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The following articles were published by The Guardian, newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, in its issue of February 22, 2012. Reproduction of articles, together with acknowledgement if appropriate, is welcome.
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INDEX
The following articles were published by The Guardian, newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, in its issue of February 22, 2012. Reproduction of articles, together with acknowledgement if appropriate, is welcome.
The Guardian,
Editorial, 74 Buckingham Street,
Surry Hills, Sydney NSW 2010, Australia
Communist Party of Australia,
74 Buckingham Street, Surry Hills,
Sydney NSW 2010, Australia
General Secretary: Dr Hannah Middleton
Phone (02) 9699 8844 Fax: (02) 9699 9833 Email CPA
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INDEX
- Employers’ “solution” to crisis – More job cuts, increased exploitation
- EDITORIAL – Abolish the PHI rebate
- Welfare Rights welcomes landmark Law Reform report
- Farmers and the supermarkets
- Roebourne community demands apology – Statement, Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corp
- “Everything on the line” in Newcastle
- More jobs to go as Qantas wields the axe
- Our uranium fuelled Fukushima
- Australia’s policies failing long term jobless and people with disabilities
- Why the Greens are winning
- CULTURE & LIFE – Toying with a fancy
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01. Employers’ “solution” to crisis
More job cuts, increased exploitation
Anna Pha
Thousands more jobs are set to go as sackings and closures continue in the airline, manufacturing and retail sectors. Those whose jobs remain are threatened with massive cost-cutting attacks on their wages and working conditions. In the mining sector, technology is replacing workers. State and federal governments are adding to the toll with budget cuts and contracting out of work. Trade unions are bracing for further attacks by employers and governments as employer bodies pressure the government to reinstate individual employment contracts and place further restrictions on the right to strike.
Jobless expansion
Rio Tinto has announced that its iron ore trains in the Pilbara region of Western Australia will be “driverless” within three years. It plans to invest $843 million on special software that will replace 500 drivers. It claims the trains will deliver better safety results as well as be more efficient with fuel usage and scheduling. This move follows a recent announcement that it is buying 150 driverless dump trucks for its Pilbara mines.
The company says the train drivers will be redeployed in other areas as their mining operations expand. Job wise this still means 650 less jobs even if some individual workers are not thrown onto the unemployment scrap heap. The industry already has the highest rate of exploitation of any in Australia. In some mines, they are making as much as a million dollars profit per employee. Their employees, who work in the most difficult conditions, away from home and long hours at a time are paid only a fraction of that.
The ANZ has announced cuts of 1,000 jobs from its 24,000-strong Australian workforce by September. It is just the latest announcement by the major banks. They have already cut 2,000 jobs this year.
According to Finance Sector Union (FSU) national secretary Leon Carter, over 10,000 jobs could disappear from the banking sector in as little as two years as the Big Four banks continue to axe positions and raise interest rates. This is an industry that made $24 billion in profits last year!
Qantas’ latest round of sackings could see 1,500 jobs go. The crash of Strategic Aviation, the owner of the new “lost cost” airliner, Air Australia, will add to the toll.
Alcoa looks set to close its aluminium plant in Geelong, with the loss of 600 jobs.
Reckitt Benckiser is closing its Sydney operations and will manufacture Mortein brand insect sprays overseas.
Woolworths is selling its Dick Smith franchises. The sale will take place after a restructuring that will see up to 100 electronics stores closed. Some sacked employees may be found work in Woolworths stores.
The Sleep City Group with its 64 bedding stores has gone belly up. And so the list of casualties continues.
The private sector is not alone in sacking workers. The federal government’s four percent “efficiency dividend” (up from 1.5%) for 2012-13 looks set to see the loss of the equivalent of 5,500 full-time jobs. The Gillard government has set up a working group to plan even more cuts to departments in the coming years. Thousands more jobs look set to go.
A Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) survey of staff in the federal public service has revealed a significant decline in the quality of services due to past cuts, an increase in mistakes as staff are expected to undertake increased workloads and meet impossible targets.
State governments are on the rampage too. The Victorian Baillieu government, for example, is slashing 3,600 public service jobs. The public service is already overstretched. Victoria’s population has grown 20 percent in the last decade but the service is one third less in size than it was 20 years ago, according to the CPSU.
Every job lost means personal hardship for the workers and their families involved. In addition, millions of workers face job insecurity. Apart from those facing the immediate threat of sacking or shorter hours, around 40 percent also live on a day to day basis in casual and contract employment, uncertain of what the future holds for them.
These workers are extremely vulnerable when it comes to gaining their legal entitlements regarding wages and working conditions. Joining a trade union, demanding their rights, let alone taking industrial action, can mean joining the ranks of the unemployed.
The ACTU is waging a “Secure Jobs, Better Future” to tackle some of these issues. See securejobs.org.au.
With the exception of the export-based resources sector, the Australian economy is entering what looks set to be a deep and prolonged recession. There is a crisis of “over production”: there are more goods and services than there is demand for them. Every drop in income, every increase in interest rates or rent, every rise in petrol, electricity and other prices, means less money left over to spend on other things, less demand for goods and services. Every rise in productivity (output per worker) without a corresponding increase in wages also deepens the crisis.
The Business Council of Australia (BCA) representing the CEOs of some of the largest corporations in Australia, has called on the federal government to do more to boost productivity, cut costs and save jobs.
Translating the BCA’s demands into simple English, they mean boosting the output per worker (speed-ups, reduced manning levels, longer hours, etc), lower wages per unit of production and large handouts from government.
Trains and trucks do not buy goods and services. They certainly do not increase demand for goods and services. Workers and their families do. Pensioners and the unemployed do. Their incomes must be raised and prices reduced.
Yet individual employers, narrowly focused on their own profits continue down the economically and socially disastrous path of cost-cutting – sacking workers, increasing workloads, speeding up production, reducing wages, casualising workforces, reducing working hours and increasing prices. Those that can are shutting plants and moving offshore to cheaper labour and less regulated labour (including health and safety) environments. Construction and resource companies are looking to import non-unionised labour to work under slave conditions at $3 an hour.
This compounds the crisis, reducing demand for goods and services and resulting in more sackings. It is a downward spiral, with innocent, hard working people and their families the victims. Every dollar extra in profits results a dollar less in wages and salaries, in a dollar less to spend on what is produced.
At the same time, the retail, manufacturing and hospitality sectors are crying out for people to spend more. Manufacturing and hospitality are also affected by the higher value of the Australian dollar, a direct result of neo-liberal financial deregulation and lifting of tariffs under free trade agreements.
Qantas claims it has to make “hard decisions” to stay “internationally competitive”. As a privately owned, profit-driven corporation that has some validity as an argument looking at it from the interests of shareholders. And that is the problem: private ownership and the drive for private profits – the system of capitalism.
The private sector, for all of its opposition to government regulation and public ownership, is not adverse to assistance from the public purse. According to Gary Bracks, chairman of the Productivity Commission, the government spent $8.5 billion in subsidies on the manufacturing sector in 2009-2010. The car manufacturers are lined up for more corporate welfare. There is no certainty that Holden or Toyota will remain in Australia in the longer term, even with handouts.
The Rudd government during the financial crisis seemed to realise the need to stimulate demand in the economy to stave off a recession. But this approach has been replaced by one of achieving a budget surplus while reducing corporate taxes regardless of the social land economic consequences.
Instead of corporate handouts and “hard decisions” (budgetary cuts, sackings, etc), the federal and state governments should be embarking on job creation programs through the public sector, in such areas as housing, transport, alternative energy sources, education, health, aged care, community services and infrastructure.
The economy should be planned, with the government, not the “markets” determining the future of Australia’s manufacturing base and other industry development. Central to this is the expansion of the public sector and where necessary the take over of private corporations or establishment of new public ones in key areas such as banking, insurance, the airline industry and communications.
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02. EDITORIAL – Abolish the PHI rebate
Last week the government finally got its private health insurance (PHI) legislation through the House of Representatives – by one vote. The Greens supported means testing of the PHI rebate and an increase in the tax surcharge on higher income earners who do not have PHI. The government in return agreed to spend $165 million on dental care (over three years) for those on low incomes. Senator Doug Cameron defended the government’s means testing of the PHI rebate: “I think it’s a deal where we should hopefully get some fairness and equity in the private health fund system so that people on a couple of hundred thousand of dollars a year, on a million dollars a year, are not getting subsidies from the poorest workers in this country.”
“We have a health system that is universal, but with that comes an obligation for Australians to contribute. We have an obligation to care for our own health and we have an obligation to contribute through our taxes,” Minister for Health Tanya Plibersek told Parliament. Universal access is central to Medicare and the fee-free public hospital system. So too is centralised funding through the taxation system.
The more progressive the tax system, the greater the fairness and equity. Under a progressive tax system, those on higher incomes pay a higher rate in the dollar, contribute a higher proportion of their income to the public purse. The rate of taxation is based on ability to pay and access to publicly funded services should be on the basis of need. There is nothing fair or equitable about a two-tier system in which the government’s PHI rebate subsidises the second, private tier which Cameron’s poorest workers cannot afford to use.
The Howard government introduced the 30 percent PHI rebate to try to make PHI premiums affordable to more people. It later increased it to 35 percent for people aged 65-69 and 40 percent from age 70. Labor’s means test cuts the rebate in half for singles on $80,000 to $124,000 and families on $160,000 to $248,000. Those on higher incomes receive no rebate.
“Our public system gives high-quality and accessible care – security for every Australian that, should the worst happen, they will receive the care they need. Our private systems offer choice and flexibility and provide competition and comparison, contributing to continued improvements,” Plibersek said. The private system is not universally accessible; it offers “choice” to those who can afford it. Even by the government’s own criteria, it is hardly “fair and equitable”. It is heavily subsidised out of taxes paid by Australian taxpayers, including many who have no choice but the public hospital system. Plibersek’s claim that “We will no longer see poorer Australians subsidising the health insurance of wealthier Australians,” is not true.
The means testing is set to commence from July 1, with predicted savings of $2.4 billion over four years. If the government were serious about fairness and equity, it would abolish the PHI rebate. This would save more than $20 billion in the next four years – money that could be better spent on improving preventative health care, the public hospital system, Indigenous health services and providing universal access to dental care under Medicare.
Claims that the increase in the tax surcharge from 1 percent to 1.5 percent on higher incomes will see a mass exodus from PHI are nonsense. The reduction in or loss of rebate (depending on income) will in most instances be less than the increase in the surcharge. But this is not the main issue. The key issue is to defend universal access to the public hospital system and Medicare. This is under attack. Once the PHI is means tested, it will not be long before the government returns with the same arguments about “equity and fairness” line to introduce means testing of fee-free access to public hospital beds, bulk billing and Medicare rebates.
As Plibersek says, “… the greatest contribution should come from those who are most able to contribute.” The best way to do that is for the government to expand the public hospital system using the $20 billion saved by abolishing the PHI rebate, take over the private hospitals that collapse, and reverse the recent the corporate and personal income tax cuts to marginal tax rates to make the system more progressive. That way the rich and corporate sector would make a far larger contribution to the public health system. Means testing the rebate means the rich make a larger contribution to the private health system.
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03. Welfare Rights welcomes landmark Law Reform report
Maree O’Halloran, President of the National Welfare Rights Network (NWRN) has welcomed a landmark report of the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) on Family Violence & Commonwealth Laws.
“This is a landmark report. We hope this report represents a turning point in the way that our social security system, Centrelink and other government agencies treat people experiencing or subject to family violence. NWRN calls on the government to accept the recommendations and to move quickly to implement them.
“This ALRC report demonstrates that our social security system in both its design and execution is failing some of the very women who are in the greatest need of its protection, those who are experiencing or have been subjected to family violence.”
Ms O’Halloran said the ALRC is to be commended on the detailed research and consultation undertaken in its inquiry. She said stakeholders including Welfare Rights were given the opportunity to contribute based on our first-hand experience of the harshest and most unjust aspects of our social security system for people experiencing family violence. The end result is a report which provides the government with a clear roadmap for action and there is now no excuse for delay.
Key recommendations include amending social security legislation or policy:
- that the availability of crisis payment be expanded to be available to persons who are otherwise not eligible for income support and be provided to any person suffering severe financial hardship who is “subject to” or “experiencing” family violence;
- to ensure that a person or persons experiencing family violence are not subject to Compulsory Income Management;
- that harsh debt provisions be modified to ensure that a person who has been subject to family violence is not penalised when acting under the duress of a violent partner;
- that New Zealand residents who have rights to work and reside in Australia have access to Special Benefit, a safety net payment, where there has been a substantial change of circumstances beyond their control such as family violence, and
- that Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations review periods of exemption from activity requirements to ensure a long enough time for victims of family violence.
“Compulsory income management is not beneficial for anyone; however, it is definitely inappropriate for women experiencing domestic violence,” said Ms O’Halloran.
“The ALRC has supported amending the social security legislation to make allowance for situations where women have been pressured by an abusive partner to claim a social security payment as a single person or not to declare the correct amounts of their earnings.
While the numbers affected are small, the impact of the existing harsh rules is devastating on women who have suffered at the hands of their partners.
“This is also an interesting report in the wake of comments about social security made by the New Zealand Prime Minister when he met with our Prime Minister. The report notes that New Zealanders, unlike other migrants, have indefinite work rights, and the right to remain here indefinitely, contributing to compulsory superannuation and tax while working.
However, even if their circumstances change, such that they face destitution, New Zealanders are not eligible for Special Benefit, unlike other newly arrived residents.
“Centrelink has indicated in discussions with NWRN on the report that Centrelink’s response will depend on whether it is adequately resourced to make the changes necessary.
“The Australian government has a responsibility to act without delay on the recommendations set out in the report. Every day that is wasted on implementing this report is a day in which women and children experiencing family violence may be further put at risk and victimised by the system.”
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04. Farmers and the supermarkets
Peter Mac
Australian shoppers have experienced a significant drop in fresh food prices over the past year. Fruit prices fell 13.4 percent in the last quarter of 2011, with vegetables 5 percent cheaper. The average price for groceries fell 4.1 percent in the three months to December.
The reductions have resulted from good weather, and from a year-long price war on milk, bread, cereals and eggs between supermarket chains Woolworths and Coles, who control 80 percent of Australia’s groceries market. Last week Coles promised half-price deals on food staples every week.
Despite the price war, both companies are doing very well. Woolworths increased its sales 5.6 percent between June and December last year.
Part of the reason is that cost reductions were passed on to suppliers. As a result, some farmers have gone out of business and others are facing bankruptcy.
The Gillard government doesn’t seem worried. Competition spokesman David Bradbury acknowledged that “Producers and farmers are also entitled to get a fair price for their produce”, but added: “… the government has confidence that farmers and supermarkets will continue to work together to ensure the viability of primary production”.
Last week Coles representative Jon Church declared, with benevolent concern: “By giving growers a commitment that we will take as much of their crops as we possibly can, we have provided them certainty that they have a market for their product.”
However, the supermarkets haven’t promised to take all that the farmers produce, just “as much as we possibly can”, and the farmers will still have to take whatever the supermarkets offer to pay them for it.
Agriculture’s anarchy of production
Farmers have no dependable guarantee that the market will adequately compensate them for their investment in labour and capital, and they are dependent on good weather conditions for a good harvest. Consequently, when good weather arrives, as it did recently, with excellent rainfalls and much of the agricultural areas spared from flooding, farmers will strive to produce as much as possible.
Logically, this should also serve the national interest. Modern storage equipment enables fresh fruit and vegetables to be stored for very long periods, potentially avoiding food shortages during poor weather and wastage during good periods.
But that’s not quite how the system operates. The supermarkets will pay the farmers a reduced price per unit, arguing that because of the increase in supply relative to demand prices must fall. However, they will store the fruit and veggies for as long as possible in order to restrict supply to consumers and maximise their returns.
Prices will certainly fall if a price war breaks out, as is happening at the moment between Coles and Woolworths. However, the intention of each of the supermarkets is not to benefit the customers, but to seriously damage the profitability of its rival and gain market predominance.
If one of them manages to do so, it will be able to set prices to maximise its profit level, regardless of the public interest. And prices will then rise! The losers will be the consumers in the long term, and the farmers in both the long and short term.
The supermarket monopolies have an interest in retaining access to supplies from local farms, but only at minimum cost, and only to fill gaps in the quantities they can derive from cheaper markets overseas. They wouldn’t worry if the entire Australian agricultural industry was closed down, as long as their profit levels were maximised.
An undesirable harvest
The world is facing catastrophic problems in feeding its rising human population, particularly because of the threats posed by climate change. The “dog eat dog” ethos of capitalism is the worst possible system to deal with these problems.
Australia’s agricultural industry has played a major role in meeting the global demand for food. However, our relative production level has fallen and we’re now a net food importer. Many farmers are abandoning agriculture and seeking employment in other areas.
Some politically short-sighted consumers have welcomed the price reductions. One Twitter correspondent sneered:
“Canadian farmers have no trouble competing. The labour costs aren’t as ridiculously high as they are here. Farmers will … bring in cheap third-world labour from Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America to work on Canadian farms for $6 per hour, plus room, board and return flights. … It’s ridiculous that tropical fruits like bananas, pineapples and mangoes … cost half than it does in Oz, despite these products being grown here.”
This argument overlooks the fact that Canadian agricultural workers simply can’t afford to work for third world rates. The logic of the argument is that any Australian industry should use imported labour paid at third world rates because we’d all be better off – despite most of us being unemployed. There’s to be no agricultural industry, as well as no manufacturing. What a great solution!
In Australia, good agricultural land is being threatened by other industries, particularly gas and coal mining. At the same time, the level of food production in third world countries is actually falling, not only because of weather problems, but also because of declining petroleum reserves.
Rather than developing renewable energy sources and an electric vehicle industry, the powerful petroleum and auto industries have promoted the use of maize and other crops for production of bio-fuels, rather than food.
A recent BBC documentary revealed that in Britain a third of all fresh supermarket food is thrown out, and other crops are rejected en masse because they have minor blemishes or aren’t the size required. The same is probably true here.
With regard to the current price war, some federal MPs have called for a review of competition laws and have even predicted the end of Australian agriculture.
Bruce Bilson, opposition spokesman for small business, says assurances are needed that price cuts are not an attempt by big operators to control supply chain.
But of course they are! These demands are totally inadequate. The only counter to the current trend towards a food crisis is a boycott of supermarket products, and/or the introduction of market controls. Even that may prove inadequate. The only effective solution may turn out to be replacement of the system itself.
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05. Roebourne community demands apology
Statement, Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation, Roebourne, WA
On Four Corners (“Iron & Dust” 18 July 2011) Andrew Forrest [head of mining company Fortescue Metal) told a story about “little” Aboriginal girls approaching him late at night in Roebourne to offer sex for cigarettes:
“If you want to join me one evening after 11 o’clock at night and walk down the streets of Roebourne and have little girls come up to you, like they have to me, and offer themselves for any type of service, I don’t want to mention on television, for the cost of a cigarette, then you know you have come to the end of the line. The social breakdown is complete.”
www.abc.net.au/4corners/
special_eds/20110718/mining/
In fact, this story seems to be a favourite because, in May this year, Mr Forrest claimed to have had exactly the same personal experience, at three and four o’clock in the morning, with Aboriginal girls in Halls Creek trying to bribe him: “with whatever they could, for a cigarette, and you know, etcetera, you can imagine what a child will try and bribe an adult with. When you hear ‘smoke for a poke’ you know you are dealing with the depths of depravity of a society that is completely broken.”
www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ouWyVmtdifk)
Of course what Mr Forrest neglected to mention is that it serves the interests of Fortescue’s (FMG) shareholders to assert the complete social breakdown of Aboriginal societies because, under the native title law, remnant members of such societies are not entitled to legal recognition (in a native title determination) of their traditional property rights; so, FMG can exploit the mineral wealth of their traditional lands with a clear conscience. FMG can even look good by offering the poor blackfellas “training and jobs” and thus create a local workforce for FMG’s mines and save the cost of a ‘fly in-fly out’ workforce.
Indeed, 40 years ago in the early 1970s during the pitch of mining development when Roebourne was invaded by thousands of heavy drinking construction workers, and when the bulk beer sales at the Victoria Hotel put it amongst the top five hotels in the state, young girls were taken advantage of. But this is definitely not the Roebourne of today. Mr Forrest’s statement about the “little girls” in Roebourne is deeply hurtful, especially to the women and girls of the community.
What makes this even more offensive is the link Andrew Forrest made between the alleged “depravity” of the Roebourne girls and his rejection of a fair and equitable agreement with Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC), because, as he stated, “I am not going to encourage with our cash that kind of behaviour.”
Mr Forrest apparently wishes to persuade the Australian public that payment of proper compensation, to YAC – the chosen representative institution and the corporate trustee of the Yindjibarndi People – will somehow result in the exacerbation of the “depraved” behaviour he allegedly encountered in the streets of Roebourne. Nothing could be further from the truth, and Mr Forrest knows this, because YAC has written to him directly to express the community purposes to which all compensation would be directed by YAC, namely: long-term, autonomous self-development, not just in resources, but in “for-community-benefit” businesses; and in diverse commercial enterprises to fund health and housing, education, training and employment, in ways that promote the long term survival of the distinct culture of the Yindjibarndi People.
Mr Forrest’s double standards are plain when he calls payments to other, non-Indigenous, landholding interests, a “royalty” or “license fee”, but payments to Aboriginal people is “mining welfare”. With regard to under-employment of Aboriginal people, Andrew Forrest has said, “We have to stop this racism of low expectations” (Yakety Yak). The slur about how Yindjibarndi would misuse royalty payments is Andrew Forrest’s “racism of low expectations” – a racism of low expectations that he wishes to formalise in an “agreement” that will be binding on all future generations of Yindjibarndi people.
Mr Forrest’s self-serving stories do not rest with his reference to Aboriginal girls in Roebourne. His repeated assertion that the majority of Yindjibarndi support his agreement is another falsehood; as was his asserted “duty, to negotiate with the majority of the Yindjibarndi community”. Mr Forrest’s duty, under the native title law, was to ensure FMG negotiated openly and fairly with YAC, as the authorised representative institution of the Yindjibarndi People.
Instead, under his watch, FMG encouraged dissent by misleading some Yindjibarndi members into believing that they would be entitled to nothing if YAC did not accept what FMG was offering; and then assisted and funded those members to establish a splinter corporation (which owes no fiduciary obligations to the Yindjibarndi People) to take the benefit of the annual cash payments under the proposed agreement to which it is not even a party.
It seems Mr Forrest needs to tell stories of “depravity” in Aboriginal communities, so he can put himself forward as the “humanitarian” philanthropist who will rescue Aboriginal people from themselves – all the while dispossessing traditional owners of the rights they are due from their ancestral lands.
The community of Roebourne deserves a fair go, and demands an apology.
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06. “Everything on
the line” in Newcastle
Newcastle fitters working for a rich global mining equipment manufacturer will this week intensify industrial action as they maintain their battle to achieve pay equality.
Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) delegate Benn Billingsley said the members from German owned Schenck Process, were determined not to back down despite being locked out by their Australian management in December.
“They’ve put everything on the line and I’m really proud of them. It’s been tough for some of them with young families and some being on single incomes. But they’re holding out strong.”
He said members from both the AMWU and Australian Workers’ Union were unhappy at receiving significantly less than their colleagues in Queensland and had asked to be paid equally.
“The company want to pay more money to another guy, in another state for the same job and the same skills,” said Mr Billingsly. “We disagree with that whole-heartedly.
“Our pay rate doesn’t reflect the industry we work in. Management are happy to send us onto mine sites and we believe that our pay should more accurately reflect payment of the mining industry.”
Both unions have repeatedly asked to see profit and loss statements for the company’s Australian operations – only to be denied access. Last year the Schenck reportedly made a global profit of $640 million.
AMWU site organiser Jim O’Neill said members would selectively exercise their protected industrial action options throughout the coming weeks until the company reconsidered the union’s proposal.
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07. More jobs to go as Qantas wields the axe
Qantas has announced that it is axing 500 jobs from various locations. These operational and support roles are vital to maintaining smooth passenger services and support for various maintenance functions, and will impact on the quality of Qantas’ overall service.
Victoria will be the hardest hit by the job losses, with the majority of job cuts likely to be white collar jobs at the Tullamarine maintenance base.
The Australian Services Union (ASU) has condemned Qantas’ announcement of job cuts as unnecessary and short-sighted, sacrificing livelihoods and the long-term efficiency of the airline for short-term cost-cutting.
Denying Qantas management’s claim that the job cuts are necessary, the union pointed to:
Profit of $202 million in the half-year to 31 December, despite the damage to the brand caused by management’s decision to ground the airline.
Eight percent increase in passenger traffic at Melbourne airport, or 2 million more passengers assisted by customer service staff, reflected in increased passenger revenue for the half-year.
Continuing high performance, quality of service and improved staff efficiency.
“This business success reflects the efforts of Qantas workers to improve efficiency and quality of service,” said Victorian ASU branch secretary Ingrid Stitt.
“These workers have contributed to sustained profits, but still they’re being thrown to the dogs by Qantas. This is clearly not about efficiency. It’s not about growing a sustainable business, because our members are doing that, and they’re being punished for it. It’s about Qantas executives in a determined effort to shift the economic benefit of the national carrier out of Victoria.”
The ASU also pointed to the lack of action by the Victorian government in the loss of more jobs from Qantas’ Victorian operations.
“[Premier] Mr Baillieu said the other day – before any workers had been told that they might lose their jobs - that he doesn’t want to get involved because it’s a matter for Qantas bosses to do as they wish. Well I think most Victorians do expect government to take action to protect jobs and the Victorian economy,” said Ms Stitt.
The ASU will be seeking urgent meetings with Qantas management.
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08. Our uranium fuelled Fukushima
David Noonan
Australian uranium fuelled the Fukushima nuclear disaster yet our governments have just approved the world’s largest uranium project in BHP Billiton’s proposed new pen pit mine at Roxby Downs.
“We can confirm that Australian obligated nuclear material was at the Fukushima Daiichi site and in each of the reactors – maybe five out of six, or it could have been all of them; almost all of them”.
This frank smoking gun admission by Dr Floyd, the Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office (ASNO) in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade came some seven months after the Fukushima crisis had started to unfold. It is quite likely this Australian uranium came from Roxby Downs in SA.
Denial runs deep in the nuclear industry. The nuclear utility TEPCO and the Japanese government lacked capacity and preparedness to respond to the inherent nuclear risks that reactors imposed on their society. Fire fighters from Tokyo had to risk their lives and health to try to control the failing Fukushima nuclear reactors as they exploded and burnt and the reactor cores melted down spewing radiation over nearly 10 percent of Japan.
Uranium mining companies in Australia are in denial. They cited “commercial in confidence” so as not to disclose their contracts and not to reveal which reactors were fuelled with their uranium.
The radioactive tailings produced by uranium miners need to be isolated from the environment for far longer than recorded human history – in effect forever.
However, Olympic Dam mine is a dam designed to leak an average of three million litres of liquid radioactive waste a day from the tailings storage facility through decades of mining up to 2050.
The federal and SA governments agreed to surface dumping of the tailings rather than to require best practice disposal into the pit.
They agreed that the company does not have to rehabilitate the proposed one kilometre deep pit that will be left to form a hyper-saline contaminated lake of some 350 metres in depth as a permanent scar on the landscape. Some 3.5 million litres a day of saline groundwater will be lost to the pit in perpetuity as it cuts through the local aquifers.
The world’s largest and richest mining company has been allowed to avoid paying for environment protection measures and mine rehabilitation costs of some many hundreds of millions of dollars.
The federal government gave election policy commitments that they have failed to deliver:
“Labor will accordingly only allow the mining of uranium under the most stringent conditions”.
And: “Ensure that Australian uranium mining, milling and rehabilitation is based on world’s best practice standards”.
How did the SA government perform in exercising their responsibilities after Fukushima?
Indigenous people bear a disproportionate burden of impacts from uranium mining and this will certainly continue to be the case in SA under the Roxby Indenture deal “negotiated” by the state with BHP Billiton that is being pushed through Parliament with bi-partisan support.
BHP Billiton is not bound by the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988 in the “Stuart Shelf Area” of some 1.5 percent of the area of SA around the Olympic Dam mine.
Aboriginal heritage obligations that apply to every other miner or developer do not apply to the Big Australian for the 70-year extended period of the Roxby Indenture, and the state further agreed that this can only be changed in future with the agreement of the company.
In response to a question by Mark Parnell, Greens MLC in the Legislative Council, a Minister acknowledged that:
“I have been advised that BHP insisted that the current arrangements continue and they were not prepared to consider changes to that ... and the government did not consult further than that”.
Olympic Dam has an option to produce and trade in copper and gold and leave the uranium and the rest of the radioactive wastes at the mine site and not fuel further nuclear risks around the world.
The state owns the minerals but chose to approve a project that seeks to lock in uranium sales. In 2007, BHP Billiton proposed a switch from processing a copper product on the mine site, as has been the case at Roxby since 1988, to the new open pit mine producing a uranium-infused bulk copper concentrate for direct sale to China.
This precedent sale of uranium in concentrates is not sanctioned under any of Australia’s nuclear treaties and bilateral uranium sales agreements and BHP Billiton’s plan requires a new or amended nuclear treaty with China that would further undermine our so-called “nuclear safeguards”.
Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke signed off on the company’s plans and granted approvals for the proposed infrastructure, processing and transport for the concentrate, pre-empting the negotiation and signing of a nuclear treaty, its presentation to the Federal Parliament and a required inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, and a subsequent decision on whether to ratify, to amend or to reject the treaty.
Commercial vested interests of uranium mining companies are writing the script for Australia’s uranium sales deals under both Liberal and now ALP federal governments.
Now Prime Minister Julia Gillard wants to write down Australia’s commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (the NPT) to sell uranium to India – locked in a nuclear arms race with Pakistan and facing the rise of nuclear terrorism.
India has an ongoing nuclear weapons program, has failed to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and reserves a right to further test nuclear weapons, and its so-called civilian nuclear sector has extensive military links.
A nuclear deal with India would suit BHP Billiton’s interests in potentially providing a second market country for the uranium-infused bulk copper concentrate from their proposed new open pit mine, and to allow them to lay off some of the increased uranium yellowcake production from the pit onto one of very few remaining potential nuclear markets in the shadow of Fukushima.
The illusion of protection in uranium sales will further unravel as the book-keeping exercise in ASNO’s so-called “nuclear safeguards” may fail to track uranium in concentrates in non-transparent China, as the developing world struggles with nuclear risks that Japan was unable to contain, and as Australian uranium continues to fuel nuclear insecurity across the world.
It does take some five to six years to dig the pit just to reach the radioactive ore at Roxby.
South Australia should come to its senses and recognise our society’s responsibilities to get out of the uranium trade and not be made complicit in nuclear risks for BHP Billiton’s vested interests.
Source: Adelaide Voices
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09. Australia’s policies failing long term jobless and people with disabilities
Bernadette Smith
As part of Social Inclusion Week 2011, the then Minister for Social Inclusion, Tanya Plibersek, outlined the Australian government’s social inclusion agenda in its “Foundations for a Stronger, Fairer Australia” report. It includes improving outcomes for people living with disability and helping jobless families with children to “increase work opportunities, improve their parenting and build their capacity”. This will be achieved through partnerships between government, business and the not-for-profit sector targeting disadvantaged groups such as the long term jobless and Indigenous Australians. Curiously there’s no mention of providing secure, remunerative employment for targeted groups through actual job creation or affirmative action.
The report foreshadows private sector outsourcing of government programs designed to address disadvantage. This risks commodifying society’s most vulnerable, particularly where public accountability is lacking and perverse profit incentives exist. Instead of protecting end users from endemic exploitation in the privatised job service and charity sectors, the government ostensibly is moving towards deregulation with planned reforms to “cut red tape”. Their consultation process seems limited to business and non-government stakeholders despite the report’s stated aim of helping clients “Have a voice so that they can influence decisions that affect them”.
The government’s agenda seems less about alleviating poverty than delegating non-government organisations to act upon a mute, deficient other. Instead of empowering the disadvantaged the government will outsource supervisory control over them by private agencies that are mainly answerable to their shareholders. Rather than being informed by an evidence-based approach, the report’s blanket value judgement that jobless families with children need help to “improve their parenting” smacks of class paternalism. Its underlying assumption is not far removed from Opposition leader Tony Abbot’s assertion that lowly paid workers and the unemployed are only in that position because of individual character flaws.
Peddling a myth
With the ink barely dry on parliament’s apology to the Aboriginal Stolen Generation and British child migrants the government and often self-serving church-based service providers are again peddling the myth that disadvantaged families are somehow dysfunctional and in need of intervention. Since the Northern Territory Intervention affecting Aboriginal communities began, reported rates of suicide and self-harm have more than doubled and indigenous incarceration has increased by 40 percent (“Closing the Gap Monitoring Report”). Ominously, social security amendments will spread dehumanising intervention measures such as compulsory income management to Centrelink recipients throughout Australia starting with ten priority sites like Bankstown, Sydney. Future parliaments may well have to apologise for another shameful chapter in Australia’s history while business, church and state seem set to ride the next new wave of institutional abuse of our nation’s vulnerable underclass.
Australia’s underclass has grown significantly along with rising inequality since the ascendant global influence of economic rationalists such as Milton Friedman from the mid 1970s. The dominant economic paradigm now dictates that it is harder to control inflation if unemployment falls below 4.5 percent. To ensure constant downward pressure on consumables and labour costs, the bottom third in our society or Fourth World must be denied any kind of disposable income beyond the basic necessities of life. Hence our governments have sustained policies of economic apartheid to produce a permanent class of marginalised unemployed and underemployed Australians.
Controlling the power of unions, casualisation of the workforce and privatisation of state infrastructure, essential services and public enterprises brought this about. Import tariff reductions have caused most of our manufacturing industries to be outsourced offshore and what remains is a tenuous labour market.
Labour hire is now a market driven commodity generating a stressful, lack of control over the lives of jobseekers forced to eke out a precarious existence on the margins of our economy. This “flexible” workforce is a revolving door of untenured, low paid and under/unemployed workers lacking job security and protection. They belong to what Noam Chomsky calls a “precariat” (dependant on chance) and Australia’s disadvantaged target groups are at the very bottom of this precariat.
This is why social inclusion initiatives simply cannot work without the government undertaking full employment through public sector expansion as happened in the 30 years following World War II. The Local Government Association alone has identified enough jobs needing to be done that if funded could provide long term employment for all Australia’s unemployed. Never mind the abundance of jobs which could be funded in the creative industries, health, education and new green enterprises if the benefits of Australia’s resources boom were spread more evenly. As Nugget Coombs had observed this would be more in keeping with the spirit of legislation which reserves underground minerals for the benefit of the whole nation or Commonwealth of Australia.
In addition the nature of work itself needs to be re-defined to recognise the underpaid contributions of Australia’s cultural workers.
The only other possible alternative to maintaining a society underpinned by social exclusion without creating full employment is to share the burden of inflation-controlling policies among all sections of Australian society. This means rationing the decent jobs so that even the socially privileged receive their turn of unemployment. Then the precariat would have social mobility ensuring no one suffers economic hardship from underemployment for more than a few months in their lifetime. This way the adverse effects of managing inflation wouldn’t only fall on those without class connections but be rotated equitably.
Social inclusion
A more practical way to bring about social inclusion would be to employ Australia’s disadvantaged within all publicly funded private enterprises and the public service. To this end I wrote to then Minister for Social Inclusion, Tanya Plibersek, both as a member of her electorate and as a person living with disabilities. I also spoke to her office staff and contacted the Australian Social Inclusion Board through the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet website. I proposed that the government as part of its social inclusion initiatives establish affirmative action for taxpayer funded service providers to ensure people with disabilities are given priority in employment within these organisations.
As a first step whenever government departments issue new service provision contracts they should include contractual obligations to employ suitably qualified disadvantaged jobseekers such as those with disabilities and the long term unemployed. This may require employment quotas of at least 10 to 20 percent and a compliance regime of issuing exemplary damages against companies and NGOs that fail to comply.
Independent oversight could be provided with a well-resourced Ombudsman to defend the rights of people with disabilities seeking part-time work. It could be financed by a levy on private sector organisations that benefit from taxpayer funding. Current anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws are too onerous for jobseekers with disabilities; instead the onus of proof should be on government-subsidised employers to prove that they are employing enough Australians with disabilities through positive discrimination.
Publicly financed charities and non-profit groups should not be exempt from the requirement to provide affirmative action in their internal hiring practices. The government is already talking about a regulator and reform of publicly funded non-profits so it wouldn’t involve much more effort to ensure disadvantaged jobseekers are given every opportunity to participate as paid workers within them rather than as volunteers. I also asked if there have been any costings done around such proposals before or whether there had been any cost/benefit analysis for implementing such a proposal.
At the time of writing I am still waiting to hear back from either the Social Inclusion Board or my parliamentary representative regarding this proposal for affirmative action. Although there has been a dearth of official information on truly effective ways to bring about social inclusion a relevant online article was published in Cathnews in April last year by Frank Quinlan, head of Catholic Social Services. He suggested one place to start employing people with disabilities was in the Australian public service and seemed to shift the blame for the lack of employment opportunities for the disadvantaged on to the public sector. However in my experience the biggest barriers to employing people with disabilities lie in the ever expanding private sector.
Private and public
At least in the public service there is an independent public service exam and government departments are required to publicly advertise job vacancies. Whereas private sector service providers funded by the public purse have no requirement to ensure merit-based employment in their internal hiring practices and nepotism is rife. People with disabilities have no recourse to freedom of information laws in that regard as commercial confidentiality clauses are inevitably invoked to avoid scrutiny.
Rather than a mature age teacher, retrenched office worker or qualified jobseeker with disabilities being given a chance at these jobs you are more likely to find a well connected Young Liberal gap year kid working as a client supervisor in the privatised job or disability service sector. Often sham job training for clients is provided in-house by staff who are not even required to have teaching qualifications while jobseekers that do are denied the opportunity to work there.
Frank is right on the money though when he informs us: “Like other major employers, the Catholic Church could also lead the charge to ensure there are opportunities for those experiencing disabilities and other barriers.” There are perhaps hundreds of thousands of adult survivors of clergy abuse in Australia most of whom are given very little help to move on with their lives.
Former Catholic survivors are left with debilitating traumas yet face discrimination in employment at Catholic schools. Any job applicant must show their academic and school record as part of the selection process and former Catholic school pupils identified as “Catholic” on their school record are automatically expected to supply a reference from their parish priest showing they are in good standing within the church. For survivors of clergy abuse who have been sexually assaulted as children by their parish priest or figures of authority within the church, obtaining a reference is too traumatic and raises an impossible bar.
Paradoxically a jobseeker brought up as a Protestant or Muslim stands a better chance of being employed within Catholic institutions than abused former Catholics, as they are not required to provide a reference from their parson or imam. This accounts for why Catholic schools have never before had such a high proportion of non-Catholic staff because a generation of clergy abuse survivors are effectively locked out.
After the Pope’s World Youth Day apology one such survivor asked a local bishop to exempt clergy abuse survivors from the requirement to provide a reference from their local parish priest when seeking employment at diocesan schools. Since his diocese was one of Australia’s clergy abuse epicentres it would have been a practical gesture of reconciliation but his answer was: “Well go to Job Network!” (Or to be precise Centacare job agency). But Centacare, like most other job service providers, is making headlines for all the wrong reasons for using jobseekers as pawns in their game of rorting taxpayer funds. Cold Comfort Farm there.
Relying on the charitable instincts of churches, charities and businesses is not a particularly effective way of employing disadvantaged groups. So rather than self-regulation, the government must ensure publicly funded institutions don’t discriminate against people living with disabilities and others. Public subsidies for non-government service providers should be tied to affirmative action obligations to employ the disadvantaged within their organisations. Australia will never be an inclusive, fair society without equitable distribution of paid, secure employment for people living with disabilities and the long term underemployed.
Bernadette Smith is an artist, writer and educator living with disabilities. She is also a media producer of online content and former Vice President of Octapod, a not for profit independent arts and new media organisation.
bernadettesmithwriting.blogspot.com
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10. Why the Greens are winning
Bob Treasure
When the dark side of Australian politics fulminates and fumes and foams against them; when the likes of Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt and Paul Sheehan wax rabid about their “crazy” policies; when the Pells and Fred Niles blather about their “godlessness”; when the number 1 priority for Murdoch’s media is to sling mud and vilify them, day in, day out; when the mining barons and captains of industry bemoan their “socialistic” tendencies; when all the major parties combine to put their preferences last, then…
…then you know for sure the Greens are doing something right!
By “right”, of course, is meant “correct”. Since their establishment in 1992, arising out of the inspiring Franklin River protests in Tasmania and running parallel with similar radically inclined movements in Europe and the Americas, the Australian Greens have not only survived, but prospered.
Green growth
With the calm, earnest, dignified and apparently incorruptible Dr Bob Brown at the helm the Greens Party has steadily grown to become a major force in Australian politics – they simply cannot be dismissed or brushed aside, as many have sought to do.
Nationally, the Greens vote has grown spectacularly from 2.4 percent in 1996 to 13.1% in 2010, the last election—an improvement of more than 400% overall. After the 2010 triumph, Brown was able to quantify the Greens vote at an aggregate of 1.6 million Australians.
Interest in, and membership of, the Greens spiked during the Tampa crisis of 2001 and continued rising fast, leading up to the joint invasion of Iraq. Since then, growth in membership has been slower, but the current level of 10,000 is admirable, given that the “old” parties’ numbers have been in constant decline over the past 30 years. Nowadays the major parties seem more interested in the whole question of donations (as in the US), preferring to rely on money and mass advertising as their political lifeblood.
Apart from federal success, the Greens now have significant representation in every State and Territory of the Commonwealth. As well, they have over 100 local government Councillors in Australia including 75 across NSW.
What is most notable about this growth in support, however, is that it has “rusted on”. The Greens do not appear to suffer the fluctuations of voting loyalty, the ups and downs of poll-driven populist politics afflicting other parties. Their growth is steady, conscious, loyal, and having a very real impact. What’s their secret?
Principled policies
Greens environmental policies have been around for decades and are finally being addressed, because they have to be. They had understood the science of Global Warming long before Rudd discovered it as “the most pressing issue of our time” (and then, when it got difficult, promptly dumped it).
The Greens have consistently argued for a tax on polluters, and showed “Realpolitik” maturity in negotiating Carbon Tax levels with Gillard. While the other parties have flip-flopped, dithered and smoke-screened, they have never wavered. Their intent has been clear, honest and consistent.
The Greens have avoided the many scandals of business bribery and corruption because they persistently support the efficient provision of Public Services: Public Education, Public Transport, Public Health and Public Welfare – all of which are subject to public scrutiny via the ballot box. Not so the privatising favours doled out by the major parties, with their odour of cronyism, corruption, elitism, taxpayer rorts, and with the constant aim of avoiding the responsibility of governance.
Who would pay for the “exorbitant costs” of Public Service delivery? It’s not complicated: the rich, those that can afford to pay more tax such as mining companies, banks, and big polluters. Most Australians agree: a fair redistribution of the nation’s wealth. No wonder Gina Rinehart wants to smother this eminently obvious truth.
Peace with national independence is a readily identifiable Greens policy which both major parties have proved incapable of providing. Their craven adherence to the sacred cow of the “US Alliance” means we will continue to be mired in various theatres of perpetual war, to preserve the sanctity of the global American Empire. Unsurprisingly, increasing numbers of Australians are getting sick and tired of this arrangement.
What a xenophobic notion is “border security”! The Greens have not had to justify the tortuous inhumanity of “turning boats back” or detention centres because they have never agreed with them. They have consistently argued that Australia is a wealthy country that can afford to absorb large numbers of refugees, the vast bulk of whom are genuine. Simple observation of our immigration outcomes since WWII is surely proof that the sky will not fall in with such a policy – rather the nation and the world both benefit.
Please share the memory of the “Tampa Crisis” of 2001, when this nation seemed to be going mad. The sole reported public figure standing fast and pointing to the barbarity of government policy was Bob Brown.
Linkages with issues
The outstanding characteristic of modern liberal democracies is their rank opportunism, their lack of vision and substance. Political leaders cannot take the populace with them. This is because they are divorced from the people, shielded by bodyguards, experts, image marketers and the status of their hallowed position.
They understand issues through a filter: usually the mass media. They project into the media with “publicity grabs”: 30 second visuals of Tony Abbott in a hard hat, and a one-line sound bite.
Have you ever noticed how often (sometimes, irritatingly so!) the Greens are correct both in their understanding of an issue and their position on it? This is simply because they have people either directly involved in the struggle in question, or they have thoroughly communicated and shared with the people actually involved.
In short, they are an “activist party” and their politicians are activists too. They are not afraid to join a protest demonstration or speak to groups of people, regardless of their past political stripe. Dr John Kaye, NSW Greens Upper House MLC, is the perfect example of an “activist politician”. He can speak with authority on almost any political topic with complete first-hand confidence because he has made himself utterly familiar with the issues.
Problems and challenges
Yet the Greens are by no means perfect. They are not a Marxist party in that they do not see the working class, that is to say, those people who actually produce our goods and services, as the core agency of power and change in society.
Instead they have an idealist perspective that places humanism generally on an equal plane with the natural environment. There are “good” capitalists, notably those who engage in “sustainable” industry, while “bad” capitalists damage the global ecology. Such a position can create dilemmas, like the one surrounding the ethanol-producing Manildra company on the south coast of NSW – on that particular matter, apparently, “… we are still awaiting the science …”
There is still a widespread perception that the Greens are “anti jobs” – that they destroy employment for the sake of the environment. Of course, that is not their intent but if they are to win over the vast bulk of the working class in Australia they must develop a credible economic policy that shows they have progressed beyond “tree-hugging” towards a broad vision of a future, harmonious society, complete with fair wealth distribution and varied, engaging employment opportunities.
Green policy makers have, in fact, been making real progress in this direction in recent elections. The problem, if there is one (and remember, no other Australian party can match their rate of growth over the past two decades!), would appear to be the medium rather than the message itself. Too often the Greens appear to be young, well-educated smarty-pantsers telling the rest of society how to suck eggs. Feasibly this stereotype needs to be reviewed.
When the Zionist blowtorch was applied to the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) policy of Marrickville Council last year, cracks appeared in the Greens’ resolve to support the Palestinian cause, especially since the NSW elections were looming and the stance may have damaged fellow Greens’ electoral chances. Clearly uncomfortable with the situation, pressure emanated from the leadership in Canberra and some Green Councillors did a back-flip, leaving the Green mayor, Fiona Byrne, hung out to dry.
The result was an embarrassing backdown from international solidarity under the hue and cry of “getting back to Council basics”: garbage collection and library dues. Under the circumstances, the Greens could have sustained greater party discipline to at least present a united front to their constituency.
Like any party, the Greens inherently have factional differences. Each state “branch” is a party unto itself. There are those who would prefer to remain in the pristine wilderness of the environment, saving whales and promoting motherhood social issues, like putting cigarette-smokers on the torture-rack. There are others more prepared to engage in the rugged hurly-burly of social democratic struggle, ready to take on the mining companies and their exorbitant profits, as well as the privileges of private schools.
Indeed, the Greens, to their eternal credit, have done much to defend and promote Public Education in this country, while nonetheless there are still those members of the party having their children taught in “alternative” settings, or home-schooled. These are the kind of tensions that continue to exist.
The future
Maybe this is all being too critical: trying to fit the Greens into an old 20th century straight-jacket of “parties”. In many respects the Greens are an entirely different form of political organization. They are more fluid, less rigid, more informal and “approachable” than the institutional parties. When controversial “punch-ups” arise, supporters emerge from the woodwork. When elections arrive, an army of volunteer non-members materialise to letterbox, distribute leaflets and person the polling booths.
The Greens are wider than a specific national party – they are part of a youthful global movement, and that is what remains exciting about them. If the future is to countenance global cooperation, peace and sustainability, Greens across the world will be part of that equation.
One thing is for certain: the Australian political landscape has changed forever. The cosy locked-up cage of “Tweedledum-Tweedledee” electoral arrangements that continued to siphon wealth to the upper levels of society, no matter who is elected, is being rattled. The very unpredictability of Greens power has shaken the complacency of the Big End of Town, hence the unrelenting venom spat towards them. The Right is worried. They should be. The rise of the Greens is prising loose their grip over Australian society, leaving us all with wider possibilities.
The future is bright for even greater change.
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11. CULTURE & LIFE – Toying with
a fancy
Rob Gowland
Poor Barry O’Farrell! His years in the NSW Opposition don’t seem to have taught him anything. Now that he is in government, he is behaving in exactly the same way as the Labor party politicians he defeated.
Barry campaigned with vigour on the NSW Central Coast where I live, no doubt made aware by his staff that Labor’s kowtowing to the coalmining companies had alienated support from Labor almost everywhere on the Coast.
Driving through much of the lower Hunter region for example is like taking a vacation on the moon: a devastated landscape of discarded topsoil and overburden, for kilometre after kilometre. It is so unnatural and inimical to human life that environmentalists take visitors up to selected high points so they can look down on the devastation for themselves. No arguments are required: the sight alone is enough of a shock.
Activists have a surfeit of choice for issues to campaign around. There is the Newcastle coal loader (recipient of large amounts of public money), a key component in making Newcastle the world’s largest coal exporting port. Not a claim one should actually want to be proud of, considering the serious pollution that is an inevitable concomitant of such operations.
There is the ever-present coal dust across the Hunter Valley that covers everything from washing to vineyards. Big billboards erected by despairing vineyard owners proclaim: “If we could eat or drink coal we’d be laughing!”
The vast increases in the number of coal trains planned under Labor are set to continue under O’Farrell and the Liberals. And why not? The Libs are after all the party of big business (and coal in NSW is definitely big business). The ALP might have tried to usurp the Libs’ position in this regard in recent years, but O’Farrell knows that it rightly belongs to the Libs.
There is the threat to the Coast’s water supply from long-wall coal mining under the main water catchment areas of the Central Coast. Even Labor had to recognise the validity of that particular threat, although they tried very hard to fob it off, setting up a bogus “enquiry” that sought no technical information from anyone except the mining companies. When they did not produce adequate information, the enquiry shrugged and said, well, it’ll be all right anyway.
The enquiry panel was handpicked by devious Labor party heavyweight Frank Sartor and chaired (a master stroke, this) by former Liberal leader Kerri Chikarovski. To no one’s surprise, the “enquiry” concluded that coal mining under the Coast’s main water catchment valleys posed no threat to any one or anything. Curiously, no one gave it any credibility whatsoever.
But while campaigning for the NSW elections, Barry O’Farrell shamelessly courted the disgruntled voters of the Central Coast, attending ant-mining rallies, posing for photographs in the “Water Not Coal” tee-shirts of the main anti-coal mining group, the Australian Coal Alliance, and making promises.
At a rally held in Dooralong’s Woodbury Park, Barry gave an absolute commitment that under a Liberal government longwall coal mining would not be allowed in the Wyong water catchment valleys. “We will ensure mining cannot occur here … no ifs, no buts … a guarantee!”
This earned the Libs lots of favourable comment in the region, and pushed the desperate Labor government shortly before the election to actually reject the proposal to develop the longwall mine, known as Wallarah 2. But to no avail: the Libs took the seat comfortably.
Once in office, however, it has been a different story. The owners of Wallarah 2, “Wyong Areas Coal Joint Venture”, are in the process of submitting a new application for the mine to proceed. And where is “no ifs, no buts” O’Farrell? Conspicuous by his silence.
This is not surprising to those of us who were aware of O’Farrell’s class allegiances from the off, but has come as a grave disappointment to some of those who actually believed his promises, who took him at his word (never a wise thing to do with bourgeois politicians!).
The latest issue of our local community Newsletter, The Rural Grapevine, contains a plaintive letter from a local urging O’Farrell to “Honour your promise Barry”. We can only imagine the communications Barry O’Farrell will have been getting from vested interests with big budgets urging him in all manner of sophisticated ways to do the right thing by the big end of town.
The coal industry (in which we must include the Coal Seam Gas industry) is a huge financial bloc, commanding substantial advertising funds as well as patronage and election funding. Bourgeois politicians will not lightly gainsay such a powerful lobby.
The proposed Wallarah 2 mine would produce coal for Kores, part of the South Korean power industry. Our coal would be burned overseas, but the greenhouse gasses produced would affect us all.
Meanwhile, the fight goes on. Alan Hayes of the Australian Coal Alliance, who became an overt supporter of O’Farrell and the Libs after Barry’s “no ifs, no buts” promise, now says of the new proposal: “Nothing has changed! Wallarah 2 are rolling out the same mishmash with the hope that it will fly.
“There is no way the miners [mining companies] can guarantee the security of the water supply.”
He points out that the new $120 million water transfer pipeline built to take water to the Mangrove Dam for drought mitigation storage draws its water from the Wyong water catchment valleys where the proposed mine would be situated!
The Rural Grapevine quotes “another Coast resident” saying: “Coal mining is detrimental to our health, air quality, quiet lifestyle, let alone the impact it will have on our sensitive environment. Keep out, Kores, go back to Korea, we don’t want you here!”
The same probably now applies to Barry O’Farrell. And if it doesn’t, it will soon if he continues his present policies. Of course, he could always keep his promise. (Peals of laughter offstage.)
I know, I know, I did not mean it to be taken as a serious suggestion. I was just toying with a fancy.
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