Whom did Gillard’s leadership really serve?

(Above: cartoon by Simon Kneebone from the SA Branch Australian Education Union Journal) 

Written by: Nick G. on 15 October 2022

 As Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard is perhaps best remembered for her famous "misogyny" speech.

The speech itself is rightly applauded for having given women who had suffered under decades and centuries of male superiority and contempt a voice that reverberated around the globe.

But to what extent does Gillard deserve the plaudits now being thrown her way as we remember that 10-year-old humiliation of Tony Abbott as leader of the Opposition?

ALP: a capitalist party that cynically uses the working class

Gillard rose in the ranks of the Labor Party not as an activist championing progressive causes, but as an apparatchik determined to advance her political career. 

The same could be said of most Labor politicians – they play the factional games, they manoeuvre for pre-selection, they distance themselves from involvement with any issue likely to later prove embarrassing to them.

And they know that whilst they are in a Party that has based its chances of electoral success on winning the support of working class Australians, they need to keep the big end of town on-side or risk being campaigned against by the powerful media that is owned by and serves that class.

Gillard shared the Labor politicians’ readiness to cynically use the working class for their own electoral advancement.

Gillard warns strikers: "You will face the full force of the law!"

Gillard was given the shadow portfolio of Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Social Inclusion. In that capacity, and buoyed by a wave of working class anger at Howard’s and Abbott’s  "work choices" policy, she began negotiations with the ACTU for a replacement policy that would not empower workers but rather bind them to exploitation and loss of rights through a seemingly more “enlightened” set of legislation.

When Labor won the 2007 Federal election, Gillard was its Deputy leader and took on the portfolios of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. She rushed to copy the very worst of US educational policies, setting herself up for conflict with parents and teachers. She abolished the hated WorkChoices, but replaced it with the equally bad Fair Work Australia bureaucracy with a vast repressive machinery directed at unions and at individual workers.

As Deputy PM and Industrial Relations Minister, Gillard got off to a very bad start when she savagely attacked Woodside-Burmah oil workers who went on strike in WA after the company downgraded their accommodation arrangements, threatening them with fines and imprisonment. "You will face the full force of the law!" she said, echoing the same anti-worker rhetoric that had previously been the hallmark of the Liberal Party.

As Acting Prime Minister in 2009, she threatened Australia Post, Qantas and NSW bus drivers – all declaring they would strike over new agreements - that "those who take unprotected action will face severe penalties". 

When the Australian Education Union developed a campaign with parents to boycott the NAPLAN tests that she had modelled on standardised testing in the USA, she first tried to break the unity of teachers and parents by urging parents to "rouse up" against the teachers, then threatened to use strike-breakers to run NAPLAN tests. "I’m not ruling anything in or out", she declared.

Gillard was a supporter of the Liberal Party’s Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). Rather than getting rid of this attack dog of the construction bosses, she brought it under the auspices of the Fair Work Act, arguing that the industry needed a "tough cop on the bea"”.  When construction worker Ark Tribe, persecuted by the ABCC for attending a safety meeting on site, and facing six months in jail, tried to talk to her at an election meeting, he was brushed aside. She refused to talk to him.

US bases get the nod

Gillard has all along been a cheerleader for US imperialism. In a 2008 speech in Washington, Gillard endorsed the ANZUS Alliance and described the United States as "a civilising global influence".

In March 2011, Gillard travelled to the US to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the ANZUS Alliance.  She met with Barak Obama and addressed a joint session of the US Congress, delivering what Richard Butler AC, former diplomat, former UN weapons inspector, former Governor of Tasmania described as having "reached unprecedented heights of sycophancy". 

"You have a friend in Australia," she said. "And you have an ally. And we know what that means. In both our countries, true friends stick together … in both our countries, real mates talk straight. So as a friend I urge you only this: be worthy to your own best traditions. Be bold."

Her call for US imperialism to "be bold" was made in the context of a reference to Afghanistan, in relation to which she promised "Australia will stand firm with our ally the United States".

For Butler and others, the sycophancy reached its height as Gillard, voice breaking with emotion, referred to Ronald Reagan, saying: "This year you have marked the centenary of President Ronald Reagan's birth. He remains a great symbol of American optimism. The only greater symbol of American optimism is America itself.'"

Visiting Australia later that year, Obama announced that a "marine rotational base" would be established at the Robertson Army Barracks near Darwin. Thus, under Gillard, US imperialism was gifted Australian territory to use for military purposes.

Opening the door to the mining companies

As Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd had been trying to win support for a new tax on miners. His Resources Super Profit Tax (RSPT) was a 40% tax on the 'super' profits made from the exploitation of Australia’s non-renewable resources including gold, nickel and uranium mining as well as sand and quarrying activities. 
Where Rudd thought he could isolate the big miners from other sections of the capitalist class and use the extra revenue to serve the wider interests of that class, a big campaign, led by Gina Reinhart and "Twiggy" Forrest, both decked out in workers' clobber, convinced Gillard that Rudd had gone too far. 

She orchestrated a campaign against him, seized the Prime Ministership and, in her first announcement post the coup, stated that she had now "opened the door of the government to the mining companies". The RSPT was consigned to the rubbish bin.

Hatred of women directed at Gillard

Despite Gillard’s anti-worker, pro-business and sycophantic service to US imperialism, her gender served to unite a chorus of women-hating males against her.

She was attacked as "barren" for not having children, as a "lesbian" for being unmarried. Cartoonist Larry Pickering drew cartoons showing her as a big-arsed naked woman with a large dildo strapped to her front. Shock jock Alan Jones said her father had "died of sham" which was cruel not just to Gillard but also to her grieving mother Moira.

At anti-Government rallies, Tony Abbott as leader of the Opposition, stood in front of placards with slogans to "ditch the witch". 

This unremitting stream of gender-based abuse came to a head when Gillard defended her appointment of Liberal defector Peter Slipper as Speaker of the House. It had come to light that he had sent text messages of his own containing vile and misogynistic content. 

Abbott leapt to the attack, criticising Gillard for standing by Slipper. Gillard then delivered her "misogyny" speech, declaring that "the Government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever."

It was a fitting response to the abuse she had suffered. It not only went viral, but diverted attention from an issue that had seen women criticising a new policy being put through parliament by Gillard that day: an attempt to cut the single parents' pension.

Learn from Gillard's time to prepare for more attacks from Labor

There is a bit of a silly merry-go-round where working people grow sick of the reactionary policies of a Liberal government, and place their hopes on a change to Labor.  For a while there is a honeymoon period, and then the gloss wears off and disillusion sets in as Labor once again sets about serving the big end of town.  The Liberals then cash in on the disillusion and get another guernsey as the government.

It is right to acknowledge Gillard’s "misogyny" speech.

But it is better to remember the essential service she provided to the ruling class and to US imperialism.

If we can be forearmed to expect that service by Labor to the class that oppresses and exploits us, then we can better develop our own independent working class organisation and activity.

It is important to cast away parliamentary illusions and fight for genuine anti-imperialist independence and for socialism.

Fight new attacks on workers' rights!

 Written by: Danny O. on 22 February 2021

In the final sitting days of federal parliament last year, the Morrison LNP government tabled two new bills aimed at attacking workers’ rights and their unions.

The first was the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamations) Bill 2020. It removed legal barriers to amalgamated unions demerging after the five-year cooling off period had passed. While the law itself appears rather innocuous, giving union members the democratic right to vote to demerge if they wish – though final decision rests with the Fair Work Commission (FWC) – its real aim is to split the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU), to isolate the more militant Construction and Maritime divisions and clear the way for further targeted attacks on the strongest sectors of the union movement.

For the past 18 months the government had failed to get the necessary support for its nuclear strike option targeting the more militant Construction Division in the form of the Ensuring Integrity Bill. Fear of widespread fallout hitting all unions meant the union movement was, even if somewhat reluctantly, united in opposition to the bill. By contrast, this new legislation was a well-placed surgical strike.

Drawn up in collusion by the federal government and disgruntled right-wing Labor Party aligned officials from the Mining and Forestry/Manufacturing divisions following two years of well publicised infighting in the CFMMEU, it took less than 24-hours from when it was introduced for both houses of parliament to pass the bill into law with the full support of both the government and the opposition Labor Party. The silence from the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and many other unions was deafening.

Whatever the internal tensions that exist between the official leadership of the various divisions and branches in the CFMMEU, no solution that really benefits the interests of the union’s members and the broader working class can come from union officials running and collaborating with the rabid anti-union and anti-worker government of the ruling class.   

The move to demerge, far from being an initiative of the rank and file for more democratic control of their union – something that all class conscious workers would support – is rather a cynical move concocted by union bureaucrats which serves the long-term interests of the bosses dividing and weakening the organised workers’ movement.   

The fate of the unity of the amalgamated CFMMEU now lies in the hands of the rank and file members of the Mining and Energy Division who are expected to vote on the future of the division in the near future. If they choose to leave, the Forestry/Manufacturing division is likely to follow close behind.

Don’t get hit by the Bus

The second piece of legislation is the Fair Work Act (Supporting Australia’s Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020 – commonly being referred to as the federal government’s Industrial Relations Omnibus Bill. Although its name suggests that these reforms have been brought together to deal with the economic downturn connected to the ongoing global pandemic, the proposed changes in the bill have been on the wish list of big business for a long time before the pandemic began.

On the whole, the reforms have been designed to do one thing – increase profit for business at the expense of workers’ pay and conditions. In particular, many of the proposed changes target casual workers, workers in insecure and low paid work, and the unorganised.

There’s no denying that these attacks on workers’ rights are drastic and severe. Yet it is also not the root and branch shake up of the entire industrial relations system that some in the boss class were hoping the government would push for under the cover of the pandemic.

With a federal election looming in the not-too-distant future, Morrison has made clear that IR reform is not going to be the hill which his government dies on. Nor are the crossbench senators that the government needs on side to pass the legislation likely to want to be seen attacking working people after they have already made so many sacrifices during the pandemic. Better to claw away whatever conditions they can get away with now, and try for more later.

Indeed, the government has already announced that they are dropping one of the more blatant attacks of the bill after crossbench senators said there was no way they would support it. The proposal would have allowed employers ‘affected by the pandemic’ to undercut the legal minimum conditions of Industry Awards by creating Enterprise Agreements that didn’t have to meet the requirements of the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) in the Fair Work Act. It’s the kind of outright assault on workers’ conditions reminiscent of the Howard government’s WorkChoices, a connotation Morrison’s government is hoping to avoid. 

Just how much the dropping of the BOOT changes placates the crossbenchers remains to be seen, though it’s likely to give ground to the government to argue for the passage of the rest of their ‘modest’ attacks.

Of course, the remaining attacks are anything but modest. Among them are proposals that:

* undermine the FWC’s ability to check if workers are better off under new agreements and allow bosses the chance to slip through dodgy agreements

*overturn a recent Federal Court decision that allowed casual workers entitlements comparable to non-casuals if they worked a regular roster over a long period of time

*cut overtime penalty rates for part-timers in effect making part-timers into casuals but without casual loading

*extend the duration of greenfields agreements for major construction projects from four to eight years effectively locking workers and unions out from negotiating better pay and conditions during the life of the project
 

And to help ram these attacks through, the government has tied it all up in a neat ribbon of deception with a toothless federal anti-wage theft provision that undermines more rigorous recent state laws passed in Victoria and Queensland.

Independent working class agenda – not class collaboration!

Whatever shape the final bill takes when it’s voted on in the coming months it must be fought. So far, the official union movement’s response to these new attacks has been nothing short of underwhelming, relying on not much more than lobbying of the crossbench senators begging them not to pass the Omnibus Bill.

For five months the ACTU was party to round table talks with big business lobbies and the government about IR reform. During that time there was not a whimper about the need for workers to get organised and prepared to fight. The ACTU were completely side swiped when the draft bill was tabled. Did the they seriously think they could protect workers’ rights by being “partners” with big business? If ACTU secretary Sally McManus’ speech at the National Press Club in early December before the announcement of the Omnibus Bill is anything to go by, she certainly did: “The union movement has had its national role returned to where it should always have been – as a widely accepted part of Australia’s civil society, and a trusted social partner for Governments and business.”

This outright class collaborationism and compromise is reminiscent of the major sell-out of the Accord and exactly how the trade union movement has gotten to its weakest point in decades. It’s the kind of approach to class struggle that’s as dangerous as the attacks coming from big business.

We should have no illusions in the government or the bosses that they will willingly look after our wellbeing. Every gain, every benefit, every measure that serves the peoples’ needs must be fought for and won from the hands of the ruling class. They will never give it up for free. It is not class collaboration, but class struggle; not begging, but the strength of the people organised that will force the demands of the people to be met.

As workers, we need our own demands, our own priorities, and our own organisations to take up the fight and be prepared to organise and mobilise. We need an independent working class agenda and movement that starts from an understanding that as workers our interests are not the same as the interests of the capitalist ruling class and their institutions of class rule, like parliament and the courts. An independent working class agenda would not subordinate itself to the electoral interests of parliamentary parties, nor would it line itself up with the interests of businesses to “keep the economy going”.

Real working class leadership will not come from the ACTU and class collaborationist union officials. It will come from rank and file organising in work places often in opposition to union officials who seek to compromise unnecessarily. It will come from union delegates and organisers with unyielding commitment to class struggle politics. The role of the Communist Party, as a strong, disciplined organisation of the working class is central to bringing together these committed activists to co-ordinate, analyse, strategize, and push forward the struggle for an independent working class movement.

Demands will change with different workplaces and communities, but the common thread must be the working class taking independent action to build its capacity to fight as a class in its own class interests. It will require mass, militant, and sometimes illegal, action by large sections of workers – the victories of our class have always come from waves of militant struggle on the jobs, in communities and in the streets.

None of it is easy. But it is the only way forward if the union movement is to turn itself around and really fight back the constant attacks from big business and their puppets in government.

 

Stop the Minerals Council agenda for attacks on the people and the environment.

Written by: Nick G. on 15 June 2020

The ruling class constantly discusses its tactics and refines its agenda in preparation for fresh attacks on the people.

Social, economic and climate crises are favoured moments for such reassessments. The Covid-19 pandemic has been one such crisis, with Morrison giving the green light to industry to “lead the way” out of the crisis with new policy frameworks designed to promote growth in the profitability of major foreign and local corporations.

Earlier this month we analysed new demands (really, attacks) promoted by the Australian Industry Group. But they are not the only ones lining up to tell the government what must be done in the wake of the pandemic.

According to its website, the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) offers full membership to “companies directly involved in mining, prospecting or contracting activities relating to the obtaining, concentrating, smelting ore (sic) refining of minerals.”  It also offers associate membership to “companies which carry on as their principal business the supply of equipment, materials, services or capital to a company eligible for Full Membership.”

The MCA began its current campaign on May 15 when it released a paper called “Immediate Reform Priorities to Accelerate Economic Recovery”.

Changes to greenfields agreements

Amongst its recommendations were proposed changes to greenfields agreements. The MCA wants greenfields agreements to run for the life of the operation.

Greenfields agreements are those negotiated between an employer and a union before the company has started operations.  At this stage there are no workers on site and the company can strike a deal with a preferred union and exclude unions it dislikes. Greenfields agreements run for four years at which stage the workers are free to negotiate a new agreement, hopefully with improved wages and conditions. By seeking to extend greenfields agreements for the life of the company’s operations, the MCA hopes to lock workers out of any future claims based on increases in their productivity and on the company’s profitability.

The MCA is also seeking a waiver allowing a 12-month greenfield agreement to be made without any union involvement.  A case of the company conveniently agreeing with itself, since no-one else is involved.

On May 29  CEO Tania Constable expanded on these demands in a press release calling for simplifying awards and improving enterprise bargaining.

Only a simpleton would fail to ask of the MCA “simplify awards” for whom? “Improve” enterprise bargaining for whom? Unless we are very mistaken, these “simplifications” and “improvements” would be for the corporations, not the workers.

Changes to company tax rate

 The MCA paper also bleats that “Australia’s company tax rate of 30 per cent is too high and not internationally competitive.” It calls for a reduction of the company tax rate.

Each year for the last five years, the Australian Tax Office, under massive public pressure to tell us what major companies are, or are not, paying in tax, has released an analysis of company tax payments.  The company tax rate is set at 30%. Hardly any companies pay that much. They retain any army of accountants to avoid taxes. For each of the five years for which this data is available, more than 300 of the biggest foreign and local corporations have paid not a single cent in tax on earnings in the hundreds of millions, indeed billions, of dollars.

Those that do pay tax manage to minimise their obligations and pay far below the 30% about which the MCA is complaining.

The ten biggest members of the MCA are listed below, with their Australian earnings, tax paid and the rate

Company	Ownership	Brief description	2017-18 Aust revenue	2017-18 Aust tax paid and rate of tax
Rio Tinto	Anglo-Australian	the world's second largest metals and mining corporation	33,176,084,964	3,170,873,230 (9.5%)
Glencore	British	ranked tenth in the Fortune Global 500 list of the world's largest companies	15,694,206,513	239,872,883 (1.5%)
BHP	Anglo-Australian	the world's largest mining company	36,685,553,130	3,523,250,116 (9.6%)
Anglo-American	South African	the world's largest producer of platinum	4,720,895,769	311,947,890 (6.5%)
Newmont	US	the world’s largest gold mining company	2,399,681,101	266,474,855 (11%)
Peabody	US	largest private-sector coal company in the world	4,323,880,463	0
Yancoal	Chinese	Australia's largest pure-coal producer	4,206,512,986	0
COAL21	Various	includes 26 investors from among black coal                 producers in Australia	n/a	n/a
Newcrest	US	subsidiary of the world's second largest gold producer	428,492,069	39,052,552 (9.1%)
Whitehaven	Australian	Biggest ASX-listed coal miner	2,307,717,714	0

The average tax rate of these leading MCA members is 5.2%.  Three paid no tax at all.  The MCA, which complains that its members are operating under an internationally uncompetitive tax system, are fleecing the Australian people of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes.

Eliminate red, black and green tape

 The MCA wants its members’ projects “fast-tracked” by the elimination of red and green tape. It wants inward and outward investment made easier, it wants the clean energy bodies the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to invest in fossil fuels, and it wants the government to support the development of nuclear energy in Australia.

The MCA pays lip service to “forming partnerships with Indigenous Australians” at the same time as its biggest member company, Rio Tinto, shows its callous disregard for Indigenous culture by blasting to smithereens a cave which records 46,000 years of Indigenous activity.

The MCA boasts about high wages in the mining sector as if such wages have been provided out of the goodness of the corporate heart.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Wages are high in this sector because they have been fought for by generations of working class Australians. They are part compensation for the often remote locations of mining operations, for the destabilising fly-in fly-out and long day shift patterns, and dirty and dangerous work. If wishes were fishes, we’d all swim in this sea.

The MCA has a common agenda with the Australia Industry Group and other peak employer bodies such as the Business Council of Australia and the Property Council.

The government has succeeded in seducing the ACTU into sitting at its table.

Workers must ensure that their own unions stay independent of attempts to buy the unions off, to dampen their efforts to protect wages and conditions and shared community concerns.

Workers should be vigilant and ensure that an independent working class agenda confronts the combined agendas of government and peak employer organisations.

 Dare to struggle, dare to win!

……………………………………………………………….

EDITORIAL An Independent Working Class Agenda – the workers’ way out of the crisis

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 1 May 2020

The capitalist ruling class never lets a good crisis go to waste. And the current economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.

As businesses feel the pinch of the economic shutdown, and the government spends big to keep the capitalist economy alive – on life support, but still breathing – the ruling class will put the burden of the crisis on the backs of the working people. “Privatise the gains, and socialise the losses” is their doctrine.

Already the bosses are using the health and economic crises to push hard for their long sought after changes to industrial relations and economic legislation. Jennifer Westacott, head of the Business Council of Australia, peak lobby group for imperialist big business in Australia, has called for the scrapping of “unnecessary red tape” in order “to make it easier to do business”. That’s a euphemism for doing away with anything that hinders profit making – union and workers’ rights, wages and conditions, health and safety, corporate taxes (they hardly pay any now!). And they are doing it all in the name of “getting Australia back to work”, an appetising prospect if you are one of the thousands of workers forced on to the dole queue recently.

But, like the “we are all in this together” rhetoric, it’s a crafty cover for the reality of the class system we live in. The virus might not discriminate, but capitalism does. As workers, if we are going to come out of this crisis with our heads held high as a class, then we need our own demands, our own priorities, and our own organisations to take up the fight. In short, we need an independent working class agenda and movement.

It must start from an understanding that as workers our interests are not the same as the interests of the capitalist ruling class and their institutions of class rule, like parliament and the courts. An independent working class agenda would not subordinate itself to the electoral interests of parliamentary parties (has anyone seen the “Opposition” lately?), nor would it line itself up with the interests of businesses to “keep the economy going”, something too many of the official trade union leadership have been doing.

It would demand the nationalisation of big businesses in such a way as to empower and benefit workers and the people, not tax-payer funded bailouts. It would place peoples’ health and the environment before profits. It would build unity of the people through solidarity and community based mutual aid.

It will require rank and file organising in work places often opposed by class collaborationist union leadership. It will require mass, militant, and sometimes illegal, action by large sections of workers – our victories have always come from waves of militant struggle on the jobs, in communities and in the streets.

Particular demands will change with different workplaces and communities, but the common thread must be the working class taking independent action to build its capacity to fight as a class in its own class interests.

This crisis is only just beginning, it has a very long way to go. The capitalist ruling class won’t let the opportunity go to waste to further its own interests. Nor should we!