Cuts at LaTrobe University

Vanguard July 2012 p. 12
Henry L.

LaTrobe University has recently announced massive cutbacks in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The severity of the cuts is best demonstrated by a few stark statistics. From a current list of 913 available subjects, 500 will be cut, 29 possible major streams to be merged into 13, the elimination of 5 entire areas of study, including the acclaimed and progressive department of Gender, Sexuality and Diversity.

The most harrowing detail of all is the fact that 45 full time staff within the department will lose their jobs. Students and staff have commenced a fight, which began with a hundreds strong rally on campus, augmented by a 25 strong occupation of the meeting of the university board which finalised the cuts on Monday the 18th of June. As well, various events and protests were staged in the last week and many more planned for the foreseeable future.

LaTrobe has a reputation as one of the top Australian universities in this field, and by embarking on such severe cuts in an area like this, they are demonstrating that their motive, and the motive of the broader tertiary education system, is not to provide a solid, broad education, but instead to turn a profit and provide degrees in areas that prove most profitable to the capitalist class.

Viewed in connection with the attempted destruction of the TAFE system, the LaTrobe cuts can be seen as a test case before a widespread concerted attempt to further reconstruct our ‘education’ system into one that simply provides students with the bare tools to become efficient cogs in the capitalist system, without spending money on the kind of subjects that promote knowledge of the world and relations between its people. Vanguard will be providing further analysis of the cuts at La Trobe in the coming months.

Are the economic fundamentals really sound?

Vanguard July 2012 p. 2
Ned K.

On June 6, both Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan claimed that the Gross Domestic Product increase of 1.3% for the March quarter, and predicted increase of 4.3% for this year, was a sign that the “fundamentals of the Australian economy” are sound.

This is questionable on two counts. On the ABC News that evening, it was revealed that the GDP growth of Western Australia and Northern Territory was over 7%, while other states and the ACT were either in negative GDP growth or a moderate 2%.

The GDP variation between different states is a reflection of the uneven development of capitalism in Australia. The overall figure of 4.3% GDP per annum hides the grim reality of high unemployment of up to 20% in the traditional manufacturing suburbs of major cities, such as Elizabeth in Adelaide’s northern suburbs. It hides the hundreds of job losses in the collapse of engineering contractor Hastie, and the move off shore of hundreds of Qantas maintenance engineer jobs.

Current account deficit out of control

Even the high GDP of WA of 7.6% is only half the story. In the Adelaide Advertiser on 6 June in the business section, there was an article headed “Mining imports drive up deficit”. The article said, “Australia’s seasonally adjusted current account deficit widened to $14,892 billion in the March quarter, from a deficit of $9,639 billion in the December quarter.”

The main cause of this huge increase in the current account deficit was the import of high cost mining equipment and machinery which Australia does not produce locally. This occurs as manufacturing jobs and skills are destroyed in other parts of Australia, and sacked workers are then criticised for not wanting to uproot their families and lifestyle to go and do a ‘Grapes of Wrath” style trek to the north-west in search of work in the mining industry, not as a manufacturer of mining equipment, but as an operator of an imported machine or truck or train (if they haven’t been automated yet).

So, just how sound are the economic fundamentals, Julia and Wayne? Take a trip to Elizabeth and ask some of the 20% unemployed in a suburb where the biggest car multinational, General Motors, has just been promised another multi- million dollar hand out of tax-payers’ money.

Victorian Mini-ABCC takes on construction workers

Vanguard July 2012 p. 9
Brian Boyd

Excerpts from a report by Brian Boyd, Victorian Trades Hall Council Secretary, for Victorian Building Industry Unions.

(Above: Baillieu, another budgie-smuggling bastard of the boss class)

The Victorian Baillieu Government is now well known for treating its own public sector workforce with disrespect and even contempt.

Not content with mistreatment of the very people who are employed to deliver State government services, the Baillieu government has now declared war on the State’s private sector construction workforce. The Victorian Building Unions and their members are to be targeted for being too successful in negotiating, through the legal EBA process, decent wages and conditions.  Baillieu wants to slash these gains on behalf of the Master Builders and big developers.

Back in April the Victorian Government created the Construction Code Compliance Unit (CCCU) of the Department of Treasury and Finance and published an updated Victorian Code for the building and construction industry.  It has appointed well know union basher Niger Hadgkiss to be the unit director.  Hadgkiss assisted the Cole Royal Commission into the national building industry over 10 years ago.

The Royal Commission led to no corruption charges against any building union officials, yet its so called ‘findings’ were used by the Howard government to create some of the most anti-union legislation enacted in Australia.

An Interim Building Industry Taskforce (IBIT) and eventually the infamous ABCC were created after the Royal Commission in order to harass building workers and their unions.  Nigel Hadgkiss worked for both bodies… Now Nigel Hadgkiss is ‘back in town’. Over the years he has made no secret he hates the Victorian building unions the most.  It is believed that Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbot is advising Ted Baillieu on IR strategies.  Abbott created the ABCC. The building unions are well aware of Tony Abbott’s antipathy towards them.  Obviously the conservative political forces want to increase the conflict once again in the nation’s construction industry.

International multinationals have huge resources and infrastructure projects on the drawing board.  Labour costs cut into their big profit margins, that’s why their friends in politics and the media continually beat up the IR laws debate.

Not only do these interests of capital want to reduce wages and conditions but also want the unfettered right to import thousands of overseas workers to carry out as much of the nation’s construction work as possible.

The employers’ obsession with IR laws often centres around the “right of entry” of union organisers, especially on project sites.  The developers want to restrict a union’s ability to organise and educate workers about their rights and the history of wage rates and other entitlements, never mind how to improve on them.  Already there is one major resource site in Western Australia where the overseas visa workers are being paid only 50% of the established going rate for that type of work.

Premier Baillieu has been ‘banging on’ about construction costs ever since he took office.  He has called on the federal government to have a national enquiry into the issue. The Federal government is entertaining the idea the idea of ‘providing’ special treatment for big projects.

The history of improving wages and conditions for all construction workers over time, is often through organising on such projects.  Gains on the bigger projects trickle down and spread out to the wider industry, via the mobility of workforce over time.  The employers are well aware of how expectations of wages and conditions are transferred around the industry. Obviously, there are now concentrated moves to thwart this well established practice.

The role of new Victorian mini-ABCC, i.e., the CCCU (Nigel Hadgkiss’ Construction Code Compliance Unit of the Department of Treasury and Finance) will be part of this wider anti-worker strategy. Any employer who negotiates outside the dictates of the new Victorian Code will be put on a Baillieu ‘blacklist’, in terms of not being allowed to bid for future government contracts. Additionally, workers on sites who wear union insignia such as  hard-hat stickers or badges or cause flags to be flown, can also cause the ‘blacklist’ to be activated!

The work of the Construction Code Compliance Unit of the Department of Treasury and Finance and its associated Code started officially on 1^st July, 2012. To mark the occasion the Victorian Building Industry unions called a mass rally and march on Wednesday 4 July, 2012.  Building workers from all over Victoria were called into Melbourne to let Premier Baillieu and his union-busting puppet Nigel Hadgkiss know their wage cutting plans were not on.

The building unions and their members know they are in for a long fight. The 4 July rally is only the beginning of a broader defence strategy.

13th National Congress Resolution on the US-Australia military alliance, US bases and Troops in Australia and Asia-Pacific

Vanguard July 2012 p. 6

(Above: US troops arrive in Darwin)

Preamble

Since the 1788 British invasion and occupation of Aboriginal lands, Australia has been used as a military outpost and base, first by British colonialism and now by US imperialism, in the Asia-Pacific region.

After World War 2, British colonialism was replaced by US imperialism in Australia as the dominant economic, political and military power over the people. Australia’s military forces and government policies have always been subservient to British colonialism and US imperialism.

Today, Australia’s military forces and foreign policies are integrated into the US imperialist policies and military machine. Australia continues as an economic and military base for US imperialism. 

Since WW2 Australia has been a host to more than 10 major US military bases and has opened many local air force and naval bases facilities to the US military. Its Pine Gap base directs drone strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while other bases carry out widespread electronic surveillance of ordinary citizens.

In November 2011 US President Barak Obama and Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced an escalation and expansion of joint US and Australian military activities in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

Australia as a launching pad

The expansion and closer integration of Australia into the US military includes permanent stationing, disguised under the banner of troop rotations, of more than 2500 US troops in Darwin, expanding and upgrading existing naval ports and air force facilities and building new military facilities to accommodate the increasing use by the US military across the country, including nuclear warships. Cocos Island is likely to be another new US military base.

This together with an almost complete integration of the Australian government’s foreign policies into the US war machine will make the whole country a US military base and a launching pad for US wars of aggression in the region.

The Australian government’s role as sycophantic US deputy-sheriff is critical to America’s continuing economic and military domination in the Asia-Pacific and in its preparations for imperialist wars. This has serious implications for Australia’s sovereignty and independence and for peace and welfare of all peoples in the region.

Imperialist economic crisis gravely increases the risk of war

Behind the US military escalation in Asia-Pacific is America’s own economic decline, the global economic crisis and a deep fear of the economic growth of China that is beginning to challenge US economic and political hegemony and dominance throughout the region, including Australia.

US monopoly capital has immense economic investments, control of markets and political power in the region that it uses to exploit and oppress the people of Asia-Pacific. US controls many important trade shipping lanes and has many military bases and troops stationed throughout the region to protect its present and future economic investments, control of resources and markets.

Imperialism means wars for the redivision of the world

The US military arms and trains the local puppet governments’ armed forces to suppress resistance by the people to imperialist domination. They have unleashed war on the people of the Philippines.

Territorial disputes are flaring up between China, the Philippines and Vietnam over the vast unexplored undersea gas and oil fields in the South China Sea. The US is manipulating the Philippines puppet government to provoke and increase the tensions in the region.  Similarly, the US is directing Australia’s acquiescent governments to stoke the fires of imperialist wars in the region.

Resolution

The social and economic cost of subservience to US imperialism is enormous. Australia's military spending is twelfth in the world on a per capita basis. Meanwhile public schools, hospitals and transport are starved of funds.

The new US imperialist military expansion and provocations in the Asia Pacific are a threat to peace and national sovereignty of countries and people in the region. US imperialism is the main instigator of imperialist wars for control of resources, markets and for its monopoly capital investments across the globe.

Australia’s military integration into the US imperialist war machine assists the US to wage predatory wars against people and nations. In the past, Australia has swapped imperial masters as one dominant power declines. An independent Australia and the interests of the Australian people are not compatible with future domination by any hegemonic power.

Australian people want peace and independence and to build friendship and solidarity with the people of the Asia-Pacific. They do not want to swap one imperialist master for another.

 

·         Oppose and expose US and foreign military and intelligence bases in Australian or the Asia-Pacific region

·         No US and foreign troops on Australian soil

·         Oppose Australia’s role as US deputy sheriff in the Asia Pacific Region

·         End Australia's integration into the imperialist US war machine

·         Promote an independent Australian foreign policy that builds peace and respects independence and sovereignty of countries and people in the Asia-Pacific

·         Support peaceful resolution of territorial disputes

·         Build active connections with the broad united front movement to kick out all foreign military bases and troops from Australia and across the Asia-Pacific

·         Expose and oppose foreign corporate war industries in Australia

·         Oppose the integration of Australia into the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. The US military build-up in the Asia pacific region goes hand-in-hand with the vigorous push for the TPPA by US imperialism

·         Investigate  Australia’s military policies, US military activities in Australia and Asia-Pacific, US-Australia military alliance and Australia’s role as an agent for US imperialism in New Guinea, East Timor, and other Pacific nations

·         Immediately withdraw Australian troops, advisors and military privateers from Afghanistan and Iraq

·         Independence for Australia against foreign domination

·         Fund peace, not war

13th National Congress resolution on Mass Work and the Mass Line

Vanguard July 2012 p. 7

Preamble

Mass work and the mass line are the principal tenets of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)’s practical and ideological work.

It is the basis on which the CPA (M-L) works to assist in organising, uniting and mobilising the working class and all its allies exploited and subjugated by imperialism and capitalism. Mass work is central to all social investigation and class analysis of objective Australian conditions by the CPA (M-L), in its key task of charting the revolutionary road to an independent, democratic and socialist Australia.

Mass work is the foundation of CPA (M-L) work because it upholds the communist principles of respect and concern for the people and the powerful will for change of the aroused and united people.  Mass work is rooted in the material (real) world where truth is found and the practice of struggle is tested and strengthened. Communists learn from the masses who are the source of deep knowledge of the real world. 

The CPA (M-L) has an unshakeable confidence in the collective wisdom and power of the working people and relies absolutely on mass struggles and mass organisations of the people.  Mass work and the mass line compel communists to identify with the people as one, listening and learning from the people, accepting guidance and wisdom from the people.  In turn the communists work with the people, offering guidance in struggles and exposing the nature of the bourgeois state dictatorship, different class relations and their contradictions, the economic, political and social conditions of life and society and always seeking out the primary contradiction in struggle.  As Mao Zedong put it, “From the masses to the masses.”

Mass work and genuine integration with the people, especially the working class, is an antidote to the isolation and sectarianism of “left blocs”, intellectual elitism, impatience, arrogance, wishful thinking, subjectivism and individualism. Deep connections in the working class ground communists and activists in the real world of class struggle and all its complexities.

If communists and activists want to dedicate themselves to the struggles of the working class and genuinely strive to lift the conditions of working people they must be with the people at all times. They must be involved in the lives and struggles of the people to understand the concrete conditions, the consciousness and thinking of the people at different times and different places and be able to differentiate between the primary and secondary contradictions in class struggle. Without this intimate knowledge born of practice and investigation, communists cannot know or understand the objective conditions and will either trail behind the people or rush too far ahead, ending in isolation and irrelevance.

Communist mass work is dynamic Marxism-Leninism that informs, organises, unites and mobilises the working class and its allies. It builds collective leadership of the masses and releases the initiative and capacity of the people in struggle. Importantly, communist mass work assists and empowers the working class and its allies to organise themselves, to bring forward their own leaders and instil confidence in the collective power of the masses.

There is no place for passive observation of conditions from the sidelines and laying low waiting for the “conditions to change” or “mature”.  Class struggle is always present and in all things, taking different forms and characteristics in different circumstances and conditions. Mass work compels communists and activists to take account of different conditions of struggle and act accordingly.

Immediate demands formulated by the CPA (M-L) are drawn from the concrete conditions and concerns of the people who know the real world.  Mass work enables the communist party to develop correct tactics and strategies according to the permanently changing conditions in the anti-imperialist class struggle for an independent, democratic and socialist Australia.

Mass work, mass line and leadership

Mass work and the mass line insist on the promotion and development of many working class leaders from the ranks of the people in mass struggle. Genuine communist leadership promotes and nurtures real leaders from people’s own struggle. Communists seek to both learn from the masses and provide ideological and political guidance to the people in struggle, as distinct from attempting to ‘capture’ leadership positions within mass organisations as a means of ‘self-promotion’ and control. This has nothing to do with the mass line and correct mass work and simply acts to hold back and stifle the growth and expansion of people’s movements and people’s struggles. The CPA (M-L) asserts that the people’s mass organisations and movements can only be strengthened and broadened through the encouragement of many people’s leaders in struggle, as is consistent with good mass work.

Mass work, mass organisations and the united front

Mass work is essential for building a united front against imperialism and capitalism. CPA (M-L) members work in mass organisations with the people, respecting differing views, seeking to unite and organise all people struggling against the effects of imperialist domination.  Patiently and appropriately, Communists point to imperialism and capitalism as the primary cause for the problems and hardships of the people and the environment. 

The CPA (M-L) firmly opposes the taking over and manipulating of mass organisations and mass campaigns by groups who try to impose their views. This style of work weakens (and sometimes even destroys) the people’s mass organisations and struggles. Rather, the CPA (M-L) seeks to simultaneously learn from and provide guidance and leadership to the working class and all other patriotic people to strengthen the mass campaigns and mass organs of the people in accordance with the mass line. 

Resolution 

The 13^th Congress of the CPA (M-L) re-affirms mass work and the mass line as its main principle in serving the anti-imperialist struggles of the people, and the foundation of Communist work in the people’s mass movement for an independent and socialist Australia.  The Congress urges all comrades to study the works of Mao Zedong, (in particular On Contradiction, On Practice and Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership) and Ted Hill on the question of mass work and the mass line and to propagate this style of work amongst friends and activists. To quote Mao, we must “Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through, so as to form correct ideas of leadership - such is the basic method of leadership.” (Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership)

The great cause of Australian independence

Vanguard July 2012 p. 3

The Great Cause of Australian Independence is the title of a book written in 1977 by CPA(M-L) founding chairperson E.F. Hill (above).

It is on the web at http://marxists.org/history/erol/australia/hill-great-cause/index.htm .

Like any piece of political and ideological writing, it is a product of its time, yet the issues it raises have not substantially dated over the past three decades and still frame the key discussions about the future of our country and our class.

What is different today compared to three decades ago is that the struggle between the US and the USSR as the two main world superpowers no longer exists, that the US is beset with an ongoing economic crisis whilst striving to remain militarily all-powerful, and that China has entered the equation as a challenger to US global hegemony.

The implications for Australians fill the headlines.

The Gillard government champions US imperialist interests, egging it on to ever more confrontational postures in the international arena, whilst providing base facilities for it on Australian soil.

Some wiser heads attempt to modify Gillard’s stance, mindful of China’s role as our major trading partner.

Delivering the Whitlam Oration last month, former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (below), who had ironically overthrown the Whitlam government in a constitutional coup because it had dared to assert some minor manifestations of independence from the Americans, called precisely for a more independent position in the context of the rivalry between China and the US.

“The choice for Australia to make,” he said, “is not for China or for the United States, but independence of mind to break with subservience to the United States.  Subservience has not and will not serve Australia’s interests.  It is indeed dangerous to our future.”

In relation to the US military build-up against China, he added: “We should be trying to lead the United States away from containment”.

Of course, what is missing from the newspaper headlines and from the very welcome comments of people like Malcolm Fraser is the perspective of the Australian working class.

That perspective embraces the knowledge that there cannot be any real independence in the era of imperialism that is not led by the working class and guaranteed by breaking the power of capital over the whole of society.

Hill’s book is a crystallisation of the working class perspective on the task that is still before us, the task defined by Fraser as “breaking with subservience to the United States”.

Of central importance to us today is to study Hill’s very clear and understandable analysis of the nature of the Australian state and of its principal components in the context of the domination of Australia by US imperialism.

And we urge comrades not just to study the teachings, but to master the methods so that we can make our contribution to the great cause of Australian independence and socialism.

.................

Further reading:

Malcolm Fraser -  The 2012 Whitlam Oration

The class struggle heats up

Vanguard July 2012 p. 1
Ned K.

The ruling class continually discusses its tactics in the war against the working class and its allies.

On June 2, The Australian contained an article headed “Abbott told to keep powder dry on workplace reform”. The article claims that whilst Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett believes that Tony Abbott must hurry up and reveal “what he stands for”, big business has a contrary view.

It reported that 350 Perth business leaders at a Deutsche Bank Business Leaders Forum were of the view that Tony Abbott should not reveal any plans to strengthen anti-worker industrial laws until after the next federal election, so as to avoid “an anti-Work Choices campaign by Labor and the unions.”  Wesfarmers, the biggest private sector employer in Australia, also urged Abbott and his “Opposition” to wait until after the election before proposing changes to Fair Work Australia laws.

Dare to struggle

The working class in Australia is already under severe assault on wages, conditions and living standards. As the crisis in the globalised economy deepens, the monopoly bosses and multinational corporations will be demanding even more austerity cut-backs in services and greater exploitation of Australia’s resources and working people.

The working class has no choice other than to fight against these continual attacks. Workers, unions, communities need to prepare for the next onslaught, need to look at tactics, need to build alliances.

To win any lasting victory, the struggle must go further than economic demands; it must embrace political demands to establish Australia as an independent country where the working people are in command, not imperialism, not multinationals and not the monopoly bosses.

Pulling the strings

A few months ago, Wesfarmers, Westfield and other large retail employers were openly calling for a reduction in penalty rates in award minimum rates for weekend work in particular. They also joined other multinational dominated industries, particularly mining, in demanding that the almost non- existent right to strike laws be changed to further restrict workers’ collective action, as part of their submissions to the review of the Fair Work Act.

So, the biggest and richest sections of the multinational corporations in Australia, represented by the Business Council of Australia and the Minerals Council, are on the one hand, impatient for change to the industrial laws to make bigger profits unhindered by workers’ action. On the other hand they have nightmares at the thought of another Your Rights At Work, Worth Fighting For mass mobilisation by workers and local communities across the country, the very force that brought down the Howard Government in 2007.

Alarm bells for the ruling class will have gone off with the massive public outcry against Employee Migration Agreements (EMAs) being used to lower pay and conditions in the mining industry, and no doubt other industries to follow.

 So will Abbott heed the “advice” of the likes of Wesfarmers and wait until after the federal election before announcing and implementing any substantial policy changes on industrial laws? Apparently at least one of his advisers is well versed in the anti-union, anti-worker laws that exist at state level in the USA. These laws allow an employer to hire a new worker for 12 months on less than the pay and conditions of the rest of the workforce of that employer.

12 month contracts in the wind

Transferring this scenario to Australia, it would mean that the current Individual Flexibility Agreements that exist in enterprise agreements and awards could  be ‘tweaked’ by an Abbott Government, perhaps by regulation, to allow an employer to make them a condition of employment, and to undercut minimum conditions in awards and agreements for a 12 month period.

These would then become the “offer of employment” to sacked workers in one part of Australia due to economic downturn, who would then be “persuaded” to take up new employment in other parts of Australia such as mining in WA, under the guise of giving Australians first option of jobs before using EMAs.

It would enable employers to lower the minimum wages and conditions in an EMA, so both Australian and migrant labour would become cheaper for the first 12 months. Workers who dare to rebel against this would no doubt be sacked before their 12 months is up.

The organised working class must take the lead in developing its own independent strategy and tactics to deal with new and intensified attacks.