Baillieu government squeezing public housing

Vanguard October 2012 p. 3
Jim H.

Victoria’s Baillieu Coalition government is going to raise rents for public housing tenants and privatise a large portion of the existing public housing stock. Future works are to be devoted to providing avenues for profit for the private sector.

This was contained in a report recently released by the Auditor General Des Pearson. Also revealed has been ongoing deferral of maintenance, as the money available for public housing dwindles.

Public housing exists because our forebears fought hard to establish the right to decent and affordable housing. For working people, housing costs are the single biggest economic burden that working people face. Lessening this burden is important to improving the quality of life.

Despite this, public housing has been turned into a charity for the poorest and most vulnerable. Inadequate provision means only 127,000 Victorians are in the system, with another 38,000 waiting on a list. It often takes many years to get off it. Fewer people are now able to buy in the private market, and more are being forced to pay exorbitant rent.

Affordable housing is a right for all.  In this respect it forms an important component of social housing. This means that society provides collectively for the housing needs of its members. This is a far more efficient and fairer solution than the cut throat workings of the private market. Social housing provides the means to build real communities of people sharing and working together.

Instead of moving in this direction, we get “transition to the private market.” Existing tenants are to be hounded perpetually to find ways of terminating their public housing tenancy.

A real housing crisis exists, and it is getting worse.

The only workable answer to this is to massively increase the existing stock of public and social housing in general. It requires a large amount of investment and must proceed on the basis of a plan that only government can deliver.

One cannot expect the problem to be solved by the capitalist state. This would require a society and political system with a socialist agenda. But considerable progress can be made if the politicians are forced to act. Some of the funds for this can be generated by taxing companies and wealthy individuals that own a portfolio of homes in order to enrich themselves from the rent. The rest should come from setting housing as a top government priority. Also important is to take the charity stigma out of public housing. It should not be third rate housing for the marginalised.

Those campaigning for decent and affordable housing for all are fighting an important battle. On July 18, Friends of Public Housing held a successful rally in Melbourne. More actions are in the pipeline. The Social Housing and Support Program (SHASP) are fighting for the rights of public and community housing tenants. It involves a broad range of community and welfare organisations.

Create jobs: nationalise key industries!

Vanguard  September 2012 p. 1
Alice M.

(Above: Pt. Kembla workers)

Tens of thousands of jobs have disappeared from Australia this year alone, and the numbers keep growing every day.

Thousands of these jobs are being shipped overseas to poor developing countries where wages are dirt cheap, working conditions are rotten and workers have no rights. At the same time the wealth from Australia’s vast mineral resources, agricultural land, nationally important public infrastructure and the labour of workers is plundered by big multinational corporations and giant foreign investment banks, mainly US.

Manufacturing industries are being wiped out in Australia and public assets are auctioned off to giant overseas corporations and banks faster than a speeding train. Australia’s value-added and food processing companies are killed off or bought out by overseas banks and corporations, only to be closed down and jobs sent overseas.

In a speech to Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce in February 2012, Prime Minister Gillard declared Australia as, “A new economy which is prosperous and fair, creative and skilled; where mining and manufacturing flourish and services grow; where the government manages the economy for working people, for the future”.    

Gillard should try and sell her spin to Telstra workers and their families who’ve just been told 651 of their jobs have been axed nationwide. Tell this to communities in Lismore in NSW and Townsville in North Queensland where Telstra will shut down its call centres, leaving more than 240 workers and their families without work and devastating the local communities.

Telstra announced the sackings less than two weeks after revealing a full year profit of $3.42 billion, an increase of 5.4% on previous year. More than half of the most recently slashed Telstra jobs are being sent overseas. Customer services, already understaffed, will deteriorate even more. And more jobs will go. This year alone Telstra wiped out more than 1,000 jobs from Australia, many sent off shore.

And it’s not only Australian jobs being shipped off. Along with thousands of jobs that Telstra and other corporations and big banks ship overseas are the technical skills and expertise, mostly funded by people’s taxes, and lost from Australia.

The gutting of 651 Telstra jobs follows the US multinational’s Ford’s announcement in July  that more than 440 jobs in its Victorian Broadmeadows and Geelong car manufacturing plants will be gone by the end of the year. This is in spite of heavy government subsidies over more than 30 years, the latest $103 million handed out in January 2012.

Lib/Lab does their bidding

The Lib/Lab side-show does nothing to protect jobs and job security for Australia’s working people.  They both dance to the same tune of the most decisive plunderers and exploiters of Australia, the multinational corporations and international finance capital. The Business Council of Australia and the Minerals Council, the powerful peak bodies of monopoly capital class rulers in Australia, dictate the economic, political and industrial policies that profit their investments and clash with the interests of the Australian working class and people.

(Above: Australian workers have no control over the economy) 

The destruction of Australia’s manufacturing and processing industries is reducing Australia into a massive quarry with little else going on for the people in the economy. Australia’s heavy dependency on foreign capital puts the country at the mercy of international capital and corporations. Capital seeks most profitable areas of investment for itself, and in the present international capitalist economic crisis of overproduction, foreign capital has deserted manufacturing and moved into the lucrative natural resources sought by China. The Australian people have no control over our country’s industrial development and economy. The multinationals, the big foreign banks, together with the local monopoly capitalist class, vigorously promote the lie that Australian economy can only be dependent on foreign capital investments for its development. 

Australia is rich in natural resources, and has a hard working and skilled workforce that creates enormous wealth and profits in this country. Instead of this socially created wealth being pocketed by a handful of multinational corporations, big banks and a few super rich individuals, it should be put into the service of the people and the national interests of this country.  

A truly independent and democratic Australia run by the working people will build a self-reliant economy that develops natural resources and food production in a planned way, builds value-adding processing and manufacturing industries that provide jobs and job security, and releases the enormous scientific, technological and creative potential of the people.

Nationalise Australia’s key industries!  National Independence!

Asylum seekers issue and class interests

Vanguard September 2012 p. 2
Jim H.

(Above: Asylum seekers in Malaysia)

As the two most unpopular leaders in Australia’s history position themselves for the next round of parliamentary elections, Julia Gillard and her Labor government can’t run fast enough to finally kill off the more humane policy that had been applied following the defeat of the former Howard government.

There is nothing that won’t be cast aside – Australian treaty obligations, Labor Party policy – as Gillard tries to capture some of the reactionary vote that has coalesced around Tony Abbott.

The Rudd government had been influenced by the demands of the rank-and-file party members, who in turn, sided with public opinion. The Tampa scandal encouraged many people to support the refugees and put an end to mandatory detention. On the other side stood a cabal of reactionaries, cynically seeking to manipulate the issue to whip up chauvinism, racist division and diversion from the attacks on working people made by Howard for the powerful rulers of Australia.

Position of ruling class

The asylum seeker question is a class issue. From this viewpoint a number of matters stand out…

• Refugee numbers coming to Australia are only a small fraction of the global refugee population. Australia is far from being overwhelmed. Suggestions that it is otherwise are a lie, calculated to criminalise people and make them vulnerable targets.
• The treatment of refugees is a testing ground for measures that can be applied to others who may in the future be labelled as a threat. We have already seen a connection with so-called anti-terrorism laws that have been used to demonise a section of the population, strengthen police powers and expand the anti-people activities of ASIO.
• The Australian government’s immigration policies have always been driven by the economic needs of capital’s labour markets. In the global capitalist economic crisis, there is over-supply of cheap labour moving around the world. It is far cheaper for the capitalist class to employ this mobile and temporary labour (‘guest workers’) without having to meet the obligations to provide entitlements for citizens and permanent residents.
• Migrants and refugees have always stood at the centre of Australia’s working class struggles and activism, playing leading roles in many struggles back to the days of Eureka Stockade. Today many are involved in the current wave of workplace struggles for job security, wages and conditions, and union rights. Migrant and refugee workers predominate in the unskilled and semi-skilled jobs with harsh conditions and low wages, such as meat processing and storage, warehousing, and cleaning.
• The bulk of today’s refugees come from war zones that are mostly fed by US led aggression. As long as this aggression keeps up, victims of imperialism and war will continue to seek asylum outside their own countries. Australian governments aligning us with imperialist aggression are therefore part of the problem.

Oppose ruling class agenda

Demonising asylum seekers is contemptible. Any person concerned with basic decency and the wellbeing of others will reject it

 Champions of the present policy attack opponents for demanding an open door policy. Few do this. From a class point of view, demanding an open door policy is wrong. However, those who seek asylum in Australia have the right to be treated humanely. They must not be vilified as “boat people”, and deserve speedy processing of their applications in Australian reception centres, and to be welcomed as citizens if they meet the criteria for asylum. 

The problem is that Labor and the Coalition are locked into the present course. There is very little difference of substance between them. Both parties posture and do nothing that will make a real difference. Putting an end to involvement in unjust wars overseas would be a good start. Assisting developing nations to reduce poverty and address climate change issues will reduce future factors in the involuntary movement of people.

There is no real solution to the global plight of refugees while the world and its people continue to be plundered and exploited by capitalism and imperialism.  The only solution is to work towards getting rid of this barbaric system. For us in Australia today, it means working to unite the great majority of Australian people from all cultural and racial backgrounds in the struggle against multinational corporations’ domination of Australia and for anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

Nothing Fair about Fair Work Australia

Vanguard  September 2012 p. 3

After more than six months of an “independent” review of the Fair Work Act, it comes as no surprise that the recommendations endorse this anti-worker and anti-unions outfit.

In fact the most significant recommendations of the review will extend restrictions on workers’ rights to take industrial action and union rights to organise.

Overhanging all is the recommendation to give Fair Work the powers “to actively encourage more productive workplaces”. In the real world of work, “increased productivity” means workers have to work harder and faster, take less time off when sick; fewer workers, longer hours, less rights, no industrial action to protect your rights and conditions, all to make bigger profits for the bosses. In the real world, “increased productivity” simply means that the bosses have more rights and freedoms to increase the exploitation of workers. It’s an attack on the working class, camouflaged behind the fig leaf of “productivity”.

The Fair Work review recommends that injured workers should no longer accrue annual leave while  absent on workers’ compensation; and an opening has been created for public holiday entitlements to be undermined. Individual flexibility clauses have been expanded and could be used as back door to AWAs.

Right to take industrial action

FWA’s new recommendations impose even tighter restrictions on workers’ and union rights to take industrial action. Unions and workers will not be able to take industrial action unless and until the bosses agree to bargain. It means the bosses can delay or refuse to bargain with the union for a long period. Australian workers never had the right to strike, even though the mild ILO’s Charter declares the right of workers to withdraw their labour.

Right to Organise

The FWA review recommendations give the FWA (the bourgeois state) more power to restrict even the few small rights remaining for union organisers to enter workplaces and organise the workers. 

Fair Work is a legal instrument of the capitalist state set up simply to contain (and when necessary suppress) workers’ organisations and collective struggle. Predictably, the more reactionary sections of the monopoly capital ruling class in the Business Council and Minerals Councils are not satisfied and want an open attack on the few limited bourgeois democratic rights wiped out altogether. Their hatred of unions and the organised working class has no bounds because they understand the collective power of workers that sets limits on capital’s capacity for rapacious exploitation of workers and the environment. They want the capitalist state to wipe out unions and collective organisations of workers, or at the very least, make them subservient puppets of capital.

Organise and struggle for job security and workers’ rights

Under Fair Work laws it is illegal for unions and workers to take industrial action to protect their job security during the ‘unprotected’ period. For the organised working class there’s only one response to Fair Work, the Business Council and Minerals Council. Organise and mobilise for jobs and job security, workers’ rights, decent working conditions and living standards for the community of working people!

All the way....to war?

Vanguard  September 2012 p. 4
Bill F.

(Above: Darwin protest against new US base)

As US imperialism reasserts its military domination of the Pacific region, and intensifies its aggressive encirclement of China, the Australian government has recklessly endorsed this by opening up Australian military bases and facilities for US forces.

The government seeks to hide its abject subservience to US imperialism behind the fig-leafs of “joint facilities” and “rotating forces”, but the scale and expanding uses of the bases makes it clear that Australia is now fully locked in with the strategic war plans of the Pentagon. Some key elements of this surrender of national sovereignty are…

Robertson Barracks in Darwin

2,500 US Marines, plus command and support, and stockpiles of unspecified combat weapons and supplies. They will have access to the vast Bradshaw Field Training Area and another at Mount Bundey.

US military aircraft, including strategic bombers based in Diego Garcia, Guam and Okinawa, will have frequent and unrestricted access to Australian air bases, especially RAAF Darwin and RAAF Tindall. There is no guarantee that US weaponry will not include nuclear weapons, uranium-depleted shells, anti-personnel mines, napalm or cluster bombs.

Delamere Air Weapons Range and Shoalwater Bay in Queensland have been used previously by the US military during the two-yearly Talisman Sabre war games, and will see more regular US bombing exercises.

Pine Gap, near Alice Springs

Officially a ‘joint facility’, Pine Gap is used by US military intelligence to control satellites gathering information across Asia and the South East Asia region. It picks up all sorts of communications data, such as radar, satellite and microwave transmissions. It has recently expanded to include the monitoring of missile launches through thermal imaging satellites, and has been a part of the ‘drone wars’ in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. In an all-out exchange of ballistic missiles, Pine Gap would be an obvious target.

Australia is supposed to share the data collected. In the unlikely event that an Australian government opposed a particular US military operation, would the data still be made available? Does Australian military intelligence get it all, anyway? If the unthinkable happened, and an Australian government actually asked the Americans to leave, would they go peacefully, would they hand back the facility intact?

Northwest Cape, Western Australia

This is a Very Low Frequency communications base for submerged submarines. As Australia has hardly any that are operational, its main role is to support US (nuclear-armed) submarines active in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, as well as the contested South China Sea.

A new function will be US space surveillance and detection activities to track the communication satellites of other countries for possible destruction in the event of hostilities. Camouflaging this role is the secondary function of tracking space junk and protecting global communications satellites.

Kojarena, near Geraldton, Western Australia

This is an Australian Defence Signals base that is part of the Echelon system, intercepting satellite communications across the region. The US also has access to a more recent facility built to provide secure 3G mobile communications in war operations.

HMAS Stirling, near Perth

The only Australian Navy base on the west coast, HMAS Stirling will be expanded to cater for a continuous stream of visiting US Navy ships of all types, including nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed vessels. “Fly-in, Fly-out” ship crews will change there, rather than the ship having to return to the USA for refurbishment. This means another Australian facility virtually taken over by the US military.

 Similarly, the US is angling to take over the airfield at Cocos Island in the Indian Ocean, as a base for its illegal ‘drone war’ missions (below).

Not in Australia’s interest

All of this is clearly aimed at China, and positioning the US military for war. It has nothing to do with defending Australia or protecting Australia’s interests. It builds on the high level of strategic and operational integration between the Australian and US military forces already, and drags Australia further along the road of passive accomplice to whatever adventures the US wants to undertake.

At the centre of the expanding and aggressive US militarisation of the Pacific region is the protection of US hegemony. The US views China’s economic development and growing investments as a major threat to its own massive investments, domination of resources, markets and political subservience to US interests.

No bases! No troops!

Many Australians are disgusted and angry at the lack of any notion of independence in Australia’s foreign policies. The expanding military collusion with US imperialism automatically joins Australia on the side of the USA in any confrontation with China. Too bad about the fact that China is Australia’s largest trading partner, too bad about the prospect of war on our doorstep!

Prominent Australians, such as Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating, have spoken out strongly against this slide into “running dog” status, while ordinary Australians are forming groups in cities and regions to campaign against the presence of US troops and US bases. For Australia, the threat of war will not pass until US imperialism is expelled, and an independent Australian republic builds the conditions for socialism.

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

Further reading:

Revealed: US flew spy drone missions from Australia

"Only the right kind of foreigner should own the land!"

Vanguard  September 2012
Max O.

Foreign investment has played the dominant role in the capitalist development of Australia since the First Fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788.

Presently the United States and Britain account for over half of all foreign investment coming into Australia. The other half comes from European, Asian countries such as Japan and Singapore, followed by China and India bringing up the rear of the investors pack.

Recently there has been considerable rancor by the likes of Barnaby Joyce (Queensland National Party senator) and Bill Heffernan (NSW Liberal Party senator) that Australia’s ability to feed itself could be threatened by government owned firms, in particular Chinese, buying out our agricultural land and agribusinesses. Mark Arbib, Australian Assistant Treasurer, is more sanguine about the matter. He argues: “that if you cut foreign investment into agriculture… You'll cut jobs, you'll cut production, and you'll threaten food security in Australia.”

Foreign ownership figures

The recent Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences report stated that 44 million hectares of agricultural land are now wholly or partly owned by foreign entities. That is a 60% increase from the 28 million hectares since the 1980s. However, the Australian Bureau of Statistics undertook a survey in 2011, called the Agriculture Land and Water Ownership (ALWOS). The results of the survey showed that as of 31 December 2010: 99% of the 133, 600 agricultural businesses in Australia were entirely Australian owned; 89% of the 353 million hectares of agricultural land were entirely Australian owned; and 91% of water entitlements for agricultural purposes were entirely Australian owned.

However, John Cobb, Federal Opposition's shadow Agriculture and Food Security Minister points out: “It doesn’t show what the value of land as compared to what it was once. It doesn’t show whether what areas of production are involved. It doesn’t even say where the land is.” He counters the argument of the 99% of agri-businesses are wholly owned by Australians with: “That totally ignores the fact the bigger ones aren’t. That is the number of businesses. You have a hundred businesses, and three of them are half the total business and they’re owned by foreigners, that’s like saying only three out of a hundred are owned, even though it’s half of all the business. The big sugar companies are all owned by Singaporeans. The milk processors are owned almost totally by the Japanese. It’s ignoring the size and the turnover of the businesses involved.”

With China stepping up its purchases of prime agricultural land, an increasing number of reactionaries aligned with Western Imperialism, in particular the National Farmers Federation and Liberal/ National parties, are essentially worried that if too much of the farm is being sold to China and this could well compromise Australia’s relationship with its major ally, the United States. Consequently the Liberal/National coalition is pushing for foreign investors seeking ownership of Australian farm land be subject to a review by the Foreign Investment Review Board for purchases of $15 million or above, a substantial reduction from the current $244 million threshold. In their recently released Discussion Paper on Foreign Investment in Australia, they also proposed a compulsory review for all overseas investments in the agribusiness sector above $53 million – or more than a 15% stake of agribusinesses valued above $244 million.

Feeling jittery about the issue, a Labor Party working group is examining the need for a national register of foreign owned land and agribusinesses. Although not all rural sectors are worried; The Pastoralists and Graziers Association is happy with the current system, and present thresholds could remain, or possibly be halved to just over $100 million.

The

Liberal/National coalition are not ardent nationalists about foreign ownership and quickly state that in the words of Bill Heffernan: “Obviously, the world in recent times has relied on foreign investment. Historically, foreign investment in agriculture’s been a good thing for Australia, because they come in, spend their money, build infrastructure, go home with their tail between their legs because the difficulty of farming, as any family farmer will tell you, is the vagary of the weather and the market.” As long as it’s not China, the United States economic rival!

Profit maximization

What both major parliamentary parties ignore is the economic issue of super-profits being extracted out of peripheral countries like Australia by multinational corporations. This exploitation by monopoly capitalism has decimated local agricultural industries, whereby imperialist grip on our economy has increased. Much of the huge profits garnered from Australian agriculture are siphoned off to the imperialist heartland (United States, Europe and Japan) via multinational corporations. This dominance keeps a wary eye on potential competitors and attempts to restrict their influence. Hence the hue and cry about Chinese state enterprises investing in Australian agriculture!

As much as we are told that Australia needs foreign investment, the fact of the matter is that we could quite easily survive without it! For example Australian superannuation funds are stated to be worth $1.3 trillion. Combine this with what Australians have saved away in our banking system; there is plenty of capital that could be invested in both local agricultural and manufacturing sectors. Unfortunately it is quite often placed in the hands of foreign financial corporations and invested elsewhere overseas for profit maximisation. They in fact use other peoples’ money and receive most of the financial benefit!

US government bank leads foreign investment in Australia

Vanguard September 2012 p. 5
Bill F.

All the fuss in the monopoly media, about Chinese foreign investment by ‘state-owned entities’, has hidden the true scale of US investments in Australia.

Following a visit to an LNG project in Queensland, the chairman of the US government Export-Import Bank is reported in The Australian as saying, “US investment is frankly far greater than any Chinese investment in Australia – it’s the No1 source of FDI (foreign direct investment) into Australia.”

He indicated that the bank will advance more than $5 billion in low interest loans to projects in Australia during this year alone. Companies to benefit include US monopolies such as Chevron, Bechtel, General Electrics, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips and Lockheed Martin. The bank is currently in discussions over financing Gina Rinehart’s $9 billion Roy Hill iron ore project in Western Australia.

The Dean of the University Sydney’s business school, Geoffrey Garrett, noted that US investment in Australia topped $550 billion between 2005 and 2011, compared with $20 billion for China. If the export of capital (foreign investment) is one characteristic of imperialism, as Lenin stated in his work, Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism, then the US is clearly dominant.

The operation of the Export-Import Bank also reveals the role of the capitalist state in underpinning the activities of corporate monopolies. Again, Lenin had a bit to say about this in another famous work, The State and Revolution.

US imperialism is strengthening its hold over Australia. It exerts great political influence over both the Coalition and Labor. It is expanding its military presence and is using the Export-Import Bank and devices such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) to grab ownership or control of Australia’s key resources.

The situation reflects the increasing rivalry between the US and China in many parts of the world. As a key resource country, Australia is an important target for investment and political influence. The monopoly media presents the increasing rivalry between the big powers in the Pacific region as Australia having to choose between the US and China (Rinehart or Palmer?) However, the real choice for the Australian people is whether we continue to have domination by foreign imperialism or an independent country in control of its own resources and future.