Statement of the SEARCH Foundation Committee, July 21, 2010

The best outcome from the high-stakes federal election campaign now underway would be the return of a Labor government with the Greens holding the balance of power in the Senate, and perhaps making a breakthrough into the House of Representatives.

It is vital that the Abbott Coalition – which is essentially a more extreme version of the Howard brand of patriarchal neo-liberalism – is soundly defeated and forced to abandon its extremism.

Not only would this be the right kind of criticism of both major parties by the voters, but it would take national politics in a progressive direction and enable a faster transition to a low carbon economy than is likely at present.

In the last parliament, despite the general preference swap between Labor and the Greens at the 2007 election, when Green preferences were crucial to the defeat of the Howard conservatives, Rudd Labor studiously marginalised the Greens. The Labor government much preferred to find a Senate majority with the Liberals, Nationals and rightwing independents, contributing in particular to the calamity over the policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Labor’s disdain towards its supporters risks alienating them and shifting support to the conservative Coalition – a pattern so clearly shown by UK Labour. The risk of electing the most rightwing Coalition leadership seen in Australia in many years should not be underestimated. An Abbott Coalition government would be a disaster of historic proportions.

An emphatic voter shift to the Greens rather than the Abbott Coalition will provide the best insurance that a Gillard Labor government won’t repeat this rightwing approach to the constituencies which support the progressive movements in Australia in the new parliament.

Despite the current picture with opinion polls putting Labor in front, the campaign up to August 21 could have some nasty surprises for Labor, because its first-term record is tainted, and because it is not speaking clearly to the people about what it would do in a second term.

The trial of union activist Ark Tribe in Adelaide, for refusing to answer the interrogators from the Australian Building and Construction Commission, could lead to one of these ‘surprises’. The report on the schools building stimulus package could be another.

For now, voters are presented on the one hand with the Abbott Coalition, which is playing up fear of asylum seekers, and fear of government debt, without putting any clear program forward; and on the other with Gillard Labor in a policy vacuum called ‘moving forward’.

This cynical dumbing-down of the campaign will react on both parties, and the hope is that strong progressive voices can shift more votes to the Greens.

Prime Minister Gillard is right – Australia can face any challenge if the society works together, but why won’t she and her Ministers speak out clearly about the challenges? Because they don’t want to be held accountable in the coming three years?

What are the challenges?

The first challenge is at the moral level – respecting the rights of the first Australians, the indigenous peoples of the land, and compensating them for the loss of their lands and culture. This should mean a rejection of the authoritarian policy of the Northern Territory Intervention, and a renewal of the people’s movement for reconciliation which created real possibilities in the 1990s, only to be cut off by the Howard government and largely ignored by the Rudd Labor government.

Clearly the global capitalist crisis is continuing to unfold, rather than fade away, with the ‘double-dip’ recession now looming in the USA and Europe. There is a huge challenge for the next government to keep people in work, and to push for the new low-carbon, fair society which is urgently needed. This requires much more refurbishing of existing dwellings and commercial buildings, as well as radical shifts in investment in the energy and transport sectors. This has to be led by government, and needs a mobilised people’s movement to push it through, with all the education and training, child-care support, public and affordable housing, fair workplace systems and changed taxation needed to support it.

To meet the challenge of climate change, there is an urgent need to put a price on carbon emissions and to implement other measures to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.

Despite the Labor government’s real success with stimulus spending, Prime Minister Gillard says she ‘believes in surpluses’ as if it’s some article of religious faith. The facts are that Australia’s public debt and budget deficit are small by world standards and should not even be issues in the campaign. Australia’s federal government debt in 2009 was 8.9 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. In contrast, the USA is 53.1 per cent, the UK is 75.1 per cent, France is 60.8 per cent, and Germany 43.8 per cent. Greece stands at 125.7 per cent, and Italy at 106.6 per cent. The latest figure for Japan is from 2008, when its central government debt stood at 178 per cent of GDP. The Abbott attack on government spending is dangerous as well as absurd. The Left must tackle this economic debate head-on.

Another major challenge is the global security crisis, where the ‘war on terror’ so blindly prosecuted by the Howard and Rudd governments at the behest of Washington, has catastrophically failed. A new policy is urgently needed to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, help the democratic movement in Iran and increase pressure on the Israeli government to respect the human and national rights of the Palestinian people. The Afghan War is not ‘winnable’, costing civilian and military lives every day, and forcing more and more people to flee as refugees.

Our major river systems are in crisis due to over-demands by irrigators, as demonstrated by the failure of any water from two flood events in the Murray-Darling Basin to reach the Murray mouth. The ‘market’ approach to this crisis has also failed and needs radical change based on community involvement, not corporate dictat.

While Labor’s reforms to the industrial laws have been positive, removing the worst features of Work Choices, much remains to be done – including the abolition of the punitive Australian Building & Construction Commission – to achieve a balanced system in which international norms of workers’ rights and standards are recognised.

Abbott’s Shadow Cabinet has, at its kernel, those who pushed the policies of the Howard Government and who were rejected by the electorate in 2007. These include Kevin Andrews, Phillip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop. No matter how Abbott evades and denies the issue, a return to those days is foremost on their agenda. He says Work Choices is “dead buried, cremated” but, like Phoenix, it would rise from the ashes if somehow the Coalition wins.

Australia’s Howard government signed up to the Millennium Development Goals back in 2000, aiming to significantly reduce global poverty by 2015. These goals will not be achieved, but it is a vital part of global security and Australia’s future well-being, that this effort is renewed. This requires Australia to move up its official overseas aid budget to 0.7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, and to embrace its obligations under the UN Refugee Convention to properly process the claims for protection from all asylum seekers who reach our territory. On this we know the stand taken by Abbott’s Coalition, Gillard Labor and the Greens.

In the four weeks left of the election campaign, community organisations and trade unions need to work to ensure that these challenges are discussed and that Labor, the Greens and the Coalition spell out their policies on them.

Whether or not the parties take any notice of the community on these issues, the organisations and networks trying to respond to these challenges will be better mobilised and educated if this effort is made, and thus more capable of engaging with the new government after August 21.

Democracy is definitely much more than casting a vote every three years, though casting the vote as intelligently as we can is a precious capacity won by our forebears that we cannot afford to waste.

Peter Murphy
Coordinator
SEARCH Foundation
www.search.org.au

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Bolivia’s UN ambassador, Pablo Solón, gave this talk to the Shout Out for Global Justice, sponsored by the Council of Canadians and attended by nearly 3,000 people on June 25 in Toronto, during the ten days of protests against the G20 meeting.

Other speakers included Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians and Indian eco-feminist Vandana Shiva. Video of the event can be viewed at rabbletv.

Read more

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/390.php#continue

right to strike on the environment

They will keep Gillard’s Fair Work Act ‘that is not bad’, but with ‘tweaking’.

The ruling corporations and employer organisations know major sections of WorkChoices remain in the Fair Work Act.

Gillard and Crean promise no changes to the Fair Work Act.

Australian workers campaigned for Our Rights at Work. But as this blog shows, citing ACTU submissions, the Fair Work Act fails to deliver what was wanted for new legal effective rights.

WorkChoices has not disappeared, in the real world of industrial relations and laboor law.

This spin of the 2010 election is like Orwell’s 1984.

Abbott and Abetz are targeted on their lies by unions. See ACTU press releases below.

As well, union activists are campaigning amongst union members in marginal seats in a strong anti-Abott push.

We see Abetz committing to not change the Fair Work Act.

This is unbelieveable in the face of demands by the corporates and their associations the BCA, Minerals Council, Mines and metals, AIG, MBA etc.

But Abetz admits ‘tweaking’.

Such as by regulation!

Regulations avoids Parliament.

Here is one example amongst hundreds.

Howard under WorkChoices had repressive anti-union ‘prohibited content’ regulations.

These extensive regulations banned unions and employers from agreement on many issues that these parties wanted to agree on.

These regulations were a severe breach of free collective bargaining.

Employers were forbidden to agree in collective enterprise bargaining to long-established rights.

One right forbidden was trade union training leave.

Union training is back under the Fair Work Act – see earlier blogs.

Abetz with his legal corporate lawyers will “tweak” regulations to continue making employees active in their unions ineffective and bias employers.

Prohibition by regulation severely legally restricted the ability for unions facing hostile management to disorganise.

WorkChoices’ essential anti-union thrust can be reintroduced as tweaks by the right-wing zealot Abetz – no doubt.

In the anti-Abott campaigning, unions promote the principles of a good industrial relations system.

The legislative framework has to be an advance of a labour law for the legal protection of collective rights for workers to effectively campaign for our economic, social and political interests.

Yet has Gillard a ‘way forward’ for workers’ rights?

Only minimally.

On the merits of industrial relations policy reform, the Greens have to be supported – at the local, regional and national level – and specifically in the Senate.

Here in Canberra, Lin Hatfield Dodds is the Greens candidate for one of the two ACT Senate positions.

The popular Labor Senator Kate Lundy Canberra will be returned comfortably.

Canberra has to reject the incumbent Liberal Senator Garry Humphries – in the past it was close. We shall see this time.

Abbott and Abetz are targeted on their lies by unions.

ACTU Your Rights at Work

Coalition and WorkChoices pose big risks to jobs and Australia’s economic recovery

15 July, 2010
The biggest clouds on the horizon for working Australians are Tony Abbott’s plans to change the economic policy directions of the country and bring back the worst aspects of WorkChoices.

Australia’s economy is outperforming the rest of the developed world because of good management by the Labor Government and industrial stability from the Fair Work Act, but this would all be put at risk by the Coalition, said ACTU President Ged Kearney.

Ms Kearney said more than 350,000 jobs were created over the past year, coinciding with the end of WorkChoices, and another 475,000 were forecast over the next two years.

But the reintroduction of WorkChoices and savage cuts to public services and infrastructure investment under the Coalition would jeopardise all that, Ms Kearney said.

She said the Labor Government’s economic record was in stark contrast to the Coalition’s plans.

“Last year as the Global Financial Crisis threatened Australia, the Government took tough decisions that protected jobs and set a platform for the recovery,” Ms Kearney said.

“Yesterday’s updated economic statement from Treasury gives working Australians cause for optimism for the next few years.

“The Labor Government’s Budget provides for investment in national infrastructure, skills and training, productivity and participation, better healthcare, and long-term improvements to national savings.

“Australia’s public debt is lower than almost all developed economies, and the Budget will be back in surplus within three years.

“The Liberal alternative would hurt working families.

“Tony Abbott opposes measures to stimulate the economy, will cut jobs and public services and is refusing to increase superannuation.

The Liberals will also abandon the National Broadband Network and wind back other key infrastructure projects.

“His main economic policy is to bring back WorkChoices by another name.”

Rights for working Australians is key issue for 2010 election
17 July, 2010 | Media Release This federal election is about the rights of all working Australians and the threat of a future return to WorkChoices under the Coalition, say unions.

Australian unions welcome the announcement today by Prime Minister Julia Gillard of a federal election on August 21, said ACTU President Ged Kearney.

Ms Kearney said the 2010 election will be a referendum on the rights of people to have job security and decent working conditions.

“In this election working Australians have a clear choice between the Coalition which brought in WorkChoices and Labor which restored rights and protected jobs during the Global Financial Crisis.

“Unions will be campaigning in the election to ensure working Australians know the facts about the Coalition’s record of attacking workers’ rights and putting jobs and services for working families at risk.

“Australia’s economy is the best-performing in the developed world and 1000 new jobs a week have been created since the end of WorkChoices and the introduction of Labor’s Fair Work laws.

“Real wages have grown with low paid workers gaining a $26 a week pay increase and productivity is almost four times higher than under the Liberals’ last year in government.

“The Labor Government deserves credit for making a very solid start considering the difficulties of the GFC and working Australians and unions will expect more from its next term.

“The election of a Tony Abbott government will hurt working families.

“The Coalition opposes stimulus measures that are protecting hundreds of thousands of jobs and will cut government funding for jobs, infrastructure and important health and education services that families rely upon.

“The Coalition will abandon the National Broadband Network and other infrastructure projects and skills programs that are essential to drive national productivity.

“Workers will also be denied financial security in retirement by the Coalition’s refusal to support Labor’s move to increase national superannuation to 12%,” said Ms Kearney.

http://www.actu.org.au

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Michael Lebowitz. The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development.
New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010. Pp 192; $15.95

Only about ten or fifteen years ago, leftist theory was in a sorry state. It seemed as if socialism had ceased to be a viable project with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Instead of an alternative to capitalism, theorists were singing the praises of the third way or the idea of changing the world without taking power.

Today, however, capitalism is facing its worst crisis in decades and socialism is hailed from Venezuela to Nepal. At this new conjuncture, Michael Lebowtiz’s Socialist Alternative helps to provide a theoretical way for twenty-first century socialism.

First, a few words about the author. Michael Lebowitz is a long-time activist. In the 1960s, he was active in Students for a Democratic Society. In the 1970s, he served as an economic policy chair for the New Democratic Party in Canada. Currently, Lebowitz is working in Venezuela at the Centro Internacional Miranda.

Lebowitz has authored a number of books on Marxist theory such as Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class (Winner of the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2004), Build It Now, and Following Marx. All of Lebowitz’s works are inspired by a solid grounding in Marx’s method and a deep revolutionary vision.

In this sense, Socialist Alternative is no different. Yet the timing could not be better: a work that reaffirms the socialist vision in the midst of the Great Recession. That is what Lebowitz sets out to do.

His work “draws upon the Venezuelan experiment to develop a general vision of socialism and concrete directions for struggle” (9).

Lebowitz begins by asking a question: “What is a good society?” (12).

Lebowitz believes that “a good society is one that permits the full development of human potential” (12).

As Lebowitz puts it, “the logic of capital generates a society in which all human values are subordinated to the pursuit of profits” (16). The logic of capital entails the exploitation of workers. Capital alienates workers from the products of their labor, crushes them with the speed-up and extended workday, and deforms the human being. Capitalism also brings with it a hierarchical division of labor, self-interest, and unemployment. Lebowitz points out that capitalism is an organic system that continually reproduces itself.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/greene130710.html

Also: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century by Michael A. Lebowitz

Marx on profit

A book of poetry by an authentic
australian working class voice

Saturday 31st July 3:00pm – 5:00pm
Qld Council of Unions Building
16 Peel St., South Brisbane

Refreshments available (gold coin donation)

Program includes:
Lilla Watson : Welcome
Humphrey McQueen : Australian
historian and social critic
Craig Buckley: rep from the meat-
workers union, the AMIEU
Ray Hearne: UK Folk and Labour
Historian (Video presentation)
Jumping Fences: Unique blend of
politics and music
Ross Clark: Well known Brisbane
poet and performer
Other reminiscences

Read more about the book:
www.surplusvalue.org.au/Leftside.html

For more details, contact:
Ross Gwyther. 33665318

Poem 952[1] 10/7/2010

day & night

democracy is everywhere
or it’s nowhere!

vis-à-vis ark tribe’s nay
recourse to wonted civil law

ark’s a tribune
in a sea of poverty

a fire stack alight
rousing the river gums

a sacrificing red lyre
roaring for the downfall
of boozh-wah tyranny

Jim Sharp

Leftside Launch poster

Socialist Project

The massive police presence in Toronto over this week has been officially
justified on the basis of protecting the leaders of the G8 and G20 countries meeting in Huntsville and Toronto.

We were told that the creation of the fenced-in fortress, the massive mobilization of police (estimates ranging from 10-20,000) from across Canada, and even the passing of a
secret law on policing (by the executive of the Ontario government without
reference to the Legislative Assembly and the opposition parties) that made it a crime to appear within five metres of the security fence would protect our right to protest as well.

This is not what has unfolded in Toronto over the weekend.

Thousands of protesters marched peacefully on Friday, challenging the purpose and agenda of the G20, although completely hemmed on all sides by
thousands of heavily armed police over the entire march (and severely hampering the freedom of assembly).

On Saturday, in the midst of a larger
demonstration (estimated at between 10-25,000), organized by the labour, anti-privatization and peace movements, a series of unwarranted acts of
vandalism by a small number of protesters against stores, vehicles and buildings, was used as an excuse for a massive unleashing of repression and attacks by police against the democratic rights of both protestors, and
Torontonians as a whole.

(Like what happened at the Montebello Summit of
North American leaders in August 2007, it will come out over the next weeks
how widely the police had infiltrated some of the key groups — especially the so-called Black Bloc, knew the planning and participated as agent
provocateurs.)

Click here to continue reading:
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/377.php#continue

joe hill

Who rules, the Gillard government or the Minerals Council?

We shall see.

Labour as well as left ANU political analyst Rick Kuhn in the Canberra Times argued the superprofitstax was for the benefit of capital generally, not just sectional very profitable resource transnationals.

However since the political coup, the following is argued in
http://enpassant.com.au/

All part of the political debate.

Julia Gillard – the Prime Minister for mining magnates

Posted by John, June 26th, 2010 – under Julia Gillard, Labor Party, Mining, Resource Super Profits tax, Super profits.
Comments: none

Julia Gillard is Prime Minister today because of the mining magnates’ campaign against a minor tax impost – the Resource Super Profits Tax.

Their campaign tore down Kevin Rudd’s leadership. The panicked right of the trade union movement and Labor Party swung behind Gillard and within a day she was Prime Minister.

The mining barons are a very powerful faction within Australian and global capitalism. They lied that the mining tax would mean job losses.

The men and women who sacked fifteen percent of their workforce during the global financial crisis convinced many workers around Australia that they would defend them against job losses under Labor’s tax. In fact the tax was structured in such a way that it would have increased jobs in the mining industry and the economy more generally.

Capitalists don’t understand that workers create wealth. In the early days of capitalism its bourgeois economists struggled towards some sort of understanding that this was the case and laid the framework for Marx to develop the labour theory of value into an analysis of the crisis ridden nature of the system.

Bourgeois economists from various schools have been unable to understand where economic rent comes from. Thus for example finite resources like minerals, which often require billions to develop and exploit, can produce profits well above the normal return on costs like capital and labour. In the case of Australian minerals the demand from China gives further levels of so-called super profits to the mining companies.

The Chinese ruling class buys these mineral resources with the surplus Chinese workers create.

In ‘normal’ conditions of competition the super profits in the mining industry would attract new investment and the extra capital and competition would drive down overall returns to the industry. That isn’t happening in mining because the resources are finite, it costs a lot to enter the market, there is an oligopoly of big mining companies and Chinese demand for Australian resources continues unabated.

Read more at

http://enpassant.com.au/

capitalist crisis severe

http://www.facebook.com/TheAMWU

capitalist crisis severe

By Tristan Ewins

For the most part since its election in 2007, the Rudd Labor Australian government appeared to enjoy a position which could almost have been said to have been unassailable. Kevin Rudd himself was riding high in the polls as one of the most popular Prime Ministers ever.

Importantly: Labor steered Australia successfully from the threat of recession, engaged in the practical and necessary business of counter-cyclical expenditure and investment in the face of dogmatic and opportunist resistance from the Conservative Opposition. Rudd’s apology to Australia’s ‘stolen generation’ of indigenous peoples removed from their families was also crucial and ground-breaking. And more recently, the wages of Australia’s lowest paid were to a significant degree restored.

But in recent months these achievements have been obscured behind scandal over the implementation of Labor’s home insulation scheme; and almost entirely overshadowed by a co-ordinated campaign to derail Labor’s proposed ‘mining super profits tax’. We will deal here mainly with the struggle over tax reform.

Labor Party parliamentary candidate, Andrew Leigh has put the case for the ‘super profits tax’ at the ALP website itself.

Leigh points out that twenty leading Australian economists support the proposed tax: including himself, John Quiggin, Fred Argy, Allan Fels and many others.

And the revenue gained from the proposed tax is projected to pay for a 2% reduction in Company Tax more broadly; and this is to provide the scope for a rise in employer superannuation contributions from 9% to 12%. http://www.alp.org.au/20-economists-support-resource-rent-tax

In Australia, superannuation is a system of private retirement savings, sponsored by government, with contributions by both employers and workers. While there are serious flaws with regard to equity in the broader scheme of superannuation, obviously the proposed reform could make a big difference to the retirement incomes of Australian workers over the long term.

At the Australian Labor Party website, David Bradbury has also put the case for the proposed tax. Bradbury argues:

“The existing royalties system is inefficient and out-dated and hasn’t kept pace with the increasing profitability of the resources sector through the mining boom. Before the last mining boom, the Australian people received $1 out of every $3 of profits in royalties and charges, but at the end of that boom, that rate was down to $1 out of every $7.”

http://www.alp.org.au/giving-australians-decent-retirement-income

Labor Minister Craig Emerson also puts a case in favour of the proposed tax.

Writing at Australian political website ‘The Punch’ Emerson explains how the ‘super profits tax’, a form of ‘resource rent’ taxation, would replace the current system of royalties. He argues that the proposed tax regime would be fairer in that it taxes profits specifically, instead of “on the [basis of] the amount of minerals extracted.” This, Emerson insists would actually remove disincentives for new investment. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/going-boom-the-economic-case-for-the-mining-tax/

Australian economist John Quiggin has also put many arguments in favour of the proposed tax reform.

He explains that in cases where mining companies make “super-normal” profits regardless of tax, the proposed tax reform will not comprise an obstacle to investment.

Specifically, Quiggin entreats us to take mining industry threats of capital flight ‘with a grain of salt’, listing occasions on which the mining giants have made threats in the past:

“…when they were upset about tax policy, about environmental restrictions, about Aboriginal land rights, about union wage demands and work practices…” http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/05/10/some-thoughts-on-resource-rent-tax/

Finally, Quiggin believes such a tax would be equitable, falling mainly upon wealthy investors “many of whom are foreigners.”

Veteran Fairfax journalist Tim Colebatch has also made a number of interesting points in a recent opinion piece.

The title of this piece is perhaps misleading: “Resource Tax amounts to 50% nationalisation of the mines”. The tax no more represents nationalisation than does Company Tax considered more broadly. And even though Colebatch is dubious of Treasury claims that: “the community’s share of mining profits has shrunk from 55 per cent over the five years to 2003-04 to 27 per cent in 2008-09”, he nevertheless recognises that the government has a genuine case for reform. http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/politics/resource-tax-amounts-to-40-nationalisation-of-the-mines-20100607-xqn0.html

A crucial point, as Colebatch recognises it that:

“The Bureau of Statistics’ recent round-up of industry data for 2008-09 estimates the profit margin in mining that year was 37.1 per cent. That’s three times the industry average of 11.2 per cent… They’re doing well.” http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/politics/resource-tax-amounts-to-40-nationalisation-of-the-mines-20100607-xqn0.html

In fact mining profits are sometimes even higher than this.

Colebatch also observes that:

“Analysts believe the mining boom is the main driver of the dollar’s rise, which has wiped out sales and profits for industries lacking its huge profit margin as a cushion.” http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/politics/resource-tax-amounts-to-40-nationalisation-of-the-mines-20100607-xqn0.html

The point of this is that with the robust dollar, some industries such as tourism and manufacturing are becoming less competitive. Restructuring the tax mix as Rudd Labor is attempting to do is one way of redressing this situation. But cutting overall tax as a proportion of GDP is not an acceptable alternative as there remains a need to provide for welfare and services; including education and infrastructure from which business clearly benefits. (and therefore must pay its fair share to support)

As the debate on the proposed mining tax has developed the fragility of Australian democracy has in some ways become apparent. While the mining giants have a war-chest of billions to draw upon in pushing fear and disinformation, no political party, NGO or social movement can possibly compete.

Much of the Australian media have also apparently abandoned any pretence to inclusiveness and objectivity; throwing themselves head-first into what could honestly be described as a ‘campaign’. Somewhere, we must assume, there is a convergence of interests. The ‘Herald-Sun’, a Melbourne newspaper, for instance carried the headline:

“Bloody amateurs! Harvey Norman chief blasts Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan over mining tax” http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/bloody-amateurs-harvey-norman-chief-blasts-kevin-rudd-wayne-swan-over-mining-tax/story-e6frf7l6-1225878174465

But excluded entirely from this article was recognition that elsewhere Gerry Harvey, the CEO of major retail chain Harvey-Norman, had actually stated that he did not oppose the tax. http://www.insideretailing.com.au/Latest/tabid/53/ID/8405/Rudd-government-bloody-amateurs–Gerry-Harvey.aspx

Meanwhile: amidst the fear and disinformation, Labor’s implementation of paid parental leave – a landmark reform – received minimal attention from significant sections of the Australian media.

And Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group (AIG), Heather Riddout, after stating her support for mining tax reform, focusing on “super-normal” profits in ‘The Age’, was ignored by much of the Australian media. (The AIG is a significant and important employer peak body) http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/pilloried-tax-is-a-step-in-the-right-direction-20100609-xwq2.html

Finally, sections of the media have constantly referred to the ‘mining super profits tax’ instead as the ‘super tax’, with an obviously altered connotation.

This kind of ‘framing’ of the debate – with very selective quotations, and sometimes a virtual ‘media blackout’ of themes inconsistent with the ‘campaign’ – is both biased and deliberate; and is a genuine threat to Australian democracy in the meaningful sense of the word.

Read more on Tristan Ewin’s blog.

Of course, it is going to be interesting to see PM Gillard’s concessions and the corporate response.

http://leftfocus.blogspot.com/

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