* Australia John Howard's conservative Coalition' was returned to power in Australia's general election on October 3. Voters did not switch to the racist One Nation party, as feared. John Tully reports.
As we go to press, it seems that the coalition will not have a majority in the Sentate. But the virulently racist One Nation party will not hold the balance of power This worst case scenario would have pushed the centre of gravity of Australian politics even farther to the right, and been a disaster for the working class and oppressed minorities. Instead, the Coalition will have to court the handful of Green and (centre-left) Australian Democrats in the Senate.
Despite their setback at this election, One Nation is still a dangerous force. Pauline Hanson's party has been able to capitalise on the distress of rural voters by scapegoating the poor and the powerless. Single mothers and Aboriginal people have been favourite targets for Hanson's hate politics and she advocates a kind of welfare for the middle classes at the expense of programmes for the poor. Such "downwards envy" has the advantage of deflecting anger away from the real causes of distress. But there is also no doubt that many "battlers" have been drawn to her simply because they see no alternative to the "economic rationalism" of the two major parties.
Hanson herself was not re-elected. But the party did well in state elections in the north-eastern state of Queensland. More of the same
Since its landslide election victory in 1996, Howard's Coalition government has broken every positive promise it made to the voters. The man the capitalist media dubbed "Honest John" subsequently divided those promises into "core" and stevedoring companies.)
The Coalition also claimed to have located a $10bn "black hole" in public finances and slashed pitilessly education, health and social security spending. Those worst hit by the cuts included women, children, the poor and recently-arrived migrants (the latter are not illegible for social security until they have been in the country for two years.
Most reprehensible of all has been the government's racist "10 Point" aimed at the virtual extinguishment of Native Title. This legislation provides for what is in effect the second greatest land grab in Australian history and secures billions of acres of leasehold land for wealthy farmers and graziers and brushes aside the rights of indigenous landowners to prevent mining on their land.
Nothing sums up the racism of this government more than the arrest of Yvonne Margarula, a leader of the Mirrar people, for trespass on her own land at the uranium mine at Jabiluka!
At the centre of Howard's election campaign was a promise to introduce a regressive Goods and Services Tax (GST) which will further shift the tax burden away from the rich and big business onto the poor. Australia's corporate taxes are already amongst the lowest in the OECD countries and it is estimated that the rich avoid paying at least A$10bn in taxes per year via legal and semi-legal scams. A majority of voters oppose the GST, but not enough to block the reelection of the Labor is unattractive
The explaination to this paradox lies in the recent experience of 13 years of Labor government.
Whilst there can be little doubt that a
Labor government would be the lesser of two evils, Kim Beazley faces an uphill battle to convince sceptical voters that his party has changed. Despite a shift in rhetoric designed to appeal to its traditional working class constituency and despite its opposition to the GST, the electorate remains unconvinced that the party has changed
The 13 years of Labor Government saw the right-wing party leaders dump policy after policy as they strove to be betters managers of the capitalist system than their conservative opponents.
The centrepiece of the Labor government's approach was a series of tripartite "accords" between government, business and the unions. In return for increased efficiency and competitiveness, workers were to receive an enhanced "social wage". The reality fell far short of the promises. There was a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the working class to the rich and big business. Company taxes actually declined under Labor and there was no compunction about privisatising state assets. The union award system was broken down in favour of "enterprise bargaining", which was in reality the thin end of the wedge for individual contracts. Small wonder that workers left the new "super unions" in droves.
Whilst the ALP has disowned some of the worst excesses of the Hawke and
Keating years, it has not come up with a credible left-wing alternative to "economic rationalism". , as neo-liberalism is known in Australia. At the same time, the Left is still too marginalised and fragmented to be able to mount a coherent, nation-wide challenge to the established parties. * Notes * The writer is co-editor of the PLP Victorian branch newspaper Progressive Labor" and is a long-time supporter of the Fourth International. 1. The Coalition is made up by thLiberal and National parties. The former is largely urban-based, and the latter is a reactionary agrarian party 2. The Senate cannot in theory block money bills indefinitely, but it can reject other legislation. 3. "Battler is a person who has to struggle to make ends meet. 4. Howard's predecessor as Coalition leader, John Hewson turned near-certain victory into defeat in 1992 by insisting on the GST as a central policy plank.
"non-core"
His pledge that no Australian worker would be worse off economically under One bright spot in this otherwise nity activist, Therese was also active in the Coalition was repackaged as a "noncore" promise. Howard has been a ruthless opponent of trade unions. He rushed through the Workplace Relations Act which aims at replacing union awards and agreements with individual contracts He also waged a dirty war against the Maritime Union of Australia, replete with dogs and thugs and military personnel trained as scab labour. (Justice North of the Federal Court agreed with the MUA that there was a prima facie case for conspiracy by the government and 22 International Viewpoint #304
(New) Victorian values gloomy election was the electoral alliance between the Progressive Labour Party (PLP), the Australian Women's Party (AWP) and the Greens.
The PLP has always campaigned for the formation of a "Red-Green-Black" alliance. No indigenous people's party is contesting the elections, but Greens candidate, Charmaine Clark, is a well known Aboriginal activist.
PLP candidate Therese Self won about 4.5% om Corio in the northern suburbs of Geelong. A long-time commuthe Movement Against Uranium Mining and the ALP. Another PLP candidate, union organiser Bill Deller, won 2.5% in the inner Melbourne seat of Wills.
The PLP campaign was endorsed by almost every construction union delegate in Geelong and many members of the Maritime Union of Australia. Numerous union officials helped Bill's campaign.
Activists in all three parties are keen to continue to build the alliance into a grass-roots political formation after the
A turning point...
Local government bodies in the Jaffna peninsula have been completely paralysed after a series of bomb attacks by the Tamil Tigers. The stalled constitutional reform package offers greater self-government by the predominantly Tamil North-East. That in itself is not a solution to the Tamil national question. But the Lanka Sama Samaja Party believes it does offer a way to stop the war. The LSSP is a major player on the Sri Lankan left, and seems to be adopting a more militant, principled stance under its new general secretary Batty Weerakoon. Unfortunately, the government has increased its war drive, and the Tigers seem to be targeting all Tamil political structures which they cannot control. This document reflects the frustration of a major strand of the Sri Lankan Left with a war which neither side can definitively win. It also reflects the thinking of many Tamils who do not support the Tamil Tigers (LTTE), and resent their hegemonic pretensions and violent behaviour. It is also evidence of the deteriorating relations between the LSSP and the Government. Some aspects of the document are controversial. Many socialists in Sri Lanka would hesitate before categorising the LTTE as "fascist". Nevertheless, this declaration represents a departure from the "war for peace" strategy which the Left in the government coalition has reluctantly endorsed Time will tell if it reflects the beginning of a break with the militarist approach to the war. If a turning point has been reached [JD] *