Australia: the collapse of "designer
Boudarel has never stopped questioning and reviewing his former commitments" 20
So what is behind the anti-Boudarel campaign? At its origin there is clearly the desire of former soldiers detained by the Viêtminh for vengeance and the efforts of
VIETNAM-FRANCE / AUSTRALIA capitalism"
the proto-fascist National Front (NF) to regain the political initiative. The NF has got itself into hot water with its own elecopposition to French torate over its involvement in the Gulf war and its
ALMOST eight years ago the Australlan Labor Party (ALP)
"understanding" attitude to Saddam Husswas swept into government in this country's Federal
By today mobilizing ein's demands.
against this historian, it dreams of once parliament. Many people saw incoming prime minister Bob again appearing as the best defender of the
Hawke, who had been president of the Australian Council of army and the "honour of the nation".
Trade Unions (ACTU), as a radical antidote to the Toryism of
Malcolm Fraser, the Liberal born-to-ruler" who had been
Other interests at work
Installed by the "Kerr coup" of November 11, 1975)
But other interests are also at work, which give this "affair" its resonance in the media and the political world. A part of the "respectable" right is bidding for the NF's electorate.
Others want to put pressure on the universities to speed up their "normalization". Others are developing the enterprise of "historical revisionism", with regard to the genocide of Jews during the second world war, today with regard to colonialism. This enterprise wants to banalize the notions of Nazism and crimes against humanity, and to efface the memory of atrocities committed by French armies in the name of the French who died in the Viêtminh camps." All agree, in the post-Gulf war ideological atmosphere, that revolutionary commitment should be
The governmental left has been keeping quiet, or has been playing the hypocrite, like Lionel Jospin, the education minister.
He recognizes that Boudarel's status as a university teacher is a matter for his colleagues, but at the same time he characterizes him, in passing, as a "kapo", and the
"concentration camps", thus summoning up the vision of choice was justified" but that nonetheless the Vietnamese were the adversary of our country". Make of that what you can!
He suggest that Boudarel should be left
"to face his own conscience". But he omits to suggest that his own Socialist
Party examine its own conscience insofar as its pursuit of colonial wars and its multiple uses and abuses of state terrorism are
In his letter to his colleagues of February 25, Georges Boudrel noted that the campaign against him was intended to discredit him and "all those who, out of political conviction, have taken a radical stance for the independence of the colonies, notably in Indochina and Algeria.
And indeed the issue here is the right to oppose criminal actions undertaken in the name of one's own country, a vital right in the present climate". *
JOHN TULLY T HEIR hopes were cruelly dashed. The Hawke government is often described ironically as the "best ever Liberal government". It has broken strikes and unions; sold out the oppressed Aboriginal population; slashed millions of dollars from the "social wage"; and betrayed those environmentalists who looked to it for a way to stop the rape of the earth. It has robbed the poor to swell the bloated purses of its super-rich "Mates"".
The government has pursued vigorous "free market" policies, pressing ahead to privatize state-owned enterprises, slash public spending and end state subsidies to manufacturing industry. This "level playing field" approach by Treasurer [finance minister] Paul Keating differs little from the policies associated with Britain's Margaret Thatcher. Today, as the winds of recession and trade war bite into the fragile Australian economy, it is obvious that "the World's Greatest Treasurer" has
A country racked by crisis
Hawke and Keating preside over country racked by accelerating economic crisis. One index of this is the level of 750,000, it may really be as high as 1.5 to 2 million and the downward trend shows no sign of bottoming out. In contrast there were just 26,900 job vacancies in February 1991, a slump of 52% over the past year. Only 16,000 of these vacancies were in the private sector.
Small and not so small businesses, squeezed by high interest rates, are going bankrupt all over Australia. Rural Australia is in the throes of the deepest depresthousands of small farmers being forced off the land. Rural misery is leading, indeed, to the growth of sinister fasciststyle movements in the countryside. In January many thousands of rural demonstrators came to the city of Melbourne to hear right wing bigots denounce socialists, feminists, gays and blacks as the cause of their plight.
Treasurer Keating's "designer capitalism" is a dismal ruin. Australian industry last year invested the lowest share of its output since 1975 in new plant, machinery and equipment, despite the government's incessant rhetoric about a "smart" Australia with a "high-tech" manufacturing base. The inflationary bubble of the 1980s, which saw the rise of speculative entrepreneurs like Alan Bond, has been
Australia's national debt is the world's fourth largest. This was incurred partly as a result of overseas borrowing for minerals and energy development projects. But it also resulted from the speculative activities of the "Order of Mates". By 1989 the Australian dollar was the world's sixth most traded currency as speculators shunted currency around on world markets in search of quick profits. The Mates also borrowed heavily overseas in order to 1. The ALP is a social democratic party affiliated to the Socialist International. Formed in the 1890s depression following the defeat of union struggles it has since enjoyed close ties with the union movement. The Liberal Party, which is usually in coalition with the reactionary agrarians of the National Party, is a conservative party in the mould of Britain's Tories. The "Kerr coup" refers to the removal [in 1975] of former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam by the Govemor-General Sir John Kerr. Kerr, an unelected figure nominated by Whitlam himself, was the representative of Australia's Head-of-State, the English queen. The situation is a hangover of Australia's former status as a British colony. 2. In Australian parlance "mate" is a close friend. The word is part of the male working class ethos and is exploited by Hawke. Unfortunately for him, his use of has rebounded and is now a term of derision. April 29, 1991 • #205 International Viewpoint
Whitlam Labor government in Australia. The Hawke government has continued to support Indonesia's illegal occupation of the territory and has turned a blind eye to the killing of between 100,000 and 200,000 East Timorese.*
AUSTRALIA finance an orgy of takeover bids, property speculation and other unproductive ventures. The now-failed entrepreneur Alan Bond ran up 10% of the foreign debt financing a conglomerate business empire that encompassed everything from television to brewing, mining and brokerage.
From Mates to spivs
Many of the Mates' business empires have collapsed as a result of overextension and inability to repay their massive loans. A number of them, including Alan Bond, Christopher Skase and Laurie Connell, are facing charges of criminal financial malpractice. Overnight, many were dubbed "spivs" as Hawke and Keating tried desperately to distance themselves from their former Mates.
Mean while the taxpayers have been left with the bill. The government has consistently preached the sermon of hard work increased productivity to working people, claiming that "wage restraint" and sacrifice of hard-won conditions (abolition of "restrictive practices" in Hawkespeak) would be rewarded. Keating said he that" the light was at the end of the tun-
The clichés masked the truth. Whilst Bond and his ilk have come and gone, the more prudent or lucky super-rich are still wallowing in the profit trough. Meanwhile at least two million Australians — out of a population of 17 million - live below the poverty line. Despite Hawke's 1988 election promise that no child would live in poverty by 1990, 17.5% of Australia's children were in that condition in 1990 compared with 7.2% in 1973. Tens of thousands live in the streets, prey to pimps, drug dealers and the police.
"socialist" government has plus as a percentage of non-farm GDP increased from 11.3% to 16.5%.
The rhetoric of the accord also included promises to increase spending on the social wage. The reality is that the poor and the "new poor" created by the government's policies have overwhelmed a welfare system weakened by government spending cuts. By 1990 the government had turned a A$5.7bn budget deficit into a A$5.5bn surplus, largely at the expense of the social wage and without any inroads into the perks dished out to big business. In fact the amount of company tax paid has been steadily declining compared with that amount collected from ordinary PAYE [Pay As You Earn — tax deducted directly from the wage packet] taxpayers. Government moves to crush resistance
At the same time the government moved to crush any resistance to its policies by militant working class organiza-
Any trade union which tried to break the accord and fulfill its traditional role of defending the members' wages and conditions has been attacked by the full force of the state with the consent of
Despite Australia being a signatory to the ILO (International Labour Organization) Charter which supposedly guarantees union rights for Australia's working people, it is extremely doubtful whether the right to strike exists in this country. Employer groups linked with what is called the "New Right" have taken civil action for damages against striking meat, and confectionery workers and have been awarded enormous sums of money. Other unions have backed off when faced with similar action.
In addition amendments to the Federal Trade Practices Act made by the former Fraser government have not been repealed. These outlaw so-called "secondary boycotts", that is sympathetic industrial action to support other workers in
Now the Federal government is belatedly introducing right to strike legislation in parliament. This has been prompted by the sabre-rattling of the opposition Liberal Party's leaders who are stating that, if as the next government, they would use the military to "clean up" the waterfront unions, an alleged hotbed of "restrictive practices."
But Hawke cannot place the blame for the erosion of union rights solely on the New Right, loathsome though they may be. The Hawke government is guilty of gross hypocrisy in its new found concern for workers' rights, and is obviously trying to placate disgruntled voters.
It was Labor Federal and State [provincial] governments which crushed the Maoist-led Builders' Labourers' Association and the industrially militant Australian Federation of Airline Pilots.
Both unions have virtually ceased to exist in the face of an unholy alliance of government, state and employer bodies, together with "yellow" unions and the ACTU leadership. In the case of the pilots, Hawke, acting directly in the interests of his long-time Mates in Ansett airlines, used the Royal Australian Air Force as scabs to break the union.
Reactionary foreign policy pursued
This dismal record is repeated in almost repeatedly refused calls by church groups (Three of) for an inquiry into wealth should come as Labor's broken promises no surprise, for it has been Hawke's deliberate policy, in alliance with his cronies in the ACTU, to try to rejuvenate Australian * The Aborigines are the indigenous people of Australia. They were disposcapitalism at the expense of the working sessed of their land by the white settlers after 1788 and by the 1920s were considered a "dying race". Over the past 25 years in particular they have struggled
Under a series of "accords" between the hard for land rights and social justice. Hawke pledged support but backed off federal government and the ACTU there under pressure from white mining corporations and pastoral interests. The Abohas been a massive transfer of wealth riginal people, despite gains won by their own struggles, still suffer Third World away from the working people to the capi- conditions in a First World country. talists. Between March 1983 and Septem- + Ecology: Australia is a huge continent, but it has a fragile environment ber 1988, for instance, the real value of which has been catastrophically affected by white settlement. It is estimated for wages fell by 9.45% for car workers; example, that 30% of the continent's topsoil has been lost since 1788. Two 12.34% for meat workers; 9.12% for shop thirds of trees in the state of Victoria have been cut down since 1830 and some assistants and 9.34% for wharfies. tributaries of the Murray River are three times as salty as the ocean. Despite an
Between 1982-83 and 1987 the share of earlier alliance with a section of the environmental movement, Hawke is now wages in the Gross Domestic Product pressing ahead with "National Resources Legislation" which will guarantee (GDP) declined from 58.3% to 51.6%, developers access to scarce timber and to the subsoil. This will result in further while that of profits rose from 10.8% to environmental deterioration. 13.9%. The wealth of the very rich + East Timor, until 1975 a Portuguese colony, lies just to the north of Austraincreased by 250% whilst the country's lia. It was invaded by Indonesia in that year, with the compliance of the US and overall wealth rose by only 20%. Between 1983 and 1990 real wages fell by 8%. Put another way, between 1982-83 and 198826 whilst the corporate gross operating sur- • 89, real unit labour costs fell by 15%. International Viewpoint #205 • April 29, 1991