No "fair go" for the working class

Vanguard December 2012 p. 4
by Bill F.

People used to talk of Australia as a place where working people had a ‘fair go’, where the disparity between rich and poor was supposedly nowhere near as great as in Europe or America, and where ordinary working people could make a decent living.

Those days have well and truly passed by, as the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reveals.

In its survey of household income for the year 2009-10, the ABS revealed that the richest 20% of households receives 47% of all wages and salaries paid in Australia, while the poorest 20% receives a mere 2.5%.

If that’s not shocking enough, the rich also got a further leg-up with non-means-tested taxpayer funded benefits, such as the child care rebate and the private health insurance rebate. According to the ABS, the richest 20% received 12% of total social assistance; the next 20% received 11%, while the poorest and most deserving 20% received only 30% of these social benefits.

That this is happening under a Labor government should be an eye-opener for those who still look to the Labor government to give workers a ‘fair go’. It brings to mind the words of Frederick Engels, who wrote about the role of the state machine in Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1894). “As the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but as it arose, at the same time, in the midst of the conflict of these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class.”

Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney commented on the rising income inequality in Australia, saying “While some people are doing well, the rise in insecure work… such as casual, contract and labour hire… means workers are under more pressure than ever and are more vulnerable if their work dries up… These workers on the periphery of the economy often do not know how many hours they will work from week to week, and can become stuck in a churn between unemployment and low-paid temporary work”.

In its quarterly Wages Report, the ACTU noted that the level of the Newstart unemployment benefit had fallen over ten years, from nearly 25% of average full-time wages to well under 20%, and from about 47% of the national minimum wage down closer to 42%.

Whether working full-time, part-time, or on the dole, this system always takes back anything workers were able to win in the good times. Even the treadmill is turning faster!