Business Council commands the agenda of the Coalition Government's "Austerity Commission"

Vanguard December 2013 p. 5

Max O

(Business CEOs meet with Treasurer Joe Hockey to lay down their agenda)

The Coalition Government's recently announced "Commission of Audit" will herald wide ranging changes to public sector operations and government expenditure. It will stipulate the need for massive transfer of public property and services to corporations and call for huge government spending cut backs and sackings of public service workers.

In effect this audit will be the Business Council of Australia's (BCA) 'Austerity Commission' for the nation and the Coalition Government will dutifully carry out its orders! The audit commission is stacked with pro-business warriors: The BCA's president, Tony Shepherd will be its chairman; BCA's chief economist and policy director Peter Crone will head the commission’s secretariat; a former public service official who oversaw the contentious WorkChoices policy, Peter Boxall; former Howard government minister, Amanda Vanstone; past Treasury Secretary, Tony Cole; and one time Western Australian public service head, Robert Fisher.

Capitalism in crisis

The backdrop for this austerity is the continuing Global Financial Crisis which is the result of capitalism’s own doing! This economic crisis, brought on by capitalism's crisis of over production and exacerbated by financial speculators syphoning off billions of dollars from the productive economy to make rapid profits in the stock market and the derivatives casino, caused government budgets around the world to go into debt to either save the predatory financial system or help stimulate economic activity and assist consumption of surplus production. Now this massive government debt must be paid back to the banks, the beasts who created the crisis, and consequently austerity measures are now being put in place.

The ideological preparation for this austerity onslaught has been in train for some time. Joe Hockey, the Coalition's Treasurer, sprouted forth the notion, "end of the age of entitlement" a neo-liberal concept where 'Big Government' is replaced by 'Big Society' and the transference of public services to either the private sector or for people to provide for themselves.

The reverse side of this "end of the age of entitlement" coin is the massive tax cuts for corporations and for those on higher personal marginal rates that the audit commission will no doubt call for. The BCA had earlier flagged its demands through its "Action Plan for Enduring Prosperity" for a company tax cut from 30 to 25 per cent and to increase the GST - to now include education, medical and fresh food - which will hurt people on low incomes.

Austerity is good for business - Utilities up for privatisation

Out of this government indebtedness is the potential for business to do very good business through privatisation of government utilities and assets. For starters the corporate sector will have a bonanza with the forecasted audit commission's recommendations for sale of Medibank Private, Australian Post, Australian Rail Track Corporation, Snowy Hydro and selling the students’ HECS debt (Higher Education Contribution Scheme) as securities to investors.

Obviously for these to be attractive they will be sold for less than their true value, if not a fire sale.

The 'Big Society' mantra is "government should do for people what they cannot do, or cannot do efficiently, for themselves, but no more.....", "that government should be run like a business" and that "government should live within its means". Now social security and public services will be replaced by charities and self-provision.

Abbott's Coalition Government is preparing to hand-ball even more government responsibility to private and church institutions to carry out such tasks as family services and housing. This will be achieved through the model of increasing contestability of services; which means outsourcing services to private charities/institutions and churches that will do it cheaper than the public sector.

This will be justified by the audit commission, that to address “the rising cost of social and other spending” government welfare programs should be eliminated and that the user pay, co-payments approach should be extended across health, education and other services.

For example it is touted that the government will introduce a Medicare “co-payments” for GP doctor visits. The inescapable result of such an action is that working class people will start to forgo necessary healthcare, while the wealthy will continue to receive the best medical treatment.

The term “self-provision” will be the method of replacing unemployment or sickness benefits in times of need, where people will pay insurance to cover such payments. The government will cease to fund these out of central revenue and jettison its social responsibility for society's well-being.

The size of the cutbacks and sell-offs

The listed measures below reveal the size of some of the cutbacks and sell offs that the BCA and Abbott's Coalition Government wish to achieve and will carry out through the imprimatur of the audit commission:

• 20,000 public services jobs to go. The running cost of the federal public service is 15 per cent in a $400 billion budget.

• Medibank Private could bring in about $4.5bn.

• The sale of the Australian Rail Track Corporation could earn the government $5bn.

Below is what the Abbott Coalition Government has already intends to slash from the working class and favours they will pass onto capital and the rich:

• Have abolished the Low Income Superannuation Contribution, which reduces tax on superannuation contributions from workers on less than $37,000 per year. This is an effective tax increase on 3.6 million workers, including 2.1 million women. It means that these workers will be paying more tax on their superannuation than on their take home pay and will have less money in retirement.

• However the government announced that it would scrap the proposed 15 per cent tax on superannuation pension earnings over $100,000. This change will apply to those with more than $2 million in superannuation assets, around 16,000 people. The 1% 'filthy rich' will be very appreciative and save themselves $313m in taxes.

• The Schoolkids Bonus has been scrapped which helped millions of families with the cost of sending children to school.

• The Income Support Bonus has been stopped, which will hurt people on a range of income support programs, including Newstart and Parenting Payments, which are already too low.

• The Mineral Resource Rent Tax for big mining companies will be abolished, not that it collected much revenue. The mining industry sends 80 per cent of its profits offshore.

These measures are to ostensibly reduce government debt, which is currently around $400bn mark or 27.1% of Australia's GDP and eventually create a government surplus.

However the touted cutbacks and sell-offs are not only to assist achieving a surplus budget of 1 per cent of GDP by 2023-24, but to restructure the budget over the long term so that the 'welfare state' will cease to exist, and the state will redirect revenue towards capital.

This 'Austerity Commission' has the objective to snatch back gains that the working class had won in the past and make them wear the burden of capital's economic crisis. Prepare for monumental struggle!

Poor workers are victims of Mebourne's planning chaos

Vanguard December 2013 p.6
Bill F.

All sections of the working class are being hit by the rising costs of food, healthcare, transport, utility bills, education expenses and transport. Whether renting or paying off a housing loan, the biggest financial burden for most working families is housing.

This is especially so for the poorest section: those on pensions, the unemployed, the vast army of part-time and casual workers eking out an existence on the fringes of society. These are the workers in low paid and insecure work who are hanging out until the next payday, juggling bills and skimping on decent food and clothes, doing without heating during winter, stuffing newspaper in their kid’s shoes when the soles wear through.

Living on the edge, the threat of homelessness hangs over them – all it takes is a lost job or cut back hours, sickness, or an accident, the car breaks down, etc. There are no savings to fall back on, and banks and landlords are not known for their compassion.

Evictions

In outer fringe Melbourne and the inner city high-rise blocks, where the poor working class have sought cheaper rental housing, rental arrears for public housing have increased by 22% in the past financial year, amounting to a record $15.1 million.

Police evictions are running at an average of 7 per day, with 2600 recorded last financial year. Suburbs listed include Broadmeadows, Craigieburn and Sunbury to the north, Werribee, Laverton and Melton to the west, and Cranbourne and Dandenong to the south-east. These are all areas with high unemployment and poor infrastructure and community resources.

Home buyers unable to meet their repayments have also lost the roof over their head, with 318 repossession warrants issued last financial year.

Budget cuts and isolation hit the poor

One immediate impact on the poorest section was the callous slashing of the single parent payment by the Gillard Labor government, forcing thousands of families onto the lesser Newstart allowance, virtually taking food off the table.

In addition, the Victorian Coalition government had cut $2.7 million from the Social Housing Advocacy and Support Program, which was set up to assist public housing tenants work through their financial difficulties to avoid eviction.

Emma King, chief executive of the Victorian Council of Social Service also noted that “Affordable housing is not affordable if it is offset by other costs, such as distance from jobs, education, health-care and community services, and with few transport options. This is further evidence of the social problems resulting from decades of poor planning… We are creating two different Melbournes … one where there are opportunities and jobs and one where there is entrenched and growing disadvantage”.

Plan Melbourne

In October, the Victorian government released their Plan Melbourne, designed to guide the city’s growth until the year 2050. (As if the capitalist economic system embraces the concept of such long-term planning!)

Apart from unfunded promises to improve public transport and the very expensive East-West road tunnel, it proposes to chop up Melbourne’s remaining green belts to allow commercial development, accommodation units and tourism activities to take over the best agricultural and recreational land close to the city.

As for the CBD area, it will increasingly be turned over to foreign investors, developers and speculators, if we are to believe Andrew Tongue, Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet. According to the Melbourne Age, he announced that the Victorian government could not control the number or type of apartment towers in Melbourne because of a need for foreign capital. Asian investment capital “felt comfortable” with high-rise development and the government could not fight it.

Michael Buxton, Professor of Environment and Planning at RMIT University, condemned the ‘plan’.

“The interests of big retailers, road builders and developers are not necessarily ours. That's why we need government. This government has no idea about how to promote affordable housing.

“Melbourne will continue to grow as two city types that entrench unequal access to the best a city can offer. Well-serviced inner and middle-ring areas will become more exclusive, while sprawling new suburbs will condemn many outer residents to the worst standards of infrastructure and facilities.

“Cities fail when powerful private interests are allowed to determine the future, advantaging a few in the short term at the long-term expense of the many. This new plan, regrettably, has set Melbourne on the path to failure.”

US investment plans for Australia suit US interests

Vanguard December 2013 p. 6
Ned K.

In The Australian on Friday 1 November 2013, departing General Motors boss Mike Devereux is quoted as saying that Australians through the federal government should pay yearly ‘rent’ to General Motors for the privilege of General Motors manufacturing cars in Australia!

The implication being that if General Motors don’t receive the ‘rent’ they want, they close up shop completely in Australia.

Investment in Australian manufacturing by this ‘icon’ of US imperialism is not a high priority after years and decades of export of profits to the US from the exploitation of thousands of workers in Australia.

It is indicative of US imperialism’s overall plan for Australia which is as a military base to keep watch over Asia and as a source of profits from natural resources and large scale agriculture.

Its interest in controlling Australian agriculture is there for all to see in the take- over bid by US agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland for grain handler GrainCorp. GrainCorp was originally part of the NSW Government Grain Handling Authority and was privatised in the mid-1980s, assuming the name GrainCorp. The slippery slide of privatisation has led to the current situation of Archer Daniels Midland’s takeover bid already being approved by the toothless tiger, the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board.

The voice of grain farmers in opposing the sale and control of more of Australia’s grain handling and production to overseas corporations is reflected in the divisions within the Liberal – National Party Coalition government.

Grain farmers are under attack from US agribusiness and coal seam gas corporations

Grain farmers want the potential of Australia becoming the ‘food bowl’ of Australia to benefit the ordinary people of Australia, not US corporations.

Car workers at General Motors’ Victorian and South Australian plants want car manufacturing to benefit the Australian people, not US corporations.

Car workers and grain farmers have interests in common here which are very different to the plans of US corporations. Their common interest in opposing the domination of their respective industries is part of the developing people’s desire for an independent Australia.

This desire is completely lost on both major parliamentary parties, with Tony Abbott declaring Australia “open for business” and Labor shadow Trade Minister Wong championing foreign investment in agriculture at a speech to the Chifley Research Centre on Sunday 3 November.

Communist Party of Philippines issues cyclone ceasefire declaration

Vanguard December 2013 p. 7

(Above: Women soldiers of the New People's Army)

 

Statement issued by the Communist Party of the Philippines

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP-CC) hereby formally issues this ceasefire declaration to all concerned commands of the New People’s Army (NPA) and people’s militias in areas devastated by the recent super-typhoon Yolanda.

Concerned NPA units have, as a matter of course, ceased offensive operations since November 9. This ceasefire declaration will remain in effect up to 2359 hours of 24 November 2013. This ceasefire declaration covers the following regional commands of the NPA:

Eastern Visayas Regional Command
Panay Regional Command 
Central Visayas Regional Command
Negros Island Command

Respective regional commands are also to transmit this ceasefire declaration to the concerned provincial commands of the NPA, namely:

Masbate Island Command
Palawan Island Command
Mindoro Island Committee

Based on their assessment of the extent of the devastation of the recent super-typhoon in their areas of responsibility, the respective regional commands can extend the effectivity of this ceasefire declaration in their areas of concern, while other regional commands of the NPA can issue similar or limited ceasefire declarations in areas within the scope of their operations.
 

In line with standing policy and with the CPP’s call for calamity-related mobilization, the abovementioned NPA units have in fact already shifted their mode of operations even before super-typhoon Yolanda hit land on November 8. This ceasefire declaration, thus, is a positive declaration of the practical mode shift already in effect.

Until the aforementioned expiration of this declaration, all NPA units and people’s militias shall cease and desist from carrying out offensive military operations against the armed units and personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Philippine National Police (PNP) and other paramilitary and armed groups attached to the Government of the Republic of the Philippines.

While this ceasefire declaration is in effect, all units of the NPA and people’s militias shall remain in active defense mode. They will, however, remain ever militant and vigilant to the encroachment and hostile movements of the AFP within the territory of the people’s democratic government.

The people demand that the AFP cease its offensive operations under its Oplan Bayanihan war of suppression. The CPP denounces the AFP for using the calamity relief operations as cover for its combat and surveillance operations within and outside the areas of devastation. The Filipino people urges the AFP to withdraw its combat units from within the guerrilla zones and demand that relief operations be carried out by civilian agencies.

(Above: NPA soldiers training)

 

With this ceasefire declaration, all local and international relief organizations are assured of safe passage through and into the calamity-affected guerrilla zones. The masses and their revolutionary organizations and governmental committees within the guerrilla zones are ever ready to help facilitate the distribution of emergency supplies to the people, giving priority to the injured, children, nursing mothers, single parents, pregnant women, the elderly, the handicapped and other vulnerable individuals.

This ceasefire declaration seeks to underscore the need to focus the attention of concerned NPA units and its Red fighters, as well as all units of the people’s militias to the immediate task of assisting the hundreds of thousands of people, especially small and landless peasants, farm workers, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples and the unemployed masses in the poor coastal and mountainous areas whose homes and sources of livelihood have been severely ravaged by supertyphoon Yolanda and who suffered deaths in their families and vast losses in property. Except for the small urban area in Tacloban City, the majority of the areas devastated by the super-typhoon are poor agricultural and fishing communities.

Since November 8, all NPA companies in the concerned areas have trained their efforts at helping the people rebuild their houses, recover farm animals, help harvest root crops for food, rebuild infrastructure for sourcing drinking water and facilitate the distribution of emergency supplies. The people in the guerrilla zones have carried out organized efforts to carry on with economic and commercial activity through their mass organizations, barrio revolutionary committees, local CPP branches, people’s militias and their people’s army.

The CPP calls on all its forces, all progressive and democratic organizations, relief agencies, doctors and health workers, agricultural experts and others who are willing to lend their expertise to coordinate with the revolutionary organizations in the guerrilla zones to help the people recover swiftly from the devastation and resume their normal lives.

 

Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement stalled but still a threat

Vanguard December 2013 p. 7
Alice M.

US imperialism is having a hard time ramming through its Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement on the nations of the Pacific region.

Despite all its efforts to keep the detail of negotiations secret, Wikileaks has published a draft text of the Intellectual Property Rights chapter, which deals with issues such as medicines, biological patents, internet services, publishing and civil liberties.

The leak exposes continuing differences as the various nations; including Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Canada, Vietnam, Chile, Brunei and Mexico resist the pressure of US imperialism to comply with its demands. Shamefully, Australia is the most subservient, raising only a few quibbles and endorsing Obama’s demand to sign off by the end of the year.

A key issue in dispute is the extension of patents for medications, which cuts across the production of cheaper generic medications, resulting in higher costs for healthcare. There is also the threat to Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme which subsidises many costs. "The Obama administration's shameful bullying on behalf of the giant drug companies would lead to preventable suffering and death in Asia-Pacific countries," Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's global access to medicines program, said in a statement.

Of great concern in the TPP is the proposal for Investor-State Rights which allow multinational companies to sue governments to compensate for any restriction or limitations placed on their business due to national laws or regulations – such protections as pollutions control, health and safety, quarantine, food standards, food labelling, etc. What this amounts to is control and monopolisation by US corporate monopolies of markets and production.

While the differences have stalled the negotiations somewhat, a big factor in the reluctance of the different countries to toe the line is the enormous popular opposition to the TPP which has arisen as more details come out.

All participating countries now have active protest groups among unions, small manufacturers, local councils, health workers, farmers, etc. that hound their politicians and warn them not to sell out their national interest..

The Australian people will be shocked to learn that the text of this far-reaching agreement is only available to three un-named people and will not be debated by parliament. On the other hand, 600 'trade advisers' from US corporations such as Chevron, Halliburton, Monsanto and Walmart get to see their parts of the text.

Julian Assange has referred to Australia’s "cringingly obsequious" role in endorsing the position of the US negotiators. In this Labor before and the Abbott government now have been united.

We must be vigilant and oppose and defeat any attempts to force this evil treaty on the Australian people.

People demand action on climate change!

Vanguard December 2013 p. 8
Bill F.

(United Firefighters Union Federal President Greg Northcott told the Adelaide rally: "There are no climate change sceptics on the end of fire-hoses!"

On November 17^th hundreds of thousands of people in cities and towns across Australia demonstrated their continuing demand for more concerted action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The rallies were held just days after the World Meteorological Organisation(WMO) released data showing that the volume of atmospheric CO₂ grew faster in 2012 than in the previous decade, reaching 393.1 parts per million (ppm), 41% above the pre-industrial level and well above the nominal ‘safe’ level of 350ppm.

Another report from the Warsaw conference on Climate Change pointed to a 26% increase in ocean acidification due to the absorption of atmospheric CO_2.  This will threaten the viability of many shell species – corals, clams, crabs, prawns, scallops and mussels, and further reduce the stocks of tuna and anchovies.

According to the UN Environment Programme, by the year 2020 greenhouse gas emissions are predicted to reach 8-12 billion tonnes over the level required to keep global warming below 2 degrees, and could reach that point in just 40 years.

These most recent reports are bracketed by the massive bushfires in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales and the devastating Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (where it is known as Typhoon Yolanda) - more evidence of extreme weather events hitting our part of the world, more evidence of global warming.

Multinationals motivated by greed

The only way to make a significant reduction in Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions is to phase out coal mining and export, together with the use of coal and gas for electricity generation.

These industries are largely owned or controlled by US, European and Asian multinational corporations and are financed by foreign banks and shareholders. They are motivated by greed and vehemently oppose any restrictions on their ability to increase their rate of profit. They want to expand their monopoly business into even more polluting ventures such as coal seam gas and brown coal exports.

These champions of capitalism hate competition. In fact, they bankroll selected politicians (and pseudo-scientists) to discredit and de-fund alternative sources of power generation, such as solar, wind and geothermal.

They will not be stopped by timid irritations such as an emission trading scheme (where they can pass on the costs) or a carbon tax (where they can claim generous offsets). Certainly, Abbott’s so-called ‘direct action’ scheme of handing over tax-payers’ dollars to favoured enterprises isn’t going to worry them.

A different kind of ‘direct action’

A government that truly represented the interests of the people would regulate greenhouse gas emissions like any other toxic or polluting substance, issuing licences with set limits and heavy penalties for violations, including “three strikes and you go to jail”.

In the end, however, the only guarantee of making a transition to clean energy is to nationalise the mining and power generation industries and place them under the supervision of the working people.

Instead of shipping profits and dividends overseas, these could be channelled into funding the construction of large scale base-load solar power stations for the cities and smaller clean energy power sources for regional and remote areas.

 

"...stand by each other to defend our rights and liberties"

Vanguard December 2013 p. 8
Alice M.

 

 

There’s a growing public concern about the relentless erosion of democratic rights and civil liberties in Australia.

The main target of the new wave of anti-democratic, anti-worker state and federal laws are unions, civil rights and community groups, farming and rural communities, resisting big business attacks on their working conditions, livelihoods, living standards and the environment.

Moslem communities, migrant workers and motor bike clubs are marginalised and demonised by the ruling class whipping up fear, and used as a pretext to push through the anti-democratic laws directed against all.

The new wave of draconian anti-democratic, anti-worker laws and regulations are a part of the big business’ ruling class preparations to suppress the people’s resistance and struggle against the deeper austerity agenda and crushing of wages and conditions demanded by the ruling class of monopoly capital.

On 13 November, 180 people attended a public forum in Melbourne on the erosion of human and democratic rights in Australia. The forum pulled together the seemingly separate laws, developments and actions against the people in struggle. A picture emerged of systematic attacks on people’s struggles.

Speakers included Rob Stary, well known democratic rights lawyer; ACTU President Ged Kearney; Ann O’Rourke, Vice-President of Liberty Victoria and Humphrey McQueen, well known Australian historian and activist in the working class movement.

The meeting focused on the wide sweeping attacks on workers’ and union rights to organise, take industrial action, strike, the unions’ right of entry and disappearing job security.

Speakers and representatives from unions pointed out that the ABCC is intended against all organised sections of the working class and unions who refuse to submit to the big business agenda of intensified exploitation of workers, lower pay and loss of many hard won workplace conditions.

The recently legislated anti-bikie club laws in Queensland, the anti-terror laws and the draconian laws against community and environmental protests are another layer of the capitalist state’s legal apparatus created in preparation for the suppression of people’s struggle and resistance.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is a tool of US imperialism to remove any impediments that stand in the way of profit maximisation by the multinationals. Many of these government regulations and standards on health and safety, protection of the environment, protection of local jobs have been forced on Australian governments by people’s mass actions.

Democratic rights do not sit above classes. In real life workers have few democratic rights. Thousands of workers are regularly sacked and lose their livelihood, whilst the rights and prerogatives of big business to maximise their profits and exploit the working class mercilessly are upheld as sacred and unchallengeable.

Multi-nationals like GMH and Ford, have unrestricted and unfettered rights to close down factories, throw tens of thousands of workers and their families on the scrapheap, so they can maximise their profits in the cheap labour markets in the developing countries, where workers have even fewer rights, if at all.

In his book Revolution and the Australian State, written in 1974, Ted Hill, the founding Chairman of CPA (M-L) sharply exposes the Australian capitalist state in all its functions, including the entire legal apparatus, as fundamentally dictatorship of the foreign and local monopoly capitalist class.

"In its essence, the (bourgeois) dictatorship is unrestricted by any laws other than the economic laws that govern capitalism. Those economic laws were elucidated by Marx... Suffice it to say that no amount of liberty, freedom of the press, habeas corpus, legal rights is of much use to the man (or woman) who is dismissed in exercise of the monopoly capitalist’s dictatorship or who is unable to get a job because of the monopoly capitalists’ unrestricted right to hire and fire."

"In the evolution of capitalism, a state apparatus to carry out these functions of dictatorship arose and developed. As class antagonisms have developed, so the apparatus of the state has been strengthened and refined."

"The legal apparatus in Australia is simply the system of repression built up in the course of British imperialist occupation and domination of Australia, then US imperialist extension to Australia and the collaboration of certain Australian monopolies with those imperialists."

"The formal liberties such as freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of organisation, what liberal traditions in the there are have an importance for the working class, and other patriotic people. They enable the workers to organise, to study, to fight. True there are limitations. The workers and other patriotic people work to understand that the struggle to preserve and extend democratic rights is not an end in itself but part of a revolutionary struggle for the seizure of state power."