Two
nights back Scott
Morrison excelled himself. Was he channelling U.S. President and B grade actor,
Ronald Reagan’s homely TV addresses, or perhaps a cat smiling after a banquet
of small native animals? Utterly unconvincing as a human being and leader. He
didn’t even choke when he said scientists are part of the Covid-19 response.
Here’s a PM who
ignored pleas to lift Newstart to people so poor they have to choose between
food and medicine, feeding their kids or themselves. Now he flings them $750
with an order to spend it now. First capitalism tramples them, then says, “Be
patriotic! You can save the economy.” And nothing to come afterwards. Maybe
they’ll buy a tent, to have it confiscated by the police. Job done!
The media will
pick over the $17.6 billion bones of the stimulus package. Whether it
temporarily holds back deep recession or total collapse, for this writer, that
$750 sums it up.
So does the $8.8
billion spent by the Reserve Bank to prop up the stock market the day after.
Yes folks, that’s taxpayer money buying stocks. The contrast couldn’t be
clearer.
Capitalism’s cultural high point
Scummo’s strategy,
following the U.S. corporate lead, has been small government, cuts to people’s
services and his jingle, “Be a lifter not a leaner.” Translate this for today’s
real life and people hear, “Grab those toilet rolls, because you’re in it on
your own.”
So many double
standards! When students share videos of school fights, the adult world is
outraged.
But when women
fight over toilet rolls, in the week International Working Women’s Day is
celebrated, even the ABC eventually shared a video that shamed and humiliated
the women.
It came after
months of unprecedented bushfire trauma
proved the complete inability of capitalism to protect Australia and its
people.
This is capitalism’s
inevitable cultural high point. Frightened and isolated women fighting for
toilet rolls. How many stores had they been in to get them before the fight?
How many hours had they been at work? How soon did they have to be home to feed
the family? How many kids, grandkids or elderly family members did they have at
home? It’s not nice. But it isn’t the cause of our problems.
This is capitalist
culture. Not me too, because that’s collective and inclusive. It’s, “Only me.
Only my family. Only I matter. Because I’m alone and abandoned by a system that
is suddenly, unexpectedly, breaking at the seams of cracks that have been
growing under our feet, papered over by propaganda.”
There is no crisis
capitalism can’t recover from.
But Covid-19 looks
like the trigger to unravel U.S. imperialism and its Australian underling into
economic crisis, brought on by overproduction, the end of a record boom delayed
by massive and unprecedented debt. And now more debt.
Just in time!
The just-in-time commodity
delivery system was meant to rid the scourge of capitalist overproduction, by
stopping the build-up of unsold products. People might have to wait a little
for commodities to arrive after they order – especially in housing where delays
are legend. But corporations wouldn’t have to slow the circulation of capital
and risk their profits as unsold goods pile up in warehouses.
What this means in
hospitals was shown in the arrival of the Serco-run, government-funded Fiona
Stanley Hospital in Perth. This writer well remembers the distress of a friend
having to take basic equipment like dressings and catheters to the hospital for
her partner. The debacle deepened, because the specialist spinal unit her
partner relied on at a local public hospital had been closed to make way for
the flash new hospital. It had no specialist spinal nurses, nor specialist
doctors. Unfortunately, the doctor brought in from Malaysia many months later
arrived just-in-time for his health to be so undermined that he died within a
few years.
Sydney’s Northern
Beaches Hospital opened in 2018. It was modelled on Fiona Stanley’s success…
No sick people, please
So, let’s have
another Scummo winner, “Public hospitals should be for the poor. Everyone else
should have private health insurance”
We know the
medical system – especially our precious public hospitals – are at breaking
point. Despite this, they achieve amazing human results. Some of the country’s
hardest working, most compassionate and capable people work at every level of
the system.
No doubt there are
ladder climbing authoritarians suppressing the hospital workers and getting in
the way of collective response. But the system still works, for now.
Meanwhile, private
hospitals profit from mass production operations. They don’t want sick people.
Only profitable ones. They leave life-saving emergencies, complex health issues
and corona virus to the public system. Perhaps they’ll be forced into action.
But the front line is, and will remain, the public system.
“No more cuts!
We’re already bleeding!” said the public system, FOR YEARS, but cut and cut and
cut went successive capitalist administrators, parading as governments. And up
and up and up go private hospital profits! Bupa is too big to fail and we have
to prop it up. And that hero! Ramsey Health making buckets and buckets and
buckets of money from mass medicine and government handouts. Cash splash for
philanthropy… after Ramsey’s founder is dead and can’t use it any more. Thank
f--- for the Ramsey Centre for Western Civilisation, funded to the hilt with
scholarships for degrees and research, while other courses are starved of funds
and more recent academics are smashed with impossible workload!
“Use your stretch
capacity,” or whatever tag Scotty from advertising uses. Of course, there’s
none. 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, hospitals at full bore.
FFS! They didn’t have breathing equipment for the Rural Firefighters. Why would
they have them for people sick with corona virus?
Remember young
doctors suiciding from overwork and guilt when they make unavoidable mistakes
with dire human consequences? That hit the 24-hour news cycle, and sank without
a trace. Still happening. Still capitalism. “Clear the decks! Put off elective
surgery!” There’s a nine month wait for surgery to remove gallstones. Once
you’d go straight in. What about other agonising, exhausting illnesses and
injuries? Oh, yes! They’re ‘elective surgery’.
And what factory
is going to make face masks in Australia? Or protective suits, handwash? Who’s
going to disinfect the GP’s offices or hospitals, or replace doctors who get
sick? Capitalism has dismantled most Australian industries, completed to hunt
increased profits overseas.
In NSW last week,
there was two to three weeks wait for testing, except for health workers,
according to insiders. Perhaps this has changed by now.
Supplies
The Health
Department contracts mainly from medical warehousing and distribution multinational,
Symbion. The latter was originally a pharmacy owner and supplier.
Symbion is owned
by EBOS, which still presents itself as a New Zealand corporation. But, by taking
over the Swiss company Symbion, EBOS gave Symbion’s owners, the Zuellig Family,
a 40 per cent share in its own operations. Symbion increased its Australian
pharmacy chain ownership to 500 with the takeover of Terry White Pharmacies and
its merger with Chemmart to become Terry White Chemmart. Symbion’s just-in-time
process is called GAINS.
Its profits are
big, but its subsidiary Onelink refused its workers a 20 cents per hour pay
rise to bring them into line with wages at Symbion. Onelink’s Sydney workers
struck in mid-February.
As buyers,
hospitals have some clout because of the size of their contract, but there is
some question as to whether the EBOS pharmacies or the hospitals will get first
dibs on needed medicines, hygiene and other critically important products.
Many of the
necessary products are imported from China and Malaysia, and some drugs, not
connected with the virus, have been in short supply for the first time. No
masks or surgical gloves are made here.
During the 2003
SARS outbreak a strategic reserve of essential products was put in secure
storage within a week of the outbreak in some hospitals.
So, the Federal Muppet
Show announces it has 54 million masks in stock. While this may seem a large
number, a former health supply insider says that it could possibly last just
weeks.
For example,
Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital has around 27 operating theatres, not all
of which are used each day, but could be needed in a crisis. Each operation
usually involves 5-6 people in masks, gloves and eye protection, doing 6-7
operations per day. Multiply this nationwide, add dentists, GPs, paramedics, nursing
homes, mobile testing clinics and the like, with protective equipment changed
with each patient seen in hospital, or at least every two hours for other
practitioners, and the 54 million don’t sound so many.
A system exposed
All round the
country, people are asking questions they’ve never asked before. They’re
thinking what they should do. It’s time to be bold and provide answers.
Some fall for capitalism’s
individualist crap, and rush for the toilet rolls, but those reduced to
brawling are just three women, who have been blamed and shamed too much.
We say, take
simple precautions. You’re not alone. Help each other. Be brave. Be kind. Work
collectively.
We need to get the
stock market, government-appointed chief medical officers and politicians out
of the way. Australia led the world in its response to the AIDS' epidemic. We
need the experts in charge!
Australia needs a
well-funded, free, universal public health system. We need an independent
economy. We need to get out from under the U.S. imperialist thumb. We need to
get rid of capitalism.
But no matter how
big the crisis, it won’t fall over on its own.
The masses need
push it over. They need to run this joint. They need working class leadership!
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