Max O.
(Above, timber workers from the South East of South Australia chain themselves to fixtures in Labor Party HQ)
It hasn’t taken South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill long to undercut public services and state enterprises in South Australia!
Whether it’s downsizing state schools (merging junior primary and primary schools to cut costs) or privatising the government owned timber plantations in the South East to bolster the state budget, the big winner is monopoly capitalism; in this instance the overseas finance institutions that the SA Government has debt obligations with and the US timber corporation, The Campbell Group.
The march of capital erodes the wriggle room for Social Democracy and demands of them that they continually deliver more and more public sacrifices on the altar of monopolising capitalism! This social opportunism has taught working people the depressing lessons of political treachery and they are now abandoning Labor governments in state elections around the country for the betrayal of their class interests.
The days of counter-posing the need to have Labor in office instead of Liberal/Coalition are over. It is now well and truly understood by working people that the ALP is not the natural party of the working class!
Labor government sells out the South East Community
The single mindedness of the Weatherill and Snelling (Treasurer) leadership to go ahead with the forward selling of the Government owned and controlled timber harvesting rights to a US timber corporation bears this out! It was recently reported that The Campbell Group put forward the highest bid of $620 million, and won the harvesting rights for the government’s South East timber plantations.
In the face of a united opposition from the South East community (unions, local Liberal Party and businesses) the SA Labor government still persisted with the position that the timber sale is, “something we are absolutely committed to”.
During 2011, many protests took place in Mount Gambier and Adelaide opposing the sell-off of such an important sovereign asset. During August, protestors gathered outside a city venue where Premier Jay Weatherill was due to speak, however he pulled out to avoid the hostile picket, so the timber workers stormed the Labor Party headquarters where they occupied the foyer and chained themselves together.
The workers from the local timber firm Carter Holt Harvey were determined to deliver a letter calling on the Premier to suspend the forward sale of the harvesting rights to the US timber giant, The Campbell Group, and to deal with the issue of Forestry SA’s exorbitant log prices, which will now put 1000 timber workers’ jobs at risk.
In September, forestry workers took their protest into the foyer of South Australia’s State Administration Building where they put the Premier’s offices in lock-down. The local media reported that the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union Green Triangle district secretary Brad Coates said 1000 direct jobs at Carter Holt Harvey and a further 710 associated jobs in the South- East were on the line if the Government did not reduce its log price ahead of selling forestry assets. The Premier accused the timber company, Carter Holt Harvey, of using its workers to try to “extract enormous amounts of money” from South Australia's taxpayers.
Behind the scenes treachery to achieve the timber privatisation
There have been divisions within government state apparatus over the Government plan to sell up to the 111 years of timber harvest rights for this $620 million sale, although the true value to the people of SA is estimated to be $1300 million.
It would result in the processing of South East timber overseas, causing huge job losses in this district and cutbacks to the fire protection services, training and monitoring, the abolishment of clean-ups of community forests, which are currently funded by Forestry SA and would lead to dramatically increased bushfire risks.
Reports have surfaced from the Forestry SA board (the government authority which runs the state owned forest) that provide damming evidence of malpractice over the push to privatise this sovereign resource. There had been growing alarm at the sale proceeding without checks on the true value of the industry; claims of conflicts of interest from consultants engaged by the Government to assess the sale; reports of glaring inaccuracies in the consultants’ reports; heated arguments with Treasury officials demanding the sale proceed; a blanket of secrecy limiting the ability of Forestry SA to check consultants’ reports or comment on them.
The telling observation from Eduardo Galeano’s book, “Open veins of Latin America” in large part can equally be applied to Australia: “… today’s imperialism radiates technology and progress… it takes over the internal market and the mainsprings of the productive apparatus; it assumes proprietary rights to chart the course and fix the frontiers of progress; it controls national credit and orients external trade at its whim; it denationalises not only industry but the profits earned by the industry; it fosters the waste of resources by diverting a large part of the economic surplus abroad; it does not bring capital in for development but takes it out.”
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