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.

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right to strike on the environment

With the ascension of Julia Gillard to PM many Australians will be asking themselves whether Labor will finally deliver on the ‘great moral challenge of our times’ that Kevin Rudd and his Ministers postured over time and again in the last two years.

It may be unwise to get our hopes up for decisive and effective initiatives to combat climate change. While Gillard will no doubt attempt through political spin to create the impression of an intention to do so, her track record on environmental issues and that of her Party suggests there may not be significant movement either before or after the Federal Election.

One major concern is that our new Prime Minister has been a party to all of the major decisions by Labor on climate change.

This includes the adoption of a target of 450parts per million of Co2 in the atmosphere after having campaigned strongly for effective policies to combat global warming in 2007.

Climate scientists and environment groups consider this to be a highly dangerous level of Co2 with a 50% chance of catastrophic runaway global warming within a few decades.

Unfortunately, Labor came up with the deeply flawed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme that would see emissions actually increase till 2035 and provide billions of dollars to the coal industry.

The Labor supported Grattan Institute found the assistance package under the Government’s proposed carbon trading legislation for emissions intensive industries was a $20 billion waste of taxpayers’ money.

Worse still, analysts believed that even the dangerous target of ‘limiting’ Co2 to 450ppm embedded in the CPRS was unachievable and carbon levels would be considerably higher under the proposed policy regime.

It was met by howls of protest by Climate Scientists, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, State and Territory Conservation Councils, and 150 Climate Action Groups around the country. Fortunately, the Australian Greens rejected the Government’s policy and the CPRS ultimately failed to progress through the Senate.

Labor then gave up any intention to act after the Copenhagen debacle which Australia, along with other major polluting countries, was partially responsible for its unsatisfactory outcome.

At the beginning of the year the Greens proposed Ross Garnaut’s sensible carbon tax idea as an interim means of putting a price on carbon. This was rejected by Labor.

Another concern is that in all her years in student and Labor politics she never embraced or acted on any environmental issue. She has no track record whatsoever of having any passion for environmental causes.

Throughout her political career she’s been a close friend and political partner of Michael O’Connor of the Forestry Division of the CMFEU that has been hell bent on maintaining the bad practice of clearing old growth forests that seriously contributes to our carbon emissions.

The PM is also a prominent member of the Ferguson Labor Party faction and hence a supporter of Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson.

He along with Stephen Conroy who she also has a factional association with in Victoria were probably the two strongest opponents within the Rudd Government to taking action to combat carbon emissions.

Stephen Conroy’s Victorian Labor Unity faction and the Ferguson group at a national ALP level played major roles in installing her as Prime Minister.

The PM when questioned after taking the top job seemed to suggest Labor won’t act in the immediate future but could put forward a policy for the election that places a price on carbon. But on the weekend she seemed to retreat from that position when she said,

‘I believe that if we are to have a price on carbon and do all the things necessary for our economy and our society to adjust, we need a deep and lasting community consensus about that. We don’t have it now’.

With around 25% of Australians as well as powerful vested interests opposing action to combat climate change this may amount to an intention to take no significant and effective action.

It could also amount to continuing with the practice of taking more notice of News Limited and the Australian Industry Group, as well as climate skeptics within in her own Government.

For Gillard and most of her Ministers climate change is just another issue, subject to the same pragmatism and compromises as everything else in politics.

They think they can negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry that are the climate system, seemingly oblivious to the dire warnings coming from NASA and thousands of climate scientists around the world.

Already Labor failed its first test under the new PM. On Friday the Government announced a program to export brown coal from Latrobe Valley to Japan. With brown coal being the worst carbon-emitting of all commercialised fossil fuels, it wasn’t exactly the greatest start to addressing climate change.

What it means for the country is fairly obvious. The many Australians concerned about climate change need to be wary of Labor’s disposition to use political spin as a means of deflecting their desire for concrete and appropriate steps to avert global warming.

Nevertheless one has to be hopeful of a more positive approach by Labor. There is now an opportunity for a fresh start with policy settings that truly do meet the immediate need of responding to our climate crisis.

The climate movement wants to see the Gillard Government embrace a 40% carbon reduction target over the next ten years as a minimum starting point.

This can be partially achieved by the shutting down the worst carbon-polluting power station in the southern hemisphere, Victoria’s Hazelwood, as well ALCOA’s Portland aluminum plant. These actions would reduce Australia’s carbon emissions by 9%.

The Victorian Government‘s consideration of closing Hazlewood’s would be more likely to happen if Federal Labor was prepared provide financial assistance.

Better forestry and land management practices are also an important part of the required policy mix.

These measures must be coupled with massive public investment in renewable energy industries and can easily be achieved by the Labor changing its spending priorities.

An agreement with Telstra over National Broadband infrastructure now seems fairly likely and a future Labor Government could come up with the $13billion dollar price tag placed on de-carbonising our economy.

In doing so it would create hundreds of thousands of jobs and in the long term protect our tourism and agricultural industries that are particularly vulnerable to the impact of global warming.

There are opportunities for our new PM to make a positive and historic impact on Australia’s future.

The question is, will she provide concrete and visionary solutions or just talk the talk.

Only time will tell.

GEOFF LAZARUS on behalf of CLIMATE ACTION CANBERRA
geofflazarus@iinet.net.au This appeared in the Canberra Times.

right to strike on the environment

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.)

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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

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capitalist crisis severe

Tickets can be bought by 20th June by contacting Peace Trust on 8267 3915 or ebertsmith@bigpond.com

Art work includes work by iconic artists Ann Newmarch, Siv Grava and emerging artists. $10,000 project funding provided to artists will be announced at Dinner.

Graham F Smith Peace Trust gave Adelaide its first Kaurna Reconciliation Artwork in front of Festival Centre and its Kaurna walking trail and has supported other projects relating to human rights and environmental sustainability in its 21 years of existence.

Your attendance at the Dinner will help the Peace Trust to finance artists to continue their work in human rights and environmental sustainability and thus raise the awareness of the public in these areas.

A Left Action Plan: From global crisis to green future …

‘The Australian people are caught in the ongoing global economic, social and political crisis and an even more profound global environmental crisis.

The federal Labor government responded quickly and positively to the initial impact of the Great Recession of 2008-09 but, having failed to effectively regulate the market like most governments, it is back to neo-liberal ‘business-as-usual’.

However, there has been a complete failure to address the environmental challenge. Australia gave away the opportunity to play an international leadership role on the threat of global warming.

Political leaders failed to seize the moment to tackle the root causes of these crises – global over-production, unregulated finance markets, corporate power and war – or to redress the inequities of the long preceding period of neo-liberal policies, including privatisation of key public assets and de-regulation of markets. Marginalised communities, especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples, are left behind, discriminated against and often vilified.

On global warming and many other policy areas, the Australian people remain captive to an agenda that is built around sustaining profits in the interests of the wealthy and privileged few, rather than building a fair and sustainable economy and society for future generations.

We are living in a time of profound crisis requiring audacious and profound change in our global society and in the Left itself. We need deep ongoing debate of our ideas and practices.

The Left in Australia has a proud record of promoting:

* the rights of working people to decent wages and conditions, and union and political organisation, and extended workplace democracy
* equality for women
* respect for lesbian, gay, bi-, and transgender sexuality
* universal access to public health, education and welfare services
* the rights of Indigenous Australians and improvement of their living standards
* the rights of immigrants, refugees and migrant workers
* international solidarity against poverty, dictatorship, war and the threat of nuclear weapons
* a genuine multicultural society
* environmental protection and green bans
* dynamic community arts
* a vigorous, innovative and free media

* defending and extending democracy in Australia.

We renew our commitment to this collective approach to meet today’s national and global challenges, encouraging younger generations of social activists to rebuild left and progressive movements.

We call on all parts of the Left in Australia to:

1. value and renew our democratic and militant heritage of struggle for human and social liberation, recognising the deep promise it holds for humanity and our planet.

2. commit to democratic social ownership and control as the alternative to both corporate capitalism and state socialism. Oppose privatisation. The new society will democratically combine public ownership, community and cooperative ownership and private enterprise. The new economy cannot be based on an engine of limitless growth.

3. recognise that capitalism has been unable to address inequality, war, and ecological degradation, and must be replaced by a democratic system that puts human need before greed, and socialises wealth instead of debt.

4. embrace the principles of democracy, social justice and environmental sustainability, as the basis for the renewal of the left, socialist and progressive movements.

5. support the struggles of Indigenous Australians for land rights, cultural rights and ending discrimination.

6. rebuild, educate and network the worker and student movements, strengthen the diverse community and neighborhood movements, and build even stronger ties with the activist environment movement.

7. work to empower people who experience poverty, the elderly and young, those with disability, and those isolated through location and lack of opportunity, with the aim of ending inequality.

8. work with immigrants, refugees and migrant workers’ groups and organisations to end discrimination and disadvantage.

9. expose and reduce the power of the blocs of capital which inflict the greatest damage on people and the planet – especially the energy, finance and corporate media sectors.

10. use new means of campaigning and technology to win community support, create local organisations and mount effective policy debates.

11. support international struggles for peoples economic, political and cultural rights, and for ecological sustainability.

12. join local campaigns to cut back carbon emissions and build renewable energy systems preferably under democratic collective ownership.

13. work for a transition to an ecologically sustainable society, including education as a key strategy.

14. support election candidates who are committed to left and environmentally sustainable policies.

We strive for practical unity with all left traditions who wish to work together in achieving these outcomes and commit to ongoing discussion and collaboration based on this declaration.

Adopted May 30, 2010

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For the first time in recorded human history, all the nations in the world agreed to work together to halve global poverty, and set specific benchmarks to measurer whether they achieved it or not. The set concrete targets, not vague aspirations.

1. What has been achieved to date?

While not all the MDGs will be met by all countries, and some countries will fail miserably, there has been some significant and worthwhile advances. For example, in education:-

• The number of children not attending primary education has dropped from 120 million to 90 million over the past 10 years.

• However, there is a gender and class dimension to this lack of education. For example, in India, the gap between the boy child and the girl child for the richest 10% is just a 2% difference in access to education. For the poorest, the gap in access to education is 24%

• Generally, the ones who miss out on an education are the children in rural areas, children from indigenous, ethnic and linguistic minorities, children with disabilities, and children affected by armed conflict

Also in Health. While great poverty and therefore poor health still exists, there have been some worthwhile achievements. For example:-

• Affordable HIV treatment has been extended to an extra 2 million people in developing countries.

• 1,600 million people have gained access to safe drinking water since 1990.

• The number of children dying each year before the age of 5 has dropped from 12.5 million a year to 8.8 million – still way too many, but an definite improvement. Almost half these deaths are from just 5 countries (India, China, Nigeria, D.R. Congo & Pakistan)

• In the 1980s, some 20,000 Vietnamese babies would die each year before the age of one month because of neonatal tetanus. Now, the Vietnamese Ministry of Health, with help from the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO), has virtually eliminated neonatal tetanus – the 9th country in the world to do so.

• In 2006, Bangladesh, with assistance from the UN’s WHO, conducted the world’s largest ever measles eradication campaign. In just 20 days, they vaccinated 33.5 million children between the ages of nine months and 10 years, possibly eradicating measles from Bangladesh.

However, much still remains to be done. For example, globally, 500,000 women die every year due to childbirth-related causes – that is one woman every12 seconds. In India, where more than 100,000 women die each year giving birth, it is often due to poor health, unsafe home births and inadequate access to quality healthcare and a trained midwife.

2. Some of the obstacles which prevented the Goals being reached

• The oil price shock of 2007 – impacted on food supplies as land converted from food production to bio-fuels

• The Global Economic Crisis of 2008 – hit the poorest the hardest. Every 1% drop in global growth plunges another 20 million into poverty.

• Non-sustainable, “western-style” economic growth that is “eating” our environmental capital.

3. Where do we go post 2015 ?

• To reach Goal 1 – you need Decent Work
While only some of the one billion people trying to survive on less than $ US 1 a day are in paid employment (others for example, are subsistence farmers, unemployed, etc) if those who are in paid employment were paid a fair, living wage, they would be able to meet most of the MDGs themselves, such as educating and feeding their children,. Also, for the absolute, chronically poorest (443 million) you need some form of social protection (free education, free health, etc)

• Goal 2 (primary education for all) – This is achievable, and at current rates, probably by 2020 or 2025, but need to then include secondary and vocational schooling, especially for girls. The education of the girl child and women is a sine qua non of development (eg, impact on population growth rates, infant mortality rates, etc)

• Goal 5 – (maternal deaths) Families need more emphasis on, and better access to reproductive health services and population control

4. Fundamentals required to achieve MDGs Part II
Perhaps instead of focusing simply on the 8 goals, we should focus on the underlying conditions that would allow the 8 goals to be realized. For example:-

Gender equity, a proper progressive taxation system where the richest pay more tax, eliminating corruption, eliminating war and civil conflict, (which brings in the issue of the arms trade and trafficking of arms), strengthening the International Court of Justice, fair trade, even a Code of Conduct for the WTO? etc. For example, a progressive and enforced taxation system would give governments the resources to build the schools and health clinics, to pay the teachers and nurses.

Also, a Tobin Tax or Robin Hood Tax on short-term, speculative financial transfers would help eliminate much of this casino-style speculation, but also provide the resources to meet the eight goals and 20 targets.

5. Lessons
• We need to focus on the fundamentals themselves to achieve the 8 Goals, not just on the goals themselves.

• To fully achieve the MDGs, we do need economic growth, but that growth needs to be sustainable and also growth with equality.
Discussion at Search Conference:
From Global Crisis to green Future
29-30 May, 2010