CPA(M-L) Statement on 2013 Federal Election Campaign

Vanguard April 2013 p. 7

The 2013 federal election campaign is occurring at a time when there is widespread dislike of both major parliamentary parties and their leaders.

The danger of increased attacks on the working class from an Abbott-led coalition government is on the minds of many people.

Gillard follows the Hawke-Keating path. There is not much left of traditional social-democratic values in the Labor Party.  It is a party fully committed to US-led neoliberalism.  People may not be clear that the genesis of this embrace of neoliberalism has always been present in the Labor Party, but they feel the effects of its current approach and they do not like it.

In previous elections, we have called for more time for Labor to expose its service to US imperialism in particular, and to capitalism in general, so that people may reconsider and move away from their deeply-held illusions about the Labor Party.

To reiterate this call in this election is to keep those illusions alive. 

People know that the differences between the two main parties are very small, that they have essentially the same policies although they pursue them with somewhat different tactics.

Under these conditions we working people need to more strongly advocate an independent working class agenda and have our own immediate demands at the forefront of our political and organizational work.

It is too early to have formal commitment by a range of people’s organisations to such an agenda.

But it is already taking shape as people share the knowledge that they cannot rely on Labor in office to protect and defend the people’s interests.

Components of that agenda include the need to get serious about a real tax on mining super-profits, a complementary financial transactions tax on the big banks and financial institutions, the fight against privatization, demands for a new funding system for schools. 

Communities are organizing for better public health systems, for improved and expanded public transport, for more and cheaper community housing.

They are confronting the property developers, the politicians in their pay, and the big end of town that has taken over so many of the previous functions of government.

The development of this agenda under appropriate and careful leadership will build an unstoppable movement for anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

Whilst taking account of tactics and different circumstances, above all else we must put forward and encourage mass struggle around this agenda as the most effective means of defending the interests of the people against the attacks by capital.

This is consistent with our view that parliament is a talking shop and that parliamentary “democracy” is a deception.

We do not support channeling such an agenda into parliament.

 This is a diversion from the path towards real democracy as exercised by the people in direct struggle against the ruling class.

 In certain future circumstances we may consider utilising parliamentary elections if it will assist in organizing the people in struggle and help in promoting revolutionary ideas.

The people must keep Abbott out but not be led into believing that keeping Gillard in is in any sense to select and support the best of a bad lot.

A bad lot by any measure is not as good as persevering in the task of developing our own independent agenda.

Central Committee

March 2013

 

Super profits tax for the banks

Vanguard April 2013 p. 7
Jim H.

(Above: profits for the Big Four for the first half of 2011)

The Greens’ call for a super profits tax on the big banks is welcome.

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) is in complete accord.

Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan might have dismissed a super profits tax on banks outright. Many Australians have not. There is a loud call to take on the banks. Failure to do so is not putting Labor in a good light. They are seen to be in the pocket of the big end of town.

 

Rather than taking on the banks, they have been given a helping hand.  The Reserve Bank will supply the banks with a permanent bailout facility worth up to $380 billion by 2015. This amounts to providing a taxpayer backed new line of credit as well as protection from insolvency. Not only will this not solve any existing problems. It is counterproductive.

The trouble is that bank operations remain essentially unregulated. A shortcoming made much worse when the banks largely misuse the funds under their control and often involve themselves in speculative ventures.  

It is right to insist that as a minimum, they pay  a super profits tax in exchange for the protection they have been given.

In the end, even this is not enough. To make a significant difference much more regulation is needed. Nationalisation of the banks would go much further. Since Labor, having fully embraced neoliberalism, will not pursue bank nationalisation, a bank super profits tax is the only likely demand that could be achieved under the capitalist institution of parliament.

The Green’s proposal involves a 0.2% levy on all banks with assets above $100 billion net. Party deputy leader Adam Bandt said that the proposal, costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, “would raise over $11 billion over four years.”

This would certainly target the big four banks that own collective assets of above $100 billion and recorded a profit of $24 billion last year alone.

 

There is no reason why the proposal should not involve a number of large directly foreign owned trading and savings banks. Citibank is a good example of an overseas bank operating on the Australian scene.

A principal justification provided for the tax is that the big banks have a monopoly advantage over their rivals in that they can obtain cash from the global wholesale money market at a cheaper rate. This is true. There are other good reasons. High on the list is that the banks have been manipulating the economic crisis to their own advantage and fleecing the Australian people at every opportunity. An estimated $21 billion has been skimmed off from home loans since 2010.

The banks have not been using the wealth in their hands to build up the manufacturing base of the country. They have done nothing to alleviate the growing hardship faced by many.

Former Reserve Bank governor, Bernie Fraser, has spoken out and said while the banks claim that charges and interest have to be raised to cover a rising cost of borrowing, these costs have actually gone down – for them at least.

To top it off, decisive foreign ownership has meant that a large portion of net profits are siphoned off overseas. In short they have not acted in the interests of Australia’s future and of the vast majority of those who live here.

Taking on the banks is a vitally important issue. Capitalism cannot provide a sound banking system capable of building a sustainable economy and society, serving the vast majority of Australians.

We do not need a rogue banking system that is part of the problem and not part of the solution. Imposing control over the robber barons is to exercise justice.

This is what the Australian people want.

A super profits tax on the banks is a good start.

Cultural workers fight against imperialist domination

Vanguard April 2013 p. 8
Nick G.

 

Culture is one of the strands in the net of imperialism in which countries like Australia are enmeshed.

The cultural products of imperialism convey the values that reflect the needs of that system.

They are also a commercial product and strive to monopolise the marketplace of ideas and entertainment.

Two aspects of culture under imperialism

The culture of a country dependent on imperialism can have two aspects.

To the extent that it apes the content of the dominant imperialist culture it is thoroughly reactionary and should be opposed.

That is one possible aspect. 

The other is positive to the extent that it keeps alive an identity independent of imperialism, and is progressive in so far as it promotes values that stand in opposition to those of the imperialists.

Progressive content is really quite rare because it is also a reflection of class struggle within Australian cultural circles. The upper hand under capitalism is always that of the dominant class.

(Above: May Gibbs' gumnut babies: a cultural reference point strikes for better clothing)

 

Occasionally one slips through the net, such as the recent episode of the Doctor Blake Murder Mysteries which was based around the pursuit of two Army deserters from South Australia who had been stationed at Maralinga during the British atomic tests. 

One dies of radiation poisoning and the local coroner is killed by two British Army officers sent to capture the absconders to keep the lid on the atomic tests and their dangers.  They also attempt to murder the surviving victim who is covered in hideous lesions and blisters from the fallout.

Skippy grills Conroy

The old TV series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is another case in point.  It was a positive contributor to Australian children’s culture, giving several generations of kids a set of cultural reference points that could not be found in imperialist culture, and strengthening their identity as Australians.

As a bush kangaroo, Skippy could hardly be expected to articulate a proletarian viewpoint, but progressive values of mateship, self-reliance and overcoming adversity were a focus for each episode.

Now Skippy has a new role.

He is the headline act in a campaign to urge the Labor government to protect the Australian screen production industry.

An online petition directed at Communications Minister Senator Conroy is introduced by a cartoon strip in which Skippy grills the Senator about Australian TV content.  It was presented to Conroy last month.

Australian Screens, Australian Stories

The “Australian Screens, Australian Stories” campaign is being jointly organised by the Australian Directors’ Guild, the Australian Writers’ Guild, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance union and the Screen Producers Association of Australia.

They are fighting against regressive legislation proposed by Conroy under which multi-channels (eg Seven’s 7Mate and 7Two) will be required to program at least 12% Australian content by 2015.

This is approximately half the amount of Australian content they currently show.  There is no requirement for new productions, so they can meet their quota by endless re-runs of sport and “reality” TV. 

The legislation enables a retreat from content that builds Australian identity in all of its diversity.

Objectively it serves imperialism by allowing its cultural products to dominate the entertainment field.

It strengthens that part of the net which holds us in the grip of imperialism.

Argo: a really bad "good" film

Vanguard April 2013 p. 8

 

The film Argo won an Oscar in this year’s US Academy Awards and it was no coincidence that the US president’s wife, Michelle Obama, announced it as the best picture winner. Below is a review of the film which comes from A World to Win News Service, 14 January 2012.

The story is about six members of the American embassy crew in Tehran who manage to escape out the embassy back door as the students overrun it. They end up taking shelter in the Canadian ambassador's residence. The rest of the film is about the plan to get them safely out of the country, cooked up and carried out by the CIA agent Tony Mendez (played by Ben Affleck), an expert in what he calls "exfiltration".

After rejecting his superiors' conventional and fatally flawed ideas for smuggling them out clandestinely, and watching the film Battle for the Planet of the Apes with his son, Mendez finally comes up with a stratagem. The six will be given false Canadian passports and leave Iran via the Tehran airport with a cover story that might work just because it's too insane to seem invented. They are to pose as film makers now leaving after having come to Iran just a few days earlier to look for locations to shoot a (fake) science fiction film called Argo. The US State Department gives the go-ahead.

The drama begins to peak when they try to go through passport control at the airport. After passing through two checkpoints, at the final one they come across a Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) who doubts their story and goes so far as to call the fake studio in California to verify it. Then things get really rough.

Argo claims to be "based on a true declassified story". However, as many commentators have pointed out, referring to the real-life Mendez's book about what happened, some key scenes, especially those that add excitement, never really took place.

Instead, the film seems to deliberately use the added details to rewrite the whole history of the event. Let's put it this way: this film tries to rewrite history according to the way the CIA would like everyone to see it.

The film fails to give a real picture of the feeling and mood of the masses of Iranian people after the 1979 revolution when the fleeing Shah was granted refuge by the U.S.

A British-US coup against elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in August 1953 installed the Shah as a client of US imperialism. It caused a tremendous amount of misery and suffering for the Iranian people. The US kept the brutal regime of the Shah in power for another 25 years.

The November 1979 embassy siege that followed the Shah’s ousting is a complicated issue. The people were outraged by what the US had done to Iran. Under the Shah and his torturers, the economy and society were increasingly reorganized in the interests of American and other imperialist capital. They were right to be angry at the US and its nest of spies and operatives at the embassy that played a key role in America's grip on the country.

The Islamic regime that took the control of the Iranian people’s revolution was never the symbol of the Iranian revolution but on the contrary the symbol of betrayal of the revolution. The decades since have seen repeated outbreaks of struggle against the regime. Argo treats the regime and the people as indistinguishable. The people's anger at the US is portrayed as religious fanaticism or just following the regime.

In fact the film was loaded with artificial and unreal scenes, not only in its dramatic situations but even worse when it comes to dealing with Iranians. The problem arises from what the film implicitly says about the Iranian people. Their blind fanaticism is both the main plot device and, in a way, the film's message.

At one point in the film when Mendez is told that the whole operation is cancelled so as not to interfere with a military operation to rescue the hostages, he forces his superiors to regain the authorization for the mission. Some refer to this point to show that the position of the film generally is one of opposition to military solutions. And some argue that this is why Affleck and Clooney, who opposed the invasion of Iraq, made this film: to put forward a "soft power" non-violent solution to the conflict between the Islamic Republic and the US. The film could be understood as saying the CIA was heavy-handed when it overthrew Mossadegh, with bad long term results for the U.S., and clever with good results in getting the six embassy staffers out.

Most of all, the film reverses right and wrong. The Islamic Republic is a reactionary regime that needs to be overthrown by the Iranian people, but the US's opposition to that regime is based on the same economic and political interests behind engineering the overthrow of Mossadegh and its decades-long support for the Shah, not to mention the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and countless other outrages before and since.

More foreign ownership of Australian agribusiness

Vanguard April 2013 p. 9
Duncan B.

More of Australia’s agribusiness has passed into foreign hands with the purchase of Australia’s biggest poultry producer, Ingham Enterprises, by US based global equity firm TPG Capital, in an $880 million deal.

Ingham had annual revenue of $2.2 billion last year and employs more than 8000 staff. The two biggest chicken producers, Inghams and Baiada between them control more than 70% of the Australian chicken market.

TPG was founded in 1992 and has $54.5 billion of capital under management. TPG’s other investments in Australia include energy group Alinta and Healthscope.

Farmer representatives are renewing calls for a register of foreign land ownership in Australia. This comes following the release of a new report that claims that almost 10% of Australia’s prime farm land is foreign owned.

A study conducted last year by leading international environmental scientists from the University of Virginia in the US and the Politecnico di Milan found 4.64 million hectares of prime, high rainfall or irrigated agricultural land in Australia was now in foreign hands.

Foreign countries and corporations are snapping up agricultural land and water rights in many countries around the world. The main countries doing the buying are the UK, (9.3% of all land purchases), and the US (7.8%).

The countries with the highest amount of land acquired include The Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sudan. According to real estate agents, there is considerable demand from overseas buyers to buy even more farm land in Australia.

Coal Seam Gas

The struggle against coal seam gas exploration continues. According to figures released recently by activist group Lock the Gate, 408 million hectares, or roughly 53% of Australia, is covered by titles for petroleum exploration and production, plus applications and release areas. This is creating great uncertainty for landholders who do not know if or when their property will be subject to drilling.

Dairy industry still in strife

Dairy farmers are continuing to do it tough, as the Federal Government has ruled out a cash bailout for struggling dairy farmers in Victoria.

Farmer groups including the new Farmer Power group were demanding emergency financial assistance for dairy farmers. There are reports of firms supplying dairy farmers with equipment and other necessities going broke as dairy farmers are having difficulty paying their bills on time. The Farmer Power group is continuing to make its presence felt, with more public meetings to be held in the near future in dairy farming areas.

TAFE SA thrown to the wolves

Vanguard April 2013 p. 9
Nick G.

TAFE SA is under concerted attack.

It is a victim of the same right-wing neoliberal pro-market and user-pays philosophies that have seen a reduction in services and their quality in areas like health, transport, housing and school education.

It is also a reflection of the contradiction between TAFE as a provider of courses that reflect the interests and needs of a very diverse Australian population, on the one hand, and as a provider to employers of a workforce that meets their productivity requirements.

The question of “TAFE for whom?”-  for the community or for corporations - has led to some big changes in TAFE operations because the corporations have the ear of both major parliamentary parties.  They have the upper hand, and it is the initiatives and innovations that serve their needs and their interests that have plunged TAFE into crisis.

The crisis has also exposed the utter irrelevance of parliament.

On November 24, 2011 Dr Bob Such, a former TAFE lecturer and Minister in a Liberal state government for Technical and Further Education, moved the following motion in the House of Assembly of the SA Parliament:

That this house calls on the state government to ensure that TAFE is not undermined by the introduction of full contestability for VET funding, nor by the South Australian government’s Skills for All policy.

The motion was carried.

It was an important motion and was the culmination of intensive lobbying by the AEU of state parliamentarians.

SA AEU members were aware of what was happening in Victoria.  And they had felt the breath of the devil on the backs of their necks in March 2011 when the chief executive of Business SA, Peter Vaughan, had savaged TAFE as a “sheltered workshop” for teachers. 

They were protected, he said, by the “dead hand of bureaucracy” and by “inflexible” industrial awards.

His chief criticism of lecturers and teachers in the SA TAFE was that they “failed to meet the needs of the business community in filling skills shortages”.

He called for it to be made easier to sack permanent teachers and for the removal of the cap on the numbers of casually-employed staff.  Industrial agreements should be created for each area of expertise, he said, echoing John Howard’s AWAs.

Labor sets up TAFE for corporate takeover

How did the state Labor government respond?

Minister for Employment, Training and Further Education Jack Snelling said that by 2012-13 he "expected" TAFE would have to compete openly against private training businesses and organisations.

"The Office for TAFE will have more autonomy and flexibility to respond to the market and be competing for training revenue."

This was heading in the direction of the Victorian model. That is why Bob Such’s motion, eight months later, was so important.

That motion reflected the will of the people.  It is what parliaments are supposed to do.

But there is a lesson in this for people who want to confine struggles to defend public interests to the Labor Party and the parliamentary process.

Despite the replacement of the Rann-Foley leadership of the government with the ALP Left’s Jay Weatherill in October 2011, Vaughan’s agenda for the commercialisation of TAFE proceeded apace.

Indeed, one year after Weatherill’s new team had been in office, the SA parliament took TAFE out from under the control of the government’s department and handed it over to the private sector. Further Education Minister Kenyon proudly announced that TAFE would now be an independent statutory corporation run by an independent Board.  The Board’s inaugural Chair?  Peter Vaughan!

Here are the other members of the Board:

         Mr Rob Chapman. Mr Chapmanis a former Managing Director of the State Bank of SA, and was most recently the CEO of St George Bank. He has extensive experience as Chairman of several high profile Boards.  He is a former President of Business SA. He is not an educator.

         Ms Joanne Denley. Ms Denley is currently the Director of Human Resources and Risk Management at Bridgestone Australia a huge multinational corporation which she describes as a “great global company”. She has a Master degree in Business Administration. She is not an educator.

         Ms Miriam Silva. Ms Silva recently was General Manager of Commercial Operations at Elders and is currently a member of the Training and Skills Commission.  She has an Honours degree in Maths and is a high profile Muslim.  As both a woman and a Muslim she has to be acknowledged for succeeding in a traditionally male and very conservative sector of South Australian business.  But she is not an educator.

         Ms Noelene Buddle. Ms Buddle is a private consultant and sits on a number of Boards including WorkCover Corporation and the South Australian Museum.  She has a BA in Accountancy and a Master in Business Administration. She is a former general manager of Austereo. She is not an educator.

         Mr John Branson. Mr Branson is currently the Chairman of Directors at Stuart Petroleum and is a Director of AED Oil. He is not an educator.

         Mr Adrian Gerard Marron. Mr Marron is currently Chief Executive Officer of the Canberra Institute of Technology and has over 15 years’ experience in the Tertiary Education sector.   He has experience as an educational administrator.

         Ms Annette Hurley. Ms Hurley was most recently a Labor Senator for South Australia and former Chair of the Senate Economics Committee.  She is not an educator.

Corporatised TAFE losing market share

There is no doubt that the Skills for All agenda has opened TAFE SA to competition by private training organisations for funding with the same results as in Victoria and elsewhere. 

Since the introduction of Skills for All, TAFE SA market share has dropped by 6% from 75% to 69%.  However, the decline is much steeper in areas of high youth employment, like the South of Adelaide, where the TAFE share has dropped by around 12%.

Currently there are around 300 Skills for All training providers contesting funding that would once have supported TAFE courses.  Many of these providers are based interstate.  Nationally, there are more than 4000 private RTOs seeking to divert funding from TAFE to themselves.

To make it easier for RTOs to compete in the market place with TAFE SA, the State government is planning to remove $30m in funding from TAFE.  This is to reduce the difference in the payments that go from the State government toTAFE and the RTOs.

In relation to funding, it is important to realise that both TAFE and RTOs are funded on course completion numbers, not on enrolment numbers.  TAFE SA has had instances recently of two courses with 37 and 36 enrolments dropping over the space of four weeks to 6 and 4 students respectively.  And courses are being “capped” – that is, once they reach a certain size they are closed to further enrolments. 

Fightback sure to develop

TAFE SA supporters and staff will be sure to campaign hard to protect TAFE from the ravages of the market.

They do not want to see lecturers laid off, courses removed and fees increased. 

But there can be no solutions in a system in which both major parliamentary parties are committed to the neoliberal belief that for-profit, private providers should be the beneficiaries of government spending on education.

The defence of TAFE must be part of an independent people’s agenda that leads not towards the bourgeois parliament, but towards anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

Only such a system can allow the people to make their own decisions about what a socially useful education system might look like.

They will be continually frustrated in those attempts while the power of the state rests with capital.

Egypt two years after Mubarak

Vanguard April 2013 p. 10
A World to Win News Service

(Above: A bus is set alight to block roads in Port Said)

On the second anniversary of the revolt that brought down Hosni Mubarak, protesters against the Islamic government that replaced him found themselves still fighting the same police units and the same beatings, torture and killing at their hands.

Demonstrations in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities were marked by a rage at what many people consider the hijacking of what they call the "revolution" by the now-governing Moslem Brotherhood.

Many thousands of youth and others fought, and many died, more than 50 according to Al- Ahram, in the name of the same slogans raised against Mubarak – "The people want the fall of the regime" and "Bread, freedom and social justice".

This new round of upheaval against the government headed by Mohammed Morsi turned even more determined over the following days. On 25 January a court in Port Said sentenced 21 men to death for what it said was their role in a football stadium attack that killed 74 people. This provoked extreme outrage both locally and elsewhere, as a cynical attempt to make these football fans scapegoats for the killings.  

During a February 2012 match between the capital's al-Ahly and the Port Said club al-Masry, men armed with knives, swords and other weapons attacked the Cairo team's supporters and chased down players. People were thrown from the stands. The stadium lights were turned off; according to some reports exit gates were locked. Many died or were injured in the stampede of people trying to flee.

In a break with standard practice, the police did not search people entering the stadium and did not intervene to protect those under attack. Many Egyptians believe that this was not a question of official negligence, but rather that the authorities had prior knowledge about the attacks, encouraged them and perhaps organized them.

In contrast to these death sentences, no security officials or even police have been held responsible for the killing of more than 800 civilians during the 18 days leading to the fall of Mubarak. Not even Mubarak was sentenced to death after being convicted for those deaths.

Indignation at this injustice led to a situation bordering on an uprising in Port Said, where crowds stormed the central prison and attacked police stations and other state institutions. Several police were killed. In the Canal city of Ismailia, protesters burned down the headquarters of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Moslem Brotherhood's electoral wing. Coalitions of youth organizations were said to have been in the lead in these cities.

The authorities' eagerness to crush the Suez cities became even more apparent on 27 January, when police in Port Said opened fire at the funerals for the 30 demonstrators they had killed the day before. At least seven more people died. In the fighting that followed, the police were driven out of the city. Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets, chanting "Morsi leave", "Down with the Brotherhood" and "The people want the state of Port Said."

Although the fighting in Suez had its own particularities, in the protests everywhere there seems to have been a common sense of fighting an unjust power structure. Who organized the Port Said stadium massacres? What are the connections between the army, whose Supreme Council was governing the country at that time, the police, the courts and the now-governing Moslem Brotherhood? And who or what could replace them?

This is a complicated situation in which people full of righteous hatred for the situation have seen little alternative other than the prospect of some arrangement in which various parties that represent the status quo, whether Islamist or pro-Western and supposedly secular, would share in governing.

To be seen as more legitimate, the state Mubarak once led needs to present itself as a product of the revolt that overthrew him. The armed forces would continue to play a central role in politics in one way or another, ready to back the police in enforcing the existing order. And Islamism would very likely play a central ideological and political role as well. This "politics" is political horse-trading whose aim is to produce a governing coalition, and that alone should be an exposure of the "liberal" and "left" Salvation Front leaders.

The Brotherhood constitution seriously threatens the rights of the people, especially insofar as it makes religion the supreme source of values and criminalizes all sorts of things religion might deem offensive. It is especially odious in its blessings on the subjugated status of women. But for the Salvation Front parties, the cry for "freedom" most definitely does not mean freedom from an oppressive economic, social and political system. This is attested to by their willingness to set aside even the most elementary rights of women in order to form a governing coalition with forces that have a forthright stand in favour of patriarchy.

The police might feel they can do without Morsi, but Morsi clearly can't do without the police. But the question of what people will tolerate on every level is related to whether or not they think there is a real alternative, not only to hated regimes but the whole system whose logic these regimes represent.