leader.

At that time 1973, Wallace was working at the Botanic Gardens, mowing lawns, for almost a year and then was awarded a six-month Commonwealth Literary Fellowship on the basis of his record as a poet. That was the first issue of Commonwealth literary grants in Australia by the new Whitlam Government.

Then in 1975, he was appointed as the inaugural Arts Officer with the Trades and Labour Council of South Australia. That involved organising lunchtime shows in factories and building sites – musical shows or very short dramas, theatrical shows or exhibitions or films. This time he collaborated with singer Robin Archer who wrote songs about working class immigration, and sang them to workers in Greek and Italian.

Three years had elapsed between the street theatre and his forced departure from Australia.

It was following his return to Australia that Wallace joined the Worker-Student Alliance and the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist). Asked in a 2022 oral history interview whether he had joined the Party, Wallace, who always strictly observed our “iceberg” organisational principle, laughed and said “If I had joined the Marxist-Leninist Party, I couldn't tell you.”

He now turned his attention to setting up the Progressive Art Movement (PAM) with Annie Newmarch and Pam Harris. It was intended to bring together working class issues and the movement for Australian independence across a multimedia collaboration which focussed largely on screenprints created by Annie and others.

In 2024, Wakefield Press published “If you don’t fight…you lose: Politics, Posters and PAM” as an illustrated retrospective on the Progressive Art Movement. In their chapter on the history of PAM, Catherine Speck and Jude Adams write: “PAM, like the Worker-Student Alliance, was a front organisation for the Communist Party of Australia (CPA M-L) which had several agendas operating. One was a campaign against foreign bases in Australia, another was against a car industry run by American companies, yet another was supporting (and joining) the Australian Independence Movement. Within this political mix, cultural workers became involved in rank-and-file operations and in the class struggle at the two major car manufacturing plants, GMH ad Chrysler.”

Another area of involvement for Wallace was the leading of the Creative Writing Workshops in Yatala Prison, which he initiated with friend and fellow poet John Healey, in 1974. It kept going for four years, initially fortnightly, and for a period of time weekly. It meant a great deal to Wallace to work with the inmates who, despite a policy of “rehabilitation”, felt they were regarded as society’s “rubbish”, but who blossomed as creative writers and artists when they felt they were treated as humans for the first time.

Wallace was also involved with the Assemblers folk group which included some of the Rank and File organisation at Chryslers. He wrote various songs and some pieces for The Independent Australian magazine. He wrote a song called 'Ballad of a Bloody Worker,' about Chrysler worker Wil Heidt's arrest and imprisonment. 

When the folk-rock group Redgum was formed by students of Medlin’s course, inspired by Mao Zedong’s Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, Wallace contributed the song Red Raggin’ to their first album. The song declared the wearing of the anti-Communist “red raggers” badge to be an act of defiant pride. The album cover, by George Aldridge, depicted a gigantic Aussie worker about to put an axe through the US spy base at Pine Gap. The back cover featured photos by Anne Newmarch. Its title was the militant union call, “If you don’t fight, you lose”.

Wallace was a founding member of the Community Arts Network of South Australia in 1979 or ‘80. In 1980 he became employed by the Arts Council of South Australia, which was a regionally-based organisation. He conducted workshops and supported community artists and writers across Eyre Peninsula at Ceduna, Port Lincoln, Tumby Bay, Port Neill and Whyalla. He also did a lot of the same work in SA’s South-East. 

In 1988, with the struggle between Patricks and the Maritime Union in full swing, he had his poem “The Slimy Patrick’s Scab” printed in Overland magazine.

Wallace was a great supporter of Indigenous cultural work and was a reference committee member (Klynton Wanganeen, Wallace McKitrick, Bill Wilson, Crystal Murray) for iDreamingTV (originally called Yaitya Makkitura), created in 1998 by the SA Aboriginal community interested in establishing an Indigenous screen and multi-media organisation. 

Wallace spent ten years representing a federal funding agency concerned with cultural initiatives in Indigenous communities.  He was Senior Policy and Program Officer, Indigenous Culture Branch, Ministry for the Arts, Australian Government 2004-14; Senior Policy Adviser, ATSIC; recipient of 1987 Ros Bower Award (then under his name as Peter Hicks).

Wallace worked with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) from 2001, where he was increasingly aware of the political importance of the Aboriginal self-determination movement. He was in Port Augusta with ATSIC for two years, and had been in Port Augusta already for almost two years before that, with a community development programme based in local government. And then he came to work for the State Policy Centre of ATSIC in Adelaide in 2003.

In 2012-13, Wallace was Senior Policy Officer for the Indigenous Languages Support scheme and its Australia-wide Master-Apprentice Language and Learning Workshop (MALLP) providing support for the revival and teaching of Indigenous languages. 

In 2012 at a Spirit of Eureka commemoration for Eureka Day on the SA Parliament House steps, Wallace heard a talk by Italian-Australian Don Longo on Eureka participant and historian Rafaello Carboni.  He mentioned it again in 2022 when interviewed by Don and Lyn Longo for the Days of Wrath oral history project. He was particularly impressed by Don’s emphasis on the multicultural nature of the 1854 Eureka Rebellion.

Following the death of his friend and comrade Brian Medlin, Wallace contributed to a book published in 2021 titled “The Level-Headed Revolutionary”, a collection of writings by and about Medlin.

Then, when his friend and collaborator from the Progressive Art Movement, Anne Newmarch, died in 2022, he wrote a moving testament to her political commitment titled “Remembering Ann Newmarch – vital contributor to an independent Australian culture”, published on the Spirit of Eureka website.

When Australia was embroiled in controversy over the referendum on Constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, Wallace wrote a three-part series on Aboriginal sovereignty for Spirit of Eureka under the heading “Indigenous Sovereignty movement is indestructible”.

In August 2024, despite illness, he wrote a review of the film Ḻuku Ngärra: the Law of the Land. The film was made by the Yolŋu people of the NT and focuses on the life of law custodian the Reverend Doctor D. Gondarra. Wallace said of Dr Gondarra’s analysis that it “deftly connects historical British imperialism, Australian settler-colonialism, and modern imperialism’s intensified exploitative practices, while sketching some essential ingredients of a people’s liberation movement.” The review is also on the Spirit of Eureka website.

When Wallace died on the morning of March 14, he had on his desk a copy of Carboni’s book on Eureka, placed on top of his copy of Don Longo’s Eureka Day speech. 

He had said during his interview with Don and Lyn Longo “Reading your 2012 Eureka Day speech, in fact brought back home to me, the absolute critical importance of that dimension. And that's what has to be brought forward. The multi-cultural fact, the diversity of backgrounds and political persuasions in other respects, all with revolutionary intent. This is a microcosm of what's possible.”

Wallace had told family members he intended to write a three-part cycle on Eureka, and kept his unfinished dream of using Eureka to show what is possible in terms of revolutionary intent beside him as he passed away.

Wallace’s passing is a sad loss for wife Sarah and his children and grandchildren.  We extend our sincere condolences to them.

But we rejoice in this comrade’s unblemished record of whole-of-life contributions to Australian anti-imperialist, democratic and socialist cultural work. 

Elections in WA

Written by: Allan M. on 1 April 2025

 

(Above: CFMEU members in WA  - Paid Up And Proud!)

2025 is a year of elections in WA, with Western Australians being asked to head to the polls to decide their State and Federal representatives. The State election here has just occurred, and WA Labor has had a decisive victory for a third term. Opposed by a Liberal/National Coalition (whose shambolic campaign, candidates, and policies are not worth further thought) the WA Labor Party entered their election campaign promising ‘a steady hand’ for WA. When looking back at their previous terms, we can see that this steady hand was used to quietly rob Western Australians of their future while enriching mining magnates and their political cronies.

The WA Labor Party experienced a record win in 2021, securing a 4-year term with no effective opposition in either house of Parliament. With this significant majority, WA Labor has had the opportunity the address major issues in our State. But in 2025, we face a huge housing crisis, with more and more families having to choose between rent payments and food, continued attacks on our natural environment, and attacks on worker power. 

With a record majority in Parliament, WA Labor promised to address the State’s seriously outdated rental laws. Soon after making this promise to the people of WA, the Labor government was falling over themselves to placate the landlords and property developer lobby, giving assurance after assurance that their proposed new law would not impact their ability to gouge tenants. What WA renters got from this law was a requirement that landlords are limited to a once-yearly rent increase, compared to the previous twice-yearly limit. What a comfort! To the landlord class, WA Labor delivered a massive green-light to continue their daylight robbery. With the retention of no-grounds evictions and the ability to increase rent to whatever they like on a yearly basis, landlords are still able to scare renters into shutting up and paying up for the privilege of living in low-quality housing. 

Now WA, like the rest of Australia, is in the midst of a massive housing crisis. In late 2024, Perth became the least affordable capital city to rent in, while 0% vacancy rates in many of our regional centres have led to rapidly increasing homelessness. Working families are in precarious conditions, having to find ways to keep up with extortionate rent increases or risk eviction. Many have been unable to keep up, shown by the growing number of families living out of cars. 

This is what the Labor party achieves when it faces no opposition.

With a record majority in Parliament, WA Labor promised to protect the State’s natural environment and heritage, while promoting sustainable economic growth. In the wake of the tragic destruction of Juukan Gorge in 2020, that vast majority of Western Australians were eager to see the arrogance of mining companies reined in. After introducing a new law to modernise the protection of Aboriginal heritage in WA, the WA government came under increasing pressure from pastoralists and smaller mining companies to water it down. Scared of a fight with industry, the WA Labor government revoked the law overnight and reverted our Aboriginal heritage protections to rely on a law from 1972. 

This disgraceful weakness of our ‘elected representatives’ and their deference to big industry continued throughout their term. Under pressure from mining and property developer lobbyists, the WA government introduced changes to our environmental protection laws with zero mandate or public consultation. These changes limited rights of appeal for the community, and changed the composition of the Environmental Protection Authority to enable greater representation of industry interests. The egregious lack of transparency in this process caused uproar for many Western Australians, but the WA Labor government was able to use their Parliamentary majority to push through the changes unopposed in late 2024. Shortly after, it was revealed that the WA Labor government also gave special privileges to Alcoa, allowing the mining giant to continue expanding its bauxite mine outside of Perth while an environmental assessment on that expansion was ongoing. It was further revealed that public servants advising the government told them that this could poison a significant portion of Perth’s water supply. Despite this, the WA Labor government allowed Alcoa to continue mining effectively without any constraints. 

This is how the Labor party uses it’s Parliamentary majority, not for the benefit of the workers, but to bow down to business interests.

With a record majority in Parliament, WA workers might have thought that the Labor government would enact policies from their allegedly ‘pro-worker’ platform. Instead, the WA Labor government used their majority to continue an attack on workers across the state. In 2022, WA nurses went on strike as part of their campaign for a pay-rise after years of being over-worked, understaffed, and protecting our community from Covid-19. Instead of supporting the workers, the WA Labor government attacked them through the Industrial Relations Commission. After continued pressure from the government, the nurses union were forced to call off their campaign and pay a $350,000 fine. 

In the Pilbara, where most of the State’s mining occurs, unions are looking to build up their membership and support mine workers who are experiencing worsening pay and conditions. Instead of supporting the unions, WA Labor has sided with their friends in the Chamber of Minerals and Energy, with the Deputy Premier stating that workers in WA ‘thrive without unions’. It should also come as no surprise that as the union presence in the Pilbara is growing, the WA Labor government joined in the attack on the CFMEU and introduced an arbitrary ‘fit and proper person’ test for any union representative seeking to enter a worksite. 

This is how the Labor party treats the workers when they fight for fair conditions.

The WA government has had a once-in-a-century opportunity to improve the lives of the WA community. With no effective opposition in Parliament and large public support, the government could have embarked on a series of reforms to ensure we have good housing, strong protections for our heritage sites and our natural environment, and good conditions for our workers. Western Australians can now see how the WA Labor government used their majority to cosy up to big business, for individuals to secure Board positions at Rio Tinto, BHP, or  FMG, and to attack the working class. The best thing to come out of this term of government has been that WA Labor has exposed to all Western Australians just how hostile they are to the working class. This is driving us to continue building the worker solidarity, to reject the bourgeois Parliamentary system, and to fight for a system that represents the working class and our interests.

The Australian economy: the continuing crisis

Written by: (Contributed) on 30 March 2025

 

(Source: freepikcom)

An OECD report dealing with the economies of member countries has revealed the fragile nature of the Australian economy. The report has been presented by economists using economic data, which can be used by politicians to provide a misleading picture of many of the problems arising.

The section of the report dealing specifically with percentage change in real household disposable income, however, has revealed how the Australian working class and lower socio-economic groups have borne the brunt of recent economic problems far more than their counterparts elsewhere.

The present OECD report has shown the global economy is in relative decline, particularly when assessed through the diplomatic hostilities between the US and China.

                                                              GLOBAL GDP

                                                              2024   -   3.2%
                                                              2025   -   3.1%
                                                              2026   -   3.0%

                                                      US   2025   -   2.2%
                                                              2026   -   1.6%  

                                                CHINA   2025   -   4.8%
                                                              2026   -   4.4% (1)

China will inevitably overtake the US as the world's biggest economy sometime in the future, sooner rather than later, if not toward the end of the present decade, then the next one. The problem arising should be assessed as remaining in the background of diplomatic hostilities between the two countries, with many of the dramas being played-out in the Indo-Pacific region, drawing Australia ever closer to real-war scenarios.

The Australian economy, meanwhile, continues to bump along the bottom, with economic growth of 2.5 per cent for the present year, with a projection falling to 1.8 per cent for next year. (2)  

The Australian figures also reveal a volatile economy; growth rates of just 0.6 per cent were recorded in the December quarter last year. (3) The growth rates do not appear sustainable, but fluctuate regularly.

The growth rates, furthermore, show Australia's fall significantly below those of the G20, where average growth rates of 3.1 per cent for this year are expected to only fall slightly to 2.9 per cent next year. (4)

Australia's inflation rate also continues to hover around 2.4 per cent, only slightly being reduced to a projected 2.2 per cent next year. (5) It continues to be a problem.

The figures also have to be studied in the context of Australia's growing debt; in 2004 gross public debt amounted to 15.2 per cent of GDP, by 2024 it had risen to 57.9 per cent. (6) By the end of this year it had been projected to rise to 60.6 per cent. (7)

When the economic data is linked to living standards, however, the real problems facing Australia can be accurately established.

The OECD report revealed that while the average gains in living standards of other member countries averaged at 5.5 per cent, Australia's had slipped by minus 8.3 per cent. (8) The figures are all the more appalling when studied in the context that they are an average for all Australians; the working class and lower socio-economic groups on basic Award terms and conditions of employment, pay far more of their disposable income for basic necessities than higher socio-economic groups.

The study, furthermore, found that on average, Australian workers were working longer than the standard working week of 38 hours, with overtime seemingly becoming essential for lower paid workers to even make ends meet.

The massive casualisation of employment has also pushed millions of workers into vulnerable positions where poverty remains a problem, looming on the horizon.

Those on the Australian Forbes rich list, however, continue to amass huge profits, up by nearly ten per cent to February this year, from last year. (9) The present economy is heavily stacked in their favour, as they exploit the working class for every last cent they can grab. Economic rationalism and the implementation of race-to-the-bottom production techniques have worked wonders for the business-classes and corporate sector.

The federal Budget acknowledges the cost-of-living crisis, but offers on limited measures for dealing with it.

An economic crisis would appear to be looming!

1.     'Serious volatility', The New Daily, 18 March 2025.
2.     OECD slashes growth forecast on global unrest, Australian, 18 March 2025.
3.     Decline in living standards undermines 'plucky rhetoric' of economic recovery, Australian, 12 March 2025.
4.     Australian, op.cit., 18 March 2025.
5.     Ibid.
6.     Debt blowout worst in developed world, Australian, 19 March 2025.
7.     Ibid.
8.     Australian, op.cit., 12 March 2025.
9.     Website: Forbes – Australia's 50 Richest, 12 February 2025.

Greetings to the Philippines New People’s Army

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 1 April 2025

 

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) would like to extend its warmest congratulations and support to the New People’s Army in its 56th Anniversary. The NPA has been at the forefront of resistance against fascist regimes and corrupt bureaucrats in the Philippines for 56 years, as well as resisting American and Chinese Imperialism. We offer our upmost support to the NPA in its struggle and wish our comrades success and longevity. 
 

Red Salute and happy birthday to the NPA
 

Communist Party of Australia CPA (M-L)

 

May 3 election - Don’t leave politics to the politicians!

 Written by: CPA (M-L) on 28 March 2025

 

On May 3 Australians will exercise their democratic right to vote for whoever will next misrepresent them in Parliament.

The vote is important.  It was fought for many years ago.

But actual democracy is largely illusory.

The big end of town, with its money and its media, has powerful means of influencing and controlling public opinion such that the dominant ideas are those of the dominant class.

Whether Labor or the Coalition win the election, there will be no sudden outbreak of independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy. There will be no withdrawal from our role in supporting US plans for war with China.

Whether Labor or the Coalition win the election, there will be no about-turn in economic policy to solve the housing crisis and the cost-of-living crisis. It is not that there is not enough money for governments to act – there is too much money and it is in the wrong hands, at the big end of town. But don’t expect the selfish rich to be made to pay – politicians do not dare touch them.

It is true that Labor has passed some laws demanded by the unions, and that there are differences with the Coalition over nuclear power. Despite the hopes and progressive ideas of many rank and file ALP members and voters, the "top brass" of the ALP in government will deliver more of the same servitude to US domination of Australia. Far better to seek out Independents with progressive policies, or the Greens, than to perpetuate the parliamentary version of the “difference” between Coles and Woolworths. Better still – to rely on our united strength  in people’s struggles.

The proximity of the election to May Day will lead some opportunist elements within the union movement to try to make re-election of Labor the focus of May Day. That would be a disservice to the working class. We must stand for our own independent agenda as a class regardless of which party of capitalism is put into office.

Whether Labor or the Coalition win the election, we must refuse to be sent back to our rooms to play.  We must not leave politics to the politicians. We must make our voices heard in our workplaces and communities, in our social media and out on the streets.

Against Zionism, and for the Palestinian people!
Out of the US “Alliance” - stop AUKUS!
Genuine self-determination for First Peoples!
For an anti-imperialist independence and socialism!

GO NORTH OLD MAN

Written by: Humphrey McQueen on 27 March 2025

 

Trump’s pledge to push the boundary of the United States of America 2,000 kilometres north is not another rush of blood but channels 300 years of imperial rivalries over resources. 

In the grip of ‘now-ists,’ all ‘News’ is fake because it comes from the ‘context of no context,’ a blight made worse by journalists afflicted with the compulsion to accuse anyone able to rub two facts together of running a conspiracy theory. Conventional wisdom around academe passes scholarly myopia off as expertise so that Clinton Fernandes can be chastised for sullying international relations with economics in What Uncle Sam Wants (2019).

 

Take up the contexts of Trump’s annexation of Canada at Britain’s 1759 victory over France at Quebec on the Plains of Abraham, securing barrels of Newfoundland cod to feed slaves on West Indian plantations and the Hudson Bay Company’s monopoly over beaver pelts.

 

Marquis de La Fayette joined the Continental Army (1) in 1777 in the War for Independence against Britain’s Hessian mercenaries. To entice the victorious Americans away from their French backers, in 1783 London talked about handing over Canada. Meanwhile, defeated Tories headed north. 

 

Blockading Napoleonic Europe thirty years later, the Royal Navy stopped other nations trading with its enemy. In response to attacks on U.S.  merchant vessels, President Madison authorised incursions into Upper Canada in 1812, which led to open warfare. The Duke of Wellington pointed to the difficulties of defending its borderless frontier. Two years later, a British force burned down the Capitol Building and the White House.

 

After the collapse of the Spanish Empire and with Britain’s unchallenged naval power after Waterloo, President Monroe in 1823 warned off European powers. His Doctrine soon turned into a land claim, starting with Texas in 1837 before annexing what became the States of Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico, (not forgetting Hawaii in the 1890s). 

 

The U.S. annexation of ‘America’ for its quarter of the Western hemisphere makes Trump’s renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America nothing new. Does anyone around the Oval Office have the faintest after whom the entire hemisphere had been named in 1507, before being reserved for the southern half in 1537? (2) While Trump is at it, he could follow Tony Abbott’s lead and rebadge the threatened annexation ‘Canadia.’

 

Financial panic distracted Washington from the 1837-8 rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada before Congress agreed in 1839 to a $10m. war budget and 50,000 conscripts, reviving schemes to bring Canada into the Union. Continentalists assumed that Canadians would rush to join the Land of the Free, apparent in the accompanying map from 1888. 

 

Lincoln’s campaigns against Confederate independence involved the British whose government backed the slaveholders’ rebellion to secure cotton and to stymie competition from textile mills in New England.

 

Richard A. Preston documented the next eighty years in The Defence of the Undefended Border Planning for War in North America, 1867-1939 (Montreal; McGill-Queens University Press, 1977). 

 

In response to the victorious Union Army’s genocidal expansion westward against the Amerindians, London revived its decades-old plan to bring Ottawa, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick together as a self-governing Dominion.  

 

Within hours of Royal Assent to the British North America Act on March 29, 1867, the U.S. of A. applied pressure from the west by paying the Czar $7.2m. for Alaska. At the same time, it hoped to squeeze from the north-east by acquiring Greenland from Denmark, on which Trump also has his sights for minerals, as in the Ukraine. 

 

The conga-line of High-Tech chieftains at his second coming are after shares of the copper and rare earths to extend their energy-gobbling networks.

In the 1880s, the President of the U.S. Naval War College, Admiral Mahon, surveyed The Influence of Naval Power upon History 1660 and 1783 (1890) through the Royal Navy’s rise to global dominance, attending to its operations in the West Indies and along both the North American coastlines. As a disciple of Mahon, Teddy Roosevelt dispatched the ‘Great White Fleet’ around the world in 1908 as a warning to Britain as much as Germany or Japan.

 

Doughboys landed in France in 1917 with the battle cry ‘Lafayette. We are here,’ suggesting that although they were happy to help France, they had not forgotten who their common enemy had been.

 

No sooner had the U.S. of A. stopped fighting alongside the British Empire, than Washington strategists drew up ‘War Plan Red’ as a contingency for armed conflict against its erstwhile ally. A joint US Army-Navy force would take Halifax to block British reinforcements, seize power plants near Niagara Falls, occupy Montreal, the railhead at Winnipeg and Ontario nickel mines, while the Navy secured the Great Lakes and blockaded its Good Neighbour’s Atlantic and Pacific ports.

 

Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1937 saw Plan Red’s being abandoned since Washington no longer feared that London and Tokyo might combine against it, as Britain and the U.S. of A. had eighty years earlier to inflict unequal trade treaties on Meiji Japan. 

 

Canada became a founding member of N.A.T.O. in 1948, the U.S.-dominated GATT and then WTO, before signing up to a Free Trade deal with the U.S. of A. from 1989 before its extension to Mexico in 1994 as the North American Free Trade Agreement established a continent for a market and a market for the continent.

 

The U.S. wrote the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement which signalled an end to Imperial Preference in trade and installed the Greenback as good as the gold in Fort Knox, which it was until the late 1960s, since when its military-industrial complexes have kept the dollar Almighty, enabling it to flick the switches at the system for international electronic financial transfers, SWIFT. 

 

The U.S. of A. writes the rules for the rest of us to take their orders. Washington is not a signatory to the Law of the Sea Convention yet when China does not accept a ruling it is confronted by the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait.

 

The U.S. of A. withdrew from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in 1986 and sanctions staff of the International Criminal Court.

 

Enforcing the Extra-territoriality of its laws, Washington fined France’s BNP Paribas $US8.9bn in 2014 for trading with Iran, forgetful of Reagan’s Iran-Contra deals of the 1980s.

 

Madison Avenue manifested American destiny by alerting the world’s consumers to our being latent U.S. Americans. For them, there is no ‘other.’

 

In the midst of dismantling its Department of Education, Washington is telling Australian universities that research funding will be cut off if they persist with diversity, inclusion and equality, or in being bribed by anyone but the U.S. corporate-warfare state, above all, by its commercial competitor, the Peoples Republic of China. 

 

On May 14, last year, Biden’s White House quadrupled the tariff on Chinese EVs to 100 percent. To protect the Trump-Biden tariff wars, successive administrations have, since 2019, blocked the appointment of new judges to the Appellate body of the World Trade Organisation. 

 

U.S. diplomacy remains a near-run thing between hypocrisy and mendacity. 

 

Its latest Globalism trumpets what had been true all along in Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.,’: ‘America’ first!

 

 

Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen's works include A New Britannia, From Gallipoli to Petrov, Suspect History, Australia’s Media Monopolies, Japan to the Rescue, Gone Tomorrow, Framework of Flesh and We Built This City.

 

(1) The Continental Army was created to coordinate the military efforts of the colonies in the war against the British, who sought to maintain control over the American colonies -eds.

(2) The earliest known use of the name America dates to April 25, 1507, when it was applied to what is now known as South America. It is generally accepted that the name derives from Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer. He disproved Columbus’s claim that the West Indies and the South American continent were part of the East Asian land mass and established that South America was a separate continent – eds.