Join the fightback!

Vanguard September 2014 p. 1

Alice M.

The Abbott government’s 2014 Budget exposes who really runs the country and whose interests the   government serves.

This cruel anti-people budget is only the start of wider austerity attacks on the people.   

The Business Council of Australia, the Minerals Council and Murdoch media monopoly, mouthpieces for the local and foreign corporations and big banks which run Australia, drafted the Commission of Audit that sets the economic and political agenda for Australia’s present government.   

The Commission of Audit and big business demand extension and increase of the GST.  At the same time they’re calling for workers’ hard won wages and conditions be crushed, and to remove the minimum wage and penalty rates. 

They demand all restrictions and regulations on imported labour be removed to enable maximum exploitation of these workers, and to push down wages and conditions for all of us.

Corporate globalisation is sending Australia’s manufacturing, value-added and technological industries and jobs overseas.  

The onslaught by big mining conglomerates and big developers is destroying Australia’s environment and adding to the damage wrought by climate warming.

 

Cracking down

Expecting resistance and fight back from workers and communities, the Abbott puppet government is preparing to go even further in suppression of unions and communities. 

The new anti-democratic laws in Victoria and Tasmania virtually ban industrial, political and social protests and pickets by workers, unions and communities.  The Queensland so-called ‘anti-bikie’ laws target all working people. 

Under the cover of protecting the public, the Abbott government is adding another layer of so-called anti-terrorism laws. It targets the entire Muslim community and can be used against anyone whom it labels a terrorist. 

Crisis in capitalism

Underlining the austerity budget is the fact that the enormous wealth created in this country from the labour power of workers is taken by local and foreign corporations and banks and used for their profit making. At the same they pay very little, or even no tax at all. 

The real problem is the system of monopoly capitalism that’s in an inevitable and worsening economic crisis.

In spite of the mining corporations and the big banks’ unprecedented mega profits, the drive for ever bigger profits is relentless. This is the very nature of monopoly capitalism and it cannot behave any other way. 

When the pace of profit accumulation slows down, the ordinary people are made to pay, through cuts to public spending on services, health, education, welfare, and slashing workers’ wages and conditions. 

The people are fighting back

Maritime workers, mining and construction workers, manufacturing workers, public servants, finance sector workers, local government workers, child care workers, cleaners, education and health workers, communication workers, are all strenuously pushing back the assault on jobs and job security, wages and conditions.

The prolonged fight by Victoria’s firefighters and paramedics for decent pay and conditions has only strengthened their resolve to see it through and has galvanised wide community support. 

Communities are mobilising against this cruel budget, destruction of their local amenities and environment, the TPP, US bases and troops on our soil and dragging Australia into its wars of aggression. 

Farmers and environmentalists are uniting against coal and gas mining wrecking their livelihoods and poisoning the environment. 

Working people’s independent demands are evolving from these struggles. They are not tied to the interests of monopoly capital and its parliamentary servants. 

They are forming the basis on which the Australian people will move towards an independent and socialist Australia.