AO (71) summer 2012 - Australian Options

Transcription

Inside
* FOCUS: Right around the globe
* The price of a woman’s life
* Tribute to Hugh Stretton
* The future of universities
Discussions for social justice and political change
The GFC
has not
chastened
the Right
but
resistance
to its
austerity
plans is
growing
right
around the
globe
$5
Summer 2012
Quarterly No.71
print post approved
PP535216/00055
Australian OPTIONS
Australian OPTIONS
is a quarterly journal which aims to challenge the ideas
dominating Australian mainstream debate. Each edition
includes major articles by activists and progressive thinkers
on contemporary political, social and cultural issues.
History
Australian Options was launched in May 1995 by a large
number of people who expressed a wish for an open discussion journal of the left.
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CONTENTS
2 Editorial: Readying for the Right
FOCUS: Right around the globe
3 Labour markets and employment: Crisis in the European Union
Francine Mestrum
5 Inequality in Europe
Antoni Barbarà
7 How women are paying for the recession in the UK
Barbara Gunnell
9 Feeling the squeeze in the UK
Netmums
11 What’s happening in Spain? Can the Indignados resurrect the Spanish Left?
14 There is no American Left
Salvatore Babones
17 Romney’s 9-point plan to annihilate unions
20 A ‘do nothing’ Premier takes on the NSW public sector
21 Queensland one day, Australia the next?
23 The new ‘new right’ in Australia
Estela Valverde
Jeremy Gantz
John O’Brien
Paul Norton & Howard Guille
The “business plan” of the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance
24 Government neglect of the Great Barrier Reef
Terry Hughes
27 Who has the energy to care about misogyny anymore?
Lisa Jackson
27 What price a woman’s life?
Chris Atmore
30 Thank you, Hugh Stretton
Frank Stilwell
31 A ‘do nothing’ Premier takes on the NSW public sector
Patrick Troy
REVIEWS & REGULARS
33 The case for regulatory reform of the resource-sector
34 The future of Australian universities
36 Archie’s bloodstream
36 Deep southern blues
18 Well read
Ray Broomhill
Colin Long
Helen Petros
Jack Humphrys
Frank Barbaro
Australian Options Summer 2012 1
editorial EDITORIAL editorial EDITORIAL editorial
Readying for the
Right
Governments in the countries of the European
Mediterranean, Ireland, United Kingdom and some of
the Baltic are making their people suffer. This is by
cuts to public spending especially in health, housing
and welfare and by failure to support economic
activity and to take action to reduce unemployment.
In Europe, this is a result of “austerity”; policies
introduced to purportedly deal with financial crises.
Very similar policies are occurring in some of the
States of the USA but here it is in the name of
reducing “big government”. State Governments
in Australia, especially New South Wales and
Queensland, have cut public spending and public
sector jobs. Here it is in the
name of “reducing debt”;
although the Queensland
Premier has also said it is to
stop Queensland becoming
like Greece.
The levels of unemployment
in parts of Europe are
horrendous. As Mestrum
writes in her articlein this
issue of Options, ‘ Youth
unemployment is 21 per cent
in the European Union and
rising, with peaks of almost
50 per cent in Spain, 45 per
cent in Greece and 35 per
cent in Portugal. Even in
the wealthy city of Brussels,
it is around 45 per cent.’
In the UK the survey by Netmums, hardly a radical
body, reports 61 per cent of respondents are short
of money every week and 20 per cent of mothers are
missing meals to feed children. The report of the
survey is also one of articles in this issue.
As the ITUC puts it in its Frontlines Report, ‘Workers
are in the frontlines of a war on their living and
working conditions, from the very forces that brought
the financial system to its knees in 2008.’ The ideas
of the neoliberal right were crucial in ‘financial
deregulation’ and the shift to market arrangements.
Freedom for bankers and financiers has brought a
series of crises culminating in the Global Financial
Crisis that began in 2007. Whatever one thinks of the
causes of the GFC, it is indisputable that most of what
2 Australian Options Summer 2012
the banks and finance sector lost they have regained
and are back to profitability and big bonuses.
The GFC has not chastened the right. Instead,
there is a renewed assault on the post-world war II
institutions of full employment, unions, education,
health and welfare. In the 1970s-80s tertiary
education, childcare and some degree of gender
equality were added. These were political advances
made by working class. They were responses to great
depression and the horrors of a fascism that received
much supported from capitalists.
Now as Tony Judt says, “Ill Fares the Land” and the
welfare state is under assault. Yet, as Babbones,
who has written about the US political scene in this
issue, reminds us, such arrangements have always
been under-developed in the United States. Moreover,
the demands and methods of the Tea Party right are
becoming evident in Australia. One sign is new right
ATA described here. Compare, also, Work Choices and
the industrial relations policies of Romney and the
Republicans as described in this issue.
Likewise, there is
not much difference
between Abbott on
climate change and the
Republican’s policy to
prohibit any regulation
of greenhouse gases.
The Republican
argument in their 2012
policy platform is that
regulations ‘will harm
the nation’s economy
and threaten millions
of jobs over the next
quarter century.’
According to Pettifor, a
driving force in the UK
and internationally for a
Green New Deal,
even economists from the International Monetary
Fund are saying that ‘rather than repairing the broken
and bankrupt economies of the world, austerity is
making matters worse.’
One important step in ‘readying for the right’ is to
explain that there are choices. We can be a society
based on decency where everyone is protected,
respected and valued. Alternatively, we can be one
based on inequality where there is deprivation and
exclusion for the many and wealth and access to
power for the (very) few. It is critical to formulate and
advocate credible left alternatives.
Today’s situation shows many
paradoxes. Whereas neoliberal
“Washington Consensus” policies
which were imposed on indebted
third woqrld countries thirty years
ago have all failed, these same
policies are now introduced in
Western Europe. The ‘poverty
reduction policies’ which have
accompanied them since the 1990s
have equally failed and
inequalities have been
growing everywhere.
This explains why
many UN organizations
are now promoting –
once again – universal
social protection and
even transformative
social protection.
Labour markets and
employment: Crisis in
the European Union
The ILO will probably adopt in June 2012 a recommendation
on a ‘social protection floor’ coupled to its campaign for
universal social security coverage. Yet again, in the European
Union, welfare states are being dismantled, as if there were
nothing to learn from the negative experiences in the third
world.
unemployment is 21 per cent in the European Union and
rising, with peaks of almost 50 per cent in Spain, 45 per cent
in Greece and 35 per cent in Portugal. Even in the wealthy
city of Brussels, it is around 45 per cent.
These neoliberal policies, with their privatizations,
deregulations and the destruction of labour law constantly
create poverty, whereas a serious fight against poverty should
start with a brake on processes of impoverishment. The best
possible prevention against poverty is social protection.
Unemployment in the European Union in early 2012 is over
ten per cent, with peaks of almost 25 per cent in Spain, more
than 20 per cent in Greece and 15 per cent in Portugal. Youth
by Francine Mestrum*
Young people also suffer from low wages and they make
up a disproportionate number of the world’s working poor.
Everywhere, they are the last in and the first out.
Nevertheless, as was pointed out by Philippe Pochet, the
Director of the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), social
discourses in the EU continue to focus on poverty and child
poverty and totally ignore inequalities. Today, we have to look
at Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) studies to find more data on inequalities. In addition,
the OECD even admits it has been making some mistakes in
the past. The EU apparently does not hear these messages.
ETUI has just published a study on the dismantlement of
labour law in the European Union. It reveals this has nothing
to do with debt problems. It is a massive attack against
collective rights and the institutions that were able in the past
to promote more equality. Very probably, this is due to the
“window of opportunity” governments are seeing and the
social devaluation they are practicing in the framework of the
European monetary union (EMU).
Today, the political situation has become much more difficult
because of the neoliberal European Commission which can be
accused of a kind of “autism”. In the past, large countries had
two EU commissioners one of whom was a social democrat.
This balance has gone and since most governments are now
rightwing, the idea of European integration itself is more and
more threatened.
The European crisis
has to be seen against
the background of
changing international
relations and
changing capitalist
modes of production
and accumulation,
stresses Walter Baier,
the coordinator of
transform! Europe).
The productivist model
of civilization is also
in crisis. These are
deep structural causes
that, if not settled soon,
will have very serious
consequences in the
near future.
What is at stake is the welfare state itself as well as European
integration. The social and economic changes neoliberals
want can never be implemented with strong trade unions and
with the existing social model. The neoliberal project is wellplanned and is less irrational than it seems.
Against that logic, which also leads to more nationalism,
we have to put another logic. We need a broad alliance of
leftwing forces, trade unions and social movements, people
from the cultural sector, experts and political representatives.
We have to invent another narrative, since we cannot go back
to the past. However, our positions should be very clear.
Céline Moreau (Youth-FGTB (the General Federation of
Belgian Labour)) emphasises the specific problems of young
people. The big problem is not the “skills mismatch” but the
lack of a sufficient number of good jobs. Moreover, employers
in Belgium do not respect their obligation to organize
training. It is very paradoxical that on the one hand old
people are obliged to work longer, whereas young people do
not get access to the labour market. Youth unemployment is
a structural problem today; young people should have better
possibilities than just apprenticeships; more jobs should be
created.
As for Greece, Panayota Maniou of the European Parliament
points out how tragic the situation is. It is not a coincidence, of
course, that Southern countries were attacked first, since their
welfare states are the weakest. Minimum wages have gone
down by 22 per cent and minimum wage for young people
by 32 per cent. Many people are now leaving the country,
which leads to a serious brain drain. The most urgent need is
to make clear this requires
a collective fight, for
education, for health care,
for jobs, for social rights.
In the discussion, one
of the main questions
concerned the belief in
possible alternatives and
the question of whether
a conscious strategy is
now being implemented
by the right. Many people
have indeed accepted the
dominant discourse of
having to reduce budget
spending in order to save
the future of the welfare
states. In Germany, there
is a divergence of opinion
amongst the elites on
whether or not to save the Euro and European integration.
But, the point is that the neoliberal focus of policies today
is not specific for the European Union and its institutions,
but is shared by all governments. In other words, it is not the
shifting of scales that is responsible, but ideology itself.
* Francine Mestrum is a lecturer at the Université Libre
de Bruxelles, Belgium and a member of the International
Council of the World Social Forum. She is active in
campaigns for Global Social Justice and Taxation Reform.
This article is the report of a workshop held in April 2012 by
the Brussels Working Group of Transform! european network
for alternative thinking and political dialogue . It was first
published at http://transform-network.net/blog/blog-2012/
news/detail/Blog/labour-markets-and-employment-crisis-inthe-european-union-1.html
We live in a heartless Europe,
in a Europe that is sinking into
inequality. As time goes on, this
Europe distorted by the crisis
ever more reveals the fracture of
the democratic procedures and
the machinations of political and
social fraud. This fracture implies
the loss of citizen rights that
represented an imprint and raison
d’être forged after the
tensions of World War II.
Furthermore, the fraud
demonstrates the lack of
will (which might have
been real at the time)
to build new European
democracies in peace,
based on welfare as
well as full employment
politics where women are
on an equal footing as
regards the distribution of
work and responsibilities.
The leap into the void is rather a push into the void each
day for each and every one of the pillars of the previous
“welfare state”: education, health, social services or strategic
companies serving the public interest.
Inequality in Europe
by Antoni Barbarà*
We had a special interest in analysing the situation in the
South of Europe, the so-called PIGS countries, especially in
Portugal, Ireland and Italy, and more particularly in Spain and
Greece.
Every passing day is more unbearable in terms of customs and There have been cuts in investments and public resources,
morals, socio-economic status, social class, place of origin
as well as social services; unemployment benefits are
and ethnic group, independent judgement or disability, or in
also diminished, as well as jobs and services. Big public
terms of the national territory where we analyse the problem.
companies are being dismantled and sliced up into pieces
by creating smaller companies for the purpose of generating
profit; consortiums and other constructs are more frequently
used every day, as well as the so-called “governance” and the
public-private collaboration. Through opaque transactions
and financial engineering, these options – by “meeting the
demands of the criteria of the markets” – end up diverting
public resources into corporate earnings. And finally, we are
witnessing the externalisation, both through direct sale and
public sector tendering, of the public health companies to the
big private health insurance industry. The same companies
also profit from
all kinds of
privileges and
government
assistance.
We have come to
believe that we
need to start by
refuting the daily
lies, repeated a
thousand times
by the media,
which are acting
at the service
of the capitalist
system, as well as
fighting tooth and
nail the neoliberal
strategy pursued
by the European
Union.
We state that, even if it is hard and even if it requires a huge
effort, promoting a radical change is more necessary than
ever. We need to take up the myth of good practices and
better intentions of that Europe that never existed. In order
to do so, there are no bridging solutions or magic wands to
use. Besides, it is important not to confuse the instrument
with the purpose. The only way is to find the “merging
points” and common ground between social movements and
organizations, and to propose social commitment and antineoliberal politics.
We must not be subordinated to an economy that condemns
us all to the abject poverty of a Europe that already failed
30 years ago. Instead, it is time to get back to the values and
rights of equality, social citizenship, peace and real well-being
for all.
We also need to expose the indisputable and grim reality of
the unbearable inequality between the populations and social
sectors. This is
especially so for
those who suffer
the most and
who are the more
penalised and
the biggest losers
in the current
crisis. These
are women, the
poorest, foreigners,
handicapped
people, chronic
patients, workers,
young people,
students and
pensioners, as
well as other
marginalised
groups. The
current policies of
neoliberalism and austerity are destroying their lives, values
and cultures.
We conclude after a good diagnosis, that we must now
proceed to dispute clearly and intelligently the social,
economic and political hegemony of the Right in order to
gain power in a democratic way by means of an electoral
offensive from the inside. This requires building a constituent
process from below and a socio-political insurrection based
on ideological rearmament.
* These are the conclusions of a conference held by the
European Left Party, Esquerra Unida i Alternativa and
Fundació l’Alternativa in Barcelona, on 5 and 6 October
2012. They are reprinted from http://transform-network.
net/en/blog/blog-2012/news/detail/Blog/conference-reportinequality-in-europe.html
It was predictable and in
fact predicted. The British
Government’s austerity
programme has turned back the
clock on women’s rights and hardwon economic gains.
Here is some good news. The August UK unemployment
figures reveal a slight fall in the number of unemployed
people, a drop of 46,000 to 2.56 million. The detailed figures
show that men who took the initial impact of the recession are
slowly finding their way back into work. That is the end of the
good news.
For women and for young people, and thus for young women
in particular, the economic outlook could hardly be gloomier.
The number of 16-24 year olds looking for work remains
stubbornly high at more than a million. Not only does this
age group make up a worryingly high proportion of total
joblessness, an increasing number of these young men and
women are staying unemployed for months on end, becoming
accustomed to having no job and losing all faith in finding
one.
For women, too, the August 2012 figures show a bad situation
deteriorating further. The number of those seeking work is
now more than a million, an all-time high, according to the
Fawcett Society which last March predicted that as public
sector cuts got underway half a million more women would
also be at risk of losing their jobs.
These are not jobs that will return in any future economic
upturn and the Government has announced no strategy for
replacing them. In some geographical areas the public sector
has been the only significant employer of women. Ministers
merely reaffirm the mantra that the private sector, in a proper
deregulated framework, will eventually pick up the slack.
Given the planned further contraction of the public sector and
that 70 per cent of the public sector workforce is female, it is
certain that the burden of unemployment will continue to fall
more heavily on women in the immediate future. The Fawcett
Society reports that in some areas, 100 per cent of local
authority jobs lost had been held by women.
Mini-jobs
There is cause for concern, too, at the nature of the jobs
How women are paying
for the recession in the
UK
by Barbara Gunnell*
that are disappearing and about what kind of work will
replace them. Local authorities and public services have
traditionally offered positions of varying skill levels at lowish
pay (compared to some private sector counterparts), offset
by relatively better job security, structured career paths and
terms and conditions that acknowledge the needs of parents.
The private sector is under no pressure at all to match these
family-friendly values. Far from it. A substantial number of
Conservative backbenchers favour radical deregulation and
the dismantling of almost all existing protective legislation.
Despite some dissent in the Liberal-Democrat ranks, the
Chancellor and other senior figures insist that employers need,
and should be given, freedom from working-hour directives,
minimum wage laws and other “stifling” employment
legislation.
This could mean, for example, zero-hour contracts or, last
week’s Big Idea, “mini-jobs”. Under the former, a worker
would agree to be available for, say, 20 hours a week; in
return an employer would guarantee, well ... “nothing at
all”. The “mini-job” was proposed as a useful possibility for
young school-leavers. It is a scheme borrowed from Germany
whereby unemployed people can take on jobs of up to about
€400 a month, losing some benefits (if they receive them) but
paying no tax and insurance. There could hardly be a better
blueprint for the creation of a new UK “precariat”.
The dangers of creating a class of disaffected young men
and women who spend their important post-school or postcollege years between dole and casual work have been spelt
out by many. Young women who leave school or university
and are unable to find jobs that offer further training or career
structures are at even greater risk of blighted futures. They
may find that they have barely put down roots in any career
at all by the time they start a family. When they do find work,
it will be in lower-paid jobs. If they are by now mothers, they
will continue in low-paid jobs or perhaps zero-hour contracts.
There are further ways in which the job market is becoming
increasingly unfriendly to women. Part-time work has been
an important option for parents. There are now eight million
part-time workers, the highest number since comparable
records began in 1992. But, one and a half million of these
part-time workers, both men and women, are actually looking
for full-time work. It is becoming increasingly difficult for
women who can only undertake part-time work to secure jobs
they can combine with childcare.
Gender audit
Campaigning organisations such as the Women’s Budget
Group , and the Women’s Resource Centre, who tried to warn
policy makers of the likely gender impact of the cuts at the
time of the 2010 Emergency Budget, could justifiably argue
that the consequences for women we are now seeing were not
only the predictable outcome of Coalition policies, they were
indeed very precisely predicted.
Soon after the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced
his emergency measures in June 2010, the Labour MP
Yvette Cooper, a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury,
commissioned a gender audit from the House of Commons
library. The detailed study of the likely impact of the Budget
revealed that women would bear a disproportionate burden of
the Budget cuts. Of the £8bn net revenue the measures were
intended to raise by 2014-15, nearly £6bn would come from
cuts to services and benefits to women.
The consequent closing down of opportunities for women
comes after two decades of steady gains in education and
employment and growing expectations. It had become
commonplace to hear not only that girls had caught up with
boys but in many educational achievements had outshone
them. Teenage girls celebrating educational achievement
have become something of a cliché in the media and, though
there were clearly far from feminist reasons why newspapers
preferred using pictures of photogenic girls rather than
awkward teenage boys, such images reinforced the general
perception that 21st century girls were going places. (For
a satirical take on the media’s enthusiasm for pictures of
shrieking, leaping teenage girls celebrating their “triple-As”,
take a look at the very funny “It’s sexy A-levels” website.)
Earlier this month, the Trade Union Congress (TUC)
expressed concern at the deeper social trends revealed
by the gloomy workless figures. Its analysis, published to
coincide with the unemployment figures, argued that young
people faced ‘the toughest outlook since 1994’. Despite
large numbers of young people in full-time education, the
proportion of ‘NEETS’ - those not in education employment
or training - is, at 20.4
per cent, the highest it
has been for 20 years.
To find a comparable
period of inactivity
for this age group
you have to go back
to 1992, the period of
recession following
the Thatcher years.
But the TUC also
noted another way in
which we are turning
the clock back. Young
men are, once again,
more likely than
young women to be in
work or education (80.6 per cent compared to 78.5 per cent).
It is not a big difference. But, is it possible that we will see the
steady gains made by young women between 1992 and 2008
halted or reversed?
* Barbara Gunnell is a writer and editor based in London.
She has worked on a variety of national newspapers
including the Financial Times, the Independent, the
Independent on Sunday, the Observer and the political
weekly, the New Statesman. She is a past-president of the
National Union of Journalists.
This article was published on24 August 2012under a
Creative Commons licence from Open Democracy. The
original article is at http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/
barbara-gunnell/how-women-are-paying-for-recession-inuk.
The latest Netmums survey has
Feeling the squeeze
discovered that many families
‘Families in crisis’ in the UK
are facing financial meltdown
living in Austerity Britain – with
over 70 per cent ‘on the edge’ of
by Netmums*
surviving. The discussions in the
Netmums Coffee House show how
hard life is for many families these
days and this survey has shown
said they were living on the edge – if one thing changes, such
as child care costs going up or child tax credits going down
the extent of the problems, with
- they will face hardship. A further 15 per cent said they were
‘desperate’ with debts piling up. And one in 33 said they felt
families teetering on the edge of
‘suicidal’ and ‘unable to cope’ with the pressure and unable to
poverty and feeling like they could see how their finances will improve.
face ruin if hit by further price
Money and borrowing
Almost a third have borrowed money from friends and family,
hikes or falls in their income.
a quarter are living on credit cards and one in 20 have taken
About the survey
In February 2012, Netmums surveyed over 2000 members to
investigate how the economic downturn was hitting families’
incomes and what the impact of rising prices was having on
families around the UK. It looked closely at the increasing
cost of household bills, how much more parents are having
to find each week to get by and how families are plugging
the shortfall in their income. The survey explored what
families are doing to cut back on their household spending
and how the lack of money and added stress affects health and
relationships.
Main findings
• One in five mums is missing meals so her children can eat
• A quarter of families are living on credit cards, five per cent
take payday loans and one in 100 have turned to loan sharks
to stay afloat
• Almost half of families have sold or pawned goods to make
money to live
• Sixteen per cent of parents are being treated for a stressrelated illness due to lack of cash
out a bank loan to fund everyday living. One in seven has
taken on a new job to bring in extra money. Worryingly,
five per cent are taking regular payday loans and digging
themselves deeper into debt to make ends meet – while one in
100 has been forced to use illegal lenders and loan sharks.
Almost half have sold or pawned household goods to get
extra money while 28 per cent stopped giving their children
treats. A further 12 per cent have stopped accepting invites
to children’s parties so they don’t have to buy expensive
presents and cards. And one in 200 say their children have
been bullied as their family is poor. Two in five families now
buy from charity shops instead of high street stores, while one
in ten gets up early to walk to work to save on travel fares.
And one in 20 families have sold their house or moved to
cheaper rented accommodation in a desperate bid to cut their
outgoings and save cash.
The impact on families
While 70 per cent of mums claimed to be ‘coping’, 16 per cent
of parents are being treated for a stress-related illness due to
lack of cash, eight per cent have been put on anti-depressants
and one in 100 have been referred for counselling to help
The ‘Ledgers’
them deal with their financial pressures. Over a third said
The study found almost two thirds of families have less
their relationship with their partner had become ‘strained’
money coming in than this time last year with 61 per cent
through lack of money – but one in ten claimed they had
short of money every week. Over half of the families surveyed become closer. However, one in five revealed they had become
‘isolated’ from friends as they could no longer afford to
socialise.
Almost four in five families are eating cheaper, poor quality
food to save cash. A fifth of all mums say they are ‘regularly’
missing meals so there is enough on the table to feed their
children. One mum told us: “If it’s a choice between me or the
kids eating, I will feed them. I have lost so much weight my
clothes don’t fit but I can’t afford to buy any more.”
Plugging the gap
A massive 85 per cent of families are attempting to plug
the gap in their finances by cutting back on other spending
‘as hard as possible’ – raising fears for the wider economy.
Childcare costs are a huge worry for 17 per cent of parents,
along with travel costs (40 per cent) and phone bills (30 per
cent). Three in five families are trying to shield their children
from the impact of the financial downturn but one in ten
admit their kids have witnessed arguments due to lack of cash.
Twelve per cent of all families surveyed had seen one or more
earners made redundant while 16 per cent had been forced to
quit work to care for the children as they did not make enough
money to cover childcare costs.
Anne Longfield OBE, Chief Executive of 4Children has
commented:
“This latest survey from Netmums shows how deep the
government’s austerity measures and the unemployment crisis
are biting into the everyday lives of millions of ordinary
families. The shocking finding that seven out of ten families
are just waiting to be pushed over the brink into crisis makes
it clear that successive government measures are having a
cumulative effect on families which in some cases could lead
to catastrophe. Government policies such as freezing the
general level of working tax credits and the reduction in its
childcare support component - together with historically high
inflation and stagnant wages – are not just forcing families to
economise, they are pushing families to the brink of crisis.
“With one in six parents being treated for stress, it is clear
that the present economic climate is taking a heavy toll on
the very fabric of family life. Unless the government takes
immediate action to ensure that struggling families have the
support they need and, in the long term, step up their efforts
to stimulate growth in the economy and increase jobs, they
will be allowing a ticking time bomb to go off, with untold
consequences for family life in Britain.”
Camila Batmanghelidgh, Founder and C.E.O of the
charity Kids Company said:
“At Kids Company we’re seeing effectively responsible
parents who are just not managing to have food in the house.
Parents who are working in low paid jobs might actually be
struggling more than those on benefits because sometimes
once they have paid their bills they are left with no money
for food. I really think there need to be people who have
visceral understanding of poverty on a decision makers level.
Often people who come into positions of power have not
experienced what poverty actually feels like. Yes, there are
those who go and live on a housing estate, on benefits for a
week. But the point is, not surviving for a week, but day in,
day out, with no sense of support or when it will come to an
end.
What the Netmums had to say
“Every week we are left waiting until the next child benefit
just so we can buy food. This week we are going 5 days with
only 10 pounds left to our name. I feel so stressed by this. If it
wasn’t for my in-laws, my mum, or friends; our girls wouldn’t
have enough clothes or shoes. My husband works but we are
truly the working poor.”
“We have recently moved closer to family to try and make
things easier financially and to have help/support with
childcare. We were previously paying out over £7000 a year
in childcare when I was working 4 days a week. Along with
other costs this meant that my working hardly brought in any
extra income.”
“My husband is off work due to ill health and waiting
surgery I am his carer and I take care of the family and the
financial side of things. I try to shield the family from money
worries but if our benefits were cut then we would be in a
desperate state.”
“I have to lie to my partner about getting loans because I
don’t like for him to see me struggle.”
“I am dreading the loss of child benefit next year.”
“We are coping at the moment because we both work. But we
cannot see ourselves expanding our family beyond one child
- simply cannot afford it.”
“I worry for my child’s future as I cannot see anything
improve in the long term. Short term I am training when I
can to gain my accountancy qualification to hopefully make
our future more comfortable.”
“I have given up my day job and taken on an evening job 712pm this way I look after kids in the day time while partner
works so we don’t have to pay childcare as cannot afford it.”
* Founded in 2000 Netmums is the UK’s fastest-growing
online parenting organisation with over 1.2 million members
and 5 million visits. The full study is available at http://www.
netmums.com/home/netmums-campaigns/families-in-crisis
The Indignados appeared for the
first time in 2011, ‘the year of
dreaming dangerously’ as Zizek
so eloquently puts it. Indeed, that
was a memorable year: the social
fabric of many countries across
the world busted open and new
dissenting voices demanded to be
heard. The Indignados in Spain are
one of those demanding groups,
but with a distinctive political
agenda.
While they drew inspiration from the revolutions in Tunisia
and Egypt, and were inspired by movements such as Occupy
in Wall Street, they have a very different political platform.
Felipe González, former Spanish Prime Minister for the
Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), pointed out that,
while in the Arab Spring the protestors were demanding
the right to vote, in Spain ‘they are saying that voting is
pointless.’ This is an important observation that requires us to
examine the origins, aims and future of this movement.
In September 2010, the Spanish government implemented
austerity measures and budget cuts, ostensibly to contain the
rampant unemployment and revive the national economy.
The main trade unions rejected the plan as it gave employers
a greater control to hire and dismiss the workers without
penalties, lowering labour prices in the process. The UGT
(General Trade Union), together with other major unions,
called for a general strike on 29 September 2010. This was
the first national strike in a decade in Spain, as the previous
Socialist government had managed to organise a fairly
controlled labour market until then. But the crisis that was
affecting the entire Europe hit harder in the economically
weaker countries like Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece.
In January 2011, the situation in Spain was aggravated further
as the main trade unions agreed with the government to raise
the retirement age from 65 to 67. Similar measures have been
introduced in other parts of Europe, notoriously in France
where protests escalated to national level.
What’s happening
in Spain? Can the
Indignados resurrect
the Spanish Left?
by Estela Valverde*
However, this measure was rejected by the anarchosyndicalist unions in Spain and a strike was called on 27
January in the “separatist” regions of the Basque Country,
Catalonia and Galicia. These regions have always had the
aspiration of forming their own states, not just because of
their different ethnic and linguistic background, but also
because they are the most prosperous regions of Spain and
have always resented Madrid’s control.
By March 2011, unemployment in Spain had risen to
4,910,200, while the rate of youth unemployment became the
highest in the European Union. It was the peak unemployment
rate since the Franco dictatorship ended almost 40 years ago.
The Indignados (angry ones) had good reason to be angry...
On 15 May 2011, the protesters organized themselves in
a major camping occupation in the Puerta del Sol, a main
square in Madrid. That occupation was mirrored in 57 other
cities throughout Spain and even in front of the Spanish
embassies all around the world. That is why the Indignados
are also referred to as the M-15 movement, the date of this
memorable demonstration.
But what are the Indignados really protesting about?
They are not only expressing a general discontent against
unemployment but also the government privatization trend
that is giving progressive control of public goods to the
private sector, unprotecting the workers. This is the plight of
the inefficient neoliberal system imposed across the world,
bringing about welfare cuts, the
privatization of state utilities and
de-unionisation of workers that is
affecting most economies at the
moment.
Their protests go a step further.
They are, like the Argentineans
in 2001, expressing a total
disappointment with the corruption
of Spanish politicians, articulated
in the memorable “que se vayan
todos” (let’s get rid of all of them!);
the current two party Spanish
system that does not allow for any
innovation; and the banks and
the bankers who have given them
loans that they cannot afford to
pay any longer, forcing them to
vacate their homes and take with
them their enormous debts. Their
claims are simple and centered
around basic human rights: home,
work, culture, health and education.
They want “REAL democracy for
REAL citizens!” They demand a
different social model. They want
“EVERYTHING and they want it NOW!”
Perhaps the most
dangerous national
consequence of the
current political
economic crisis has
been that response of
the regional separatist
parties that have grown
in popularity as the
economic conditions
has worsened. The
veneer of national unity
has been broken.
Their agenda is wide but it does not limit itself to a political
plan. Apart from combating unemployment, their aims range
from reform of the two party political system to exposing
and ending political corruption; changing regulations in
the banking and housing loans system; developing better
public services and allowing citizens a more participatory
role in government. These are not small tasks, and without
a strong political
organisation there
is little likelihood
of success for the
claims. However, one
strong element is the
overall social support
of the Indignados.
Between 6.5 and 8
million Spaniards
have participated in
these protests, coming
not just from the
unemployed youth but
from professional and
employed people who
feel they need to help
forge a change that
can stabilize and guarantee their
own future and their children’s.
With the highest unemployment
rate in the European Community
at 25.8 percent and with youth
unemployment above 50 percent,
Spain is in the eye of the European
debt tornado. This economic
disaster is not only straining the
social fabric but also producing the
risk of creating a lost generation of
the most qualified workers Spain
has ever had and a brain drain that
tends to accompany any such crisis.
One of the most interesting
aspects of the appearance of the
Indignados is that Spain until now
has had a very low level of civic
participation in social protests.
Perhaps as a result of the repression
imposed during 40 years of Franco
dictatorship or the lingering fear
of another Civil War, the fact is
that Spanish politics has been
dominated by the two largest
parties: the centre-right PP and the centre-left PSOE.
Perhaps the most dangerous national consequence of the
current political economic crisis has been that response of the
regional separatist parties that have grown in popularity as
the economic conditions has worsened. The veneer of national
unity has been broken. During the Franco years, the separatist
regions were forcefully kept under central government
control. Franco forbade them even to speak and teach their
languages in schools, to
ensure their integration
into Spain. But, many
people question the
concept of Spain as a real
country and claim that it
was Franco’s ‘invention”.
Perhaps you noticed
during the Football World
Cup 2010 that, when
the Spanish team stood
to attention during the
playing of their national
anthem, they could only
hum along. Post Franco,
the Spaniards have never
agreed upon the words
to their national anthem!
That is how divided Spaniards are
over their nationalism.
After Franco’s death and the
installation of a new democracy,
the central government had
to make concessions to these
regions, but it was not until 1978
that languages other than Spanish
were officially recognized in
Spain under a new constitution
that allowed for the creation of
Autonomous Communities. But,
as we know, regions such as
the Basque Country have never
given up on the independence
paradigm. The terrorist group
ETA only recently had abandoned
its violent methods and opted for
democratic means. Any national
disruption can affect the stability
of these regions, and in turn any
agitation in these peripheral zones
can cause ripples in the national
government’s efforts to pull Spain
out of its financial swamp.
In the most recent regional
elections of 21 October, Rajoy’s
conservative People’s Party (PP)
won unexpectedly in Galicia, a
fact that he used as an example
of the efficacy of his economic
plans. Galicia, run by Alberto
Nunez Feijoo for the PP since
2009, was one of the first regions
to implement an austerity
program and had one of the
smallest deficits last year.
Whether Spain is at the
edge of the abyss, only
time will tell. One thing
is clear: if Spain does
not find a real solution
for the current economic
problems the Indignados
will not be able to channel
social protests into a
new alternative political
platform. They do not have
a planned agenda and
certainly do not represent
the new left. Rather,
they are the voices of a
disillusioned generation
that has not been able
to enjoy the benefits that
Spain’s integration into the
European Community had
promised.
At the same time, the PNV
(Basque Nationalist Party) won the polls in the Basque region,
ending the brief Socialist rule. Although Inigo Urkullu, the
party’s leader, has not openly revived the separatists’ longstanding ambitions for this region, the central government
will be watching their reaction after the Catalonian elections
on 25 November.
Catalonia, another semi-autonomous region that represents
one fifth of Spain’s economy, is already openly calling for
sovereignty, and the CiU (Convergence and Union) led by the
present Catalan President Artur Mas is behind this aspiration.
Mas has pledged a referendum on independence if he wins
the vote, while the PVN leader Inigo Urkullu has said he’ll
join forces with Mas to push
for greater autonomy for two of
Spain’s richest states, Catalonia
and the Basque Country. They
are so serious about their
plan that they have already
requested the opinion of
Brussels about the possibility
of constituting separate states.
Brussels has already warned
them they will not be included
in the European Community if
they split.
Whether Spain is at the edge
of the abyss, only time will
tell. One thing is clear: if Spain
does not find a real solution for
the current economic problems
the Indignados will not be
able to channel social protests
into a new alternative political
platform. They do not have a
planned agenda and certainly
do not represent the new left.
Rather, they are the voices
of a disillusioned generation
that has not been able to
enjoy the benefits that Spain’s
integration into the European
Community had promised.
They are not just fighting
against neo-liberal outcomes
but constructing a position that
speaks about social, political
and institutional reforms
that can lead to a more just,
compassionate and sharing
democracy where the political
elites cannot usurp the rights
of the people. One placard
summarizes the core of their mission: “We are saying publicly
what we are all talking about in the bar”. The Indignados have
become the “public intellectuals” of Spain.
Maybe we should brace ourselves for how more dangerously
can Spain dream itself. Let’s all only hope that 2013 does not
become “the year of dreaming chaos”: Spain does not need
another Civil War.
*Estela Valverde is Associate Professor in Spanish and Latin
American Studies in the Department of International Studies,
Macquarie University and Review Editor of the Journal of
Iberian Latin American Research.
In September 2012 Chicago mayor
Rahm Emanuel attempted to
break the Chicago Teachers Union
(CTU) with a bid to privatize
Chicago’s public schools. The
mayor’s proposal was based
on a plan to subject teachers
(and schools) to performance
measurement based on students’
standardized test scores.
Teachers whose students scored poorly would be fired.
Schools whose students scored poorly would be closed. The
students would then be farmed out to so-called “charter
schools” -- for the most part, for-profit institutions run by
corporations like Edison Schools, Rocketship, Victory
Schools, and Educational Services of America.
The CTU went out on strike with the goal of maintaining
public education in Chicago, America’s third largest city.
Schools in Philadelphia, America’s fifth largest city, have
already been largely privatized, and the state of Texas is
currently in the process of privatizing its local public school
systems.
Under threat of a court injunction that might force them to
return to work without a contract, the union ended the strike
after just six business days. The negotiated settlement terms
included a longer working day (for the same pay), teacher
evaluations based 30% on student test scores, and complete
mayoral discretion over teacher hiring and firing.
As Reuters reported on September 18, “those were major
goals for Emanuel and positive outcomes for any Emanuel
financial backers associated with the national education
reform movement.” The outcome, however, was widely
reported in the United States as a victory for the teachers,
since (amazingly, to most Americans) they retained their prestrike jobs, salaries, and health insurance benefits.
Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, is a Democrat.
The Obama administration: Center-right Democrats
There is no American
Left
by Salvatore Babones*
Rahm Emanuel is not just any Democrat. He was Barack
Obama’s first chief of staff, responsible for hiring many of
the Obama administration’s key personnel. One of Obama’s
appointees, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is a former
“Chief Executive Officer” of the Chicago public school
system. In Chicago he had promoted the expansion of forprofit charter schools.
In Washington Secretary Duncan developed the $4.35 billion
“Race to the Top” program to encourage states to privatize
their schools. The funding was structured as a competition.
All 50 states adopted the Race to the Top program in hopes
of receiving scarce federal funding during a severe recession;
only 12 actually received any grants. The tournament format
was designed to ensure maximum institutional impact for the
smallest possible investment.
It’s not just in education policy that the Obama administration
has pursued a broadly neoliberal, center-right agenda. For
example, President Obama has taken no action to improve
minimum wages or working conditions. The US federal
minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, with no guaranteed sick
days, holidays, or vacation time. The last increase was in
2009, under a law passed by the Bush administration in
2007. President Bush actually supported the increase -- in
combination with business tax cuts.
The federal minimum wage for restaurant staff (and others
who might be expected to receive customer tips) is just $2.13
an hour, against which the value of meals provided by the
employer can be deducted.
But of course President Obama’s signature program is health
care reform. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act of 2010 is proudly or derisively (depending which side
you’re on) known as Obamacare. America has long been
the only rich country without universal health insurance.
Obamacare is intended to extend health insurance coverage to
all Americans.
What is Obamacare really? At its heart is a requirement that
all Americans will have to buy health insurance, mainly from
private, for-profit insurance companies. Insurance premiums
will remain largely unregulated, subject to the single
requirement that insurance companies will have to accept all
applicants and not be allowed to turn away those with preexisting conditions.
People who refuse to buy health insurance will be forced
to pay a $695 penalty. Given that the cost of the most basic
private health insurance in the United States is far greater
than this, many people are likely to remain uninsured even
after Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014.
What’s more, starting in 2017 states will essentially be able to
opt out of Obamacare if they present an alternative plan that
is approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
This requires no further action by Congress. So if the next
US president is a Republican, expect every Republicancontrolled state to opt out of universal healthcare as soon as
that president is inaugurated.
And then there’s foreign policy. The Obama administration
foreign policy is slightly to the left of ... Dick Cheney. The
Obama administration embraces targeted assassination
and maintains a kill list -- sorry, “disposition matrix” -- of
people it considers fair game for drone attacks. The Obama
administration embraces the use of torture on people in US
custody (with the sole specific exclusion of waterboarding).
The Obama administration embraces the infliction of national
collective punishment to induce civilian populations to
overthrow their governments.
The Obama administration maintains a gulag archipelago
of secret CIA prisons around the world, and automatically
as a matter of policy classifies as “enemy combatants” any
adolescent or adult male civilians who are killed in its
military operations on the logic that if they were killed, they
must have been combatants.
Non-Americans who applaud the Obama administration
on the very limited basis that it hasn’t invaded any other
countries (yet) might consider these facts before forming their
opinions. For a balanced view of the American foreign policy
consensus, one need only listen to the October 22, 2012 third
US presidential debate. Democrats are no doves.
And then there are the Republicans
If Democrats are no doves, Republicans are virtual
velociraptors -- and proud of it. Mitt Romney was considered
a “moderate” Republican and easily the least right wing of the
major contenders for the Republican nomination. In fact, his
“moderateness” was the main charge made against him in the
Republican primaries.
Nonetheless, Romney’s official electoral platform called for
a trade war with China, the privatization of old age pensions,
the elimination of inheritance taxes, further expansion in US
military spending, and of course the deunionization of public
employees.
Romney planned to create 12 million jobs by building oil
pipelines, expanding offshore oil drilling, and working to
“eliminate regulations destroying the coal industry.” Offshore
oil drilling alone would supposedly employ an additional
1.2 million Americans -- the population of Dallas -- in some
New Atlantis floated on oil. In the immortal words of former
Alaska governor Sarah Palin: “drill, baby, drill.”
The official Republican party platform for the 2012 elections
called for a return to the gold standard, the complete
outlawing of all abortions, the disenfranchisement of the
(mainly black) residents of the District of Columbia, the
vitiation of food and drug regulation, “consumer choice” in
education, a flat income tax, and the building of a nationwide
missile defence system. It had an entire 26-point section on
“American Exceptionalism” based on “the conviction that our
country holds a unique place and role in human history.”
The most loathsome of Republican policies, however, is not
listed on any party platform. It is the wholesale use of voter
suppression as a strategy for electoral victory. Far from
being mandatory, in the US voting is a minority activity,
governed by state-by-state rules and procedures. Less than
60% of the adult population votes in presidential elections,
far less in congressional and local elections. Every American
government is a minority government.
With its pro-rich tax policies, demonization of Spanishspeaking immigrants, opposition to all things feminist,
anti-idealism that turns off young voters, and outright racism,
the Republican party simply can’t win a fair national election.
There just aren’t enough rich middle-aged white male racists
to win a majority. So it tries to suppress the vote of everyone
else.
Republicans have made proof of citizenship (and, more
importantly, mailing address) a major campaign issue, despite
the fact that only 10 (yes, ten) cases of in-person voter fraud
have been identified over the five federal elections between
2000 and 2010. The real purpose of these Republicansponsored voter ID laws is to disenfranchise those who move
frequently or have no fixed address: the young, the homeless,
the very old, and the poor. In other words, Democrats.
Even more frightening, Republican state administrations
around the country have vigorously pursued the installation
of computerized voting machines made by companies that
are controlled by activist Republican campaign contributors.
These are not machines made by IBM or Apple or some other
monolithic multinational firm (scary as that might be). These
are voting machines made by -- among others -- companies in
which the Romney family are investors.
In 2003 Diebold CEO (and major Bush fundraiser) Walden
O’Dell infamously declared ‘’I am committed to helping
Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” In
2004 Ohio’s Republican government duly reported a lateevening change in voting patterns that swung Ohio (and the
presidency) from John Kerry to George Bush. Ohio used
Diebold voting machines.
In a country where voting is
voluntary, however, it doesn’t
take a computer conspiracy
to swing the vote. The Ohio
state government overstaffed
voting stations in Republican
areas and understaffed then in
Democratic ones. As a result
white suburbanites could vote
in two minutes while some
black inner-city dwellers
waited in line for up to 10
hours. Waits of 2-3 hours
were reported as commonplace in black districts.
Sadly, in the democratic United States of America such
shenanigans aren’t even illegal. For the Republican party
they’re just part of the game. Voter suppression works.
Where suppression isn’t enough, outright fraud is possible.
It may be happening already. With unencrypted, paperless
electronic voting machines that can’t be audited and a lack of
exit polling to verify results, we’ll never know.
The end, or at least the ending
Why are the only two choices in US politics the responsible
center-right and the barbarian nationalist extreme? It
wasn’t always this way. Though social scientists have
long investigated / bemoaned the non-existence of a
socialist alternative in the United States, the Democratic
party of the 1930s - 1960s was at least as progressive as
any social democratic party in western Europe. Even the
1950s Republican party of Dwight Eisenhower maintained
Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms, including a 90% top marginal
tax rate.
In fact, the Republican party once had a liberal (i.e.,
left) faction. No more. In 1996 arch-conservative Barry
Goldwater reportedly wondered in amazement that he and
presidential candidate Bob Dole were by then on the left of
the Republican party. Goldwater died in 1998; both parties
have since moved much farther to the right. Today, Goldwater
would be considered left even for a Democrat.
Over the past forty years America has become much more
politically correct with regard to gender and sexualiy. Men
do not openly display calendars featuring topless models on
their office walls, and public gay bashing is now considered
inappropriate, even in Republican circles. But gender and
sexuality are issues that transcend social class. Even rich,
powerful men have gay children. Even rich, powerful men
have wives.
On every other issue America -- or
at least American politics -- has
swung violently to the right. The
more social class is involved, the
further to the right America has
swung. Poverty was once a social
disease to be cured; it is now an
individual crime to be punished.
Put it down to individualism,
conservatism, neoliberalism, or
whatever -ism you want, America
is now the world’s greatest
reactionary force.
Unfortunately, all the evidence is that the rest of the world is
following America down the road to perdition. Nowhere are
national health insurance schemes, access to free education,
and old age pensions being expanded. Nowhere is the world
moving forward. Everywhere the social gains of the twentieth
century are either being eroded, or destroyed.
The mid-late twentieth century may or may not turn out to
have been the highpoint of human civilization. Progress
may yet return. But if it does, it will not be led by the United
States. It will be resisted by the United States. It’s up to
the rest of the world to provide the hope for the future that
once emanated from Washington, New York, and California.
Otherwise you will become just like us.
* Salvatore Babones is Senior Lecturer in Sociology,
University of Sydney and an associate fellow at the Institute
for Policy Studies(IPS). Website-http://salvatorebabones.
com
Except for one quick swipe at
Romney’s 9-point plan
teachers unions by Mitt Romney,
to annihilate unions:
neither of the major-party
What Mitt Romney and the
presidential candidates—nor
Republican Party would like to do
their running mates—mentioned
to labour
workers’ rights, collective
bargaining or organized
labour during any of the three
by Jeremy Gantz*
presidential-campaign debates and
the one vice-presidential one.
Usually, anything happening in the swing-state-rich Midwest
gets scrupulous attention from presidential candidates.
Given the momentous labour battles that played out across
Midwestern political stages over the last few years, as
Republican Party lawmakers waged attacks on unions in
Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio, the omissions were surprising.
But then again, given unions’ declining size and presumed
lack of clout among undecided voters in swing states, perhaps
they weren’t.
When unions popped up during the general election season, it
was as enemies of progress. Romney’s reference to unionized
teachers as an obstacle to reform during the foreign policy
debate, of all places, was so quick you probably missed it. In
fact, he would like to eviscerate them.
Labour leaders have painted a stark picture of what might
lie ahead should Romney win. ‘A worker voting for Mitt
Romney is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders,’ Richard
Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, said during an AFLCIO rally in August. Romney wants to ‘annihilate organized
labour as we know it,’ Teamsters President James Hoffa said
in September.
Overheated rhetoric is a hallmark of every campaign season.
But the GOP’s (Grand Old Party (the Republican Party)) and
Romney’s positions on labour and collective bargaining—
from support for a federal union-weakening “right-to-work”
law to eliminating most public-sector bargaining rights—are
genuinely to the right of where they were even four years
ago. With unions now accounting for less than 12 per cent
of the workforce (down from 36 per cent in the 1950s), it is
now possible to imagine a country devoid of labour power,
replaced by a corporate vision of “employee empowerment
and workplace flexibility” as the GOP 2012 platform puts it.
That platform represents a new level of aggression toward
the labour movement, says Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of
Labor Education Research at the Cornell University School
of Industrial and Labor Relations. If enacted, it ‘won’t destroy
the labor movement, but it’s serious,’ she says.
If Romney and the GOP’s vision somehow happened, through
a Republican sweep of the White House and Capitol Hill,
what would be left of organized labour? In short: very little. It
would be far worse than the Gov. Walker’s ideal Wisconsin or
Gov. Kasich’s ideal Ohio.
In two sentences, Romney’s official jobs and economic plan,
titled “Believe in America,” acknowledges what unions have
accomplished in the last century. ‘Over the years, unions have
made extraordinarily important contributions to American
society,’ it reads. ‘Many of the protections and benefits
enjoyed by workers in the 21st century are the result of
sacrifices and struggles and hard-won battles fought by unions
in an earlier era.’
The GOP’s platform doesn’t even bother—in fact, it doesn’t
once mention collective bargaining or workers’ rights. The
documents brand unions as dangerous artifacts of a bygone
era run by “stooges,” “bosses” and “elites” that stand in the
way of a more prosperous future.
Romney’s plan soon switches tone, darkly referring to
unions as a ‘force within ... that would undermine our key
competitive advantage.’ There are even “union CEOs” in
Romney’s world—surely the only type of CEO he dislikes.
Unions are antiquated and expensive, and American workers
are smart enough to know that. What else could explain the
precipitous drop in union membership during the last 40
years? (No mention, of course, of the weakening of labour
laws during that time, and the increasing brazenness of
employers in delaying elections and intimidating pro-union
workers).
None of this rhetoric is surprising. However, the totality
of what the party and its current standard-bearer now call
for is breathtaking. Step one would be to restore Bush-era
standards:
1. Change federal law to guarantee that all pre-election
campaigns last at least 30 days. (This wouldn’t change the
status quo, since the National Labor Relations Board’s rule to
speed up union elections is stuck in court.)
2. Change federal law to ‘explicitly protect the right of
business owners to allocate their capital as they see fit.’
This is a reference to
the National Labor
Relations Board’s
(NRLB) lawsuit
against Boeing for
violating federal law
by opening a plant
in South Carolina in
retaliation for workers
in Washington going
on strike. (The NLRB
dropped the case in
December 2011 after
the workers’ union
struck a deal with
Boeing that secures
their jobs and raises
wages.)
3. End ‘project labor agreements’ on federally funded
construction projects, which require a collective bargaining
agreement and the use of union labour. These have been
a political football: George W. Bush forbid them; one of
President Obama’s first actions was an executive order
reinstating them.
So far, nothing movement-shattering. These changes would
basically result in a Bush-era NLRB, which is likely anyway
once Romney is able to make appointments to the federal
agency charged with enforcing labour law.
But Romney would also like to:
4. Change federal law to “guarantee” the secret ballot in every
union certification election. In other words, employers would
not have the option of recognizing a union via “card check”,
as they currently can.
5. Repeal, on “day one” the federal law requiring prevailing
wages on all federal public works projects. This is the DavisBacon Act, signed into law by Herbert Hoover and briefly
suspended by George W. Bush in areas hit by Hurricane
Katrina.
6. Prohibit the use of union funds automatically deducted
from worker paychecks for political purposes. This is what
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-backed
‘paycheck protection’ provisions attempt to do.
7. Ban teachers unions outright from donating to political
campaigns. (He’s fine with corporations donating as much as
they’d like, however.)
8. Pass a national “right-to-work” law, which would allow all
workers benefiting from union agreements and services to
avoid paying dues. Romney was opposed to this in 2008, but
now supports such a law, in line with the new GOP platform.
9. Strip nearly all bargaining rights from public workers, a
la the measures signed by governors John Kasich of Ohio
and Scott Walker
of Wisconsin (and
subsequently repealed by
Ohio voters and partly
rejected by Wisconsin
judges, respectively).
Both laws also banned
automatic dues
deductions and made
union certification more
difficult.
Taken as a whole, this
would be a blueprint for
a union-free America.
Still, it doesn’t go quite
as far as the GOP
platform, which would
like to add a final nail
to labor’s coffin by asserting that ‘no government at any level
should be dues collector for a union.’ The platform also calls
for the withdrawal of federal and state regulations protecting
hundreds of thousands of low paid and vulnerable employees
in American-Indian ‘tribal’ workplaces. (Note these are the
casinos built in reservations. They are a $25 billion industry
and give large sums to Republican causes.)
Nevertheless, two data points suggest how badly Romney’s
anti-union agenda would shrink the size and scope of
America’s unions.
First, since the anti-union law went into effect in Wisconsin,
the membership of the American Federation of State, County
and Municipal Employees ( AFSCME) has fallen by more
than 50 per cent in the state. Second, in 2011, 20 of the 25
FOCUS:
Co-operatives
Interview
From the ashes of European debt
a radical
spark
SYRIZA, a coalition of Greece’s radical left, voted to become a
party at its national conference recently. Announcing the move
to a united party before 3,000 delegates on Friday evening 30
November 2012 chairman of its parliamentary group Alexis
Tsipras said that if SYRIZA won the next election it would be the spark “that sets on fire the whole field
of European neo-liberalism.” SYRIZA represented a surge towards the left that gave it 26.9 percent of the
Greek vote in the June 17 elections, less than 3 percent short of victorious New Democracy.
Its origin was in a variety of groupings from the left side of the political spectrum, such as Eurocommunists, anti-capitalists and ecologists. On the eve of the conference, SYRIZA’s coordinator, Kostas
Athanasiou said: “We are proud of everything we’ve done so far under difficult and sometimes desperate
conditions. We have survived as a left and as a people against the most barbarous policies applied in
Europe since the Second World War.” He said SYRIZA was proof what the left could do by talking and
struggling with people without getting lost in the labyrinth of ‘personalities and in ifs and buts’.
He said SYRIZA’s membership had grown from nearly 10,000 to now more than 30,000. “We have held
600 local assemblies in the most unexpected places that were often self-organized, because many want
SYRIZA near their home, in their workplace, in their town. It’s not just people on the left who are mobilized
against the crisis. We have a lot of people whose first his political experience has been with us.“
Players are with Gaza
Sixty players, including Didier Drogba and Frederic Kanoute, with Eden Hazard (Chelsea), Abou Diaby
(Arsenal) and Jeremy Menez (the Paris SaintGermain), have sent a letter to the Union of European
Football Associations (UEFA) to protest against the decision to give Israel the organization of the Under 21
European Championships in 2013. The petitioners claim that UEFA has closed its eyes to the recent Israeli
offensive against the Gaza Strip, and expressed their “solidarity with the people of Gaza who live, and have
done so for a long time, in a state of siege, with the denial of their fundamental human rights: dignity and
freedom. “The latest Israeli bombings of Gaza, which have caused hundreds of civilian deaths, were a new
offense to the conscience of the world,” the letter, published on the Internet, said.
Frontline rage
While corporations profit, their frontline staff in call centres are abused from an often frustrated and
enraged public. According to Professor Paul Patterson, from the Australian School of Business customer
rage builds up and can explode. He was part of a team that studied customer rage across Australia,
the United States, Thailand and China. The Professor acknowledges that more often than not front line
employees are not the cause of the problem but bear the brunt of the rage. Exposure to such rage
requires counseling and recalibration of workloads. But, it may be useful to question the strategic decision
businesses make in buffering themselves against unfair and exploitative consumer practices by closing
shop fronts and face-to-face contact with clients and shoppers. Leading offenders are electricity retailers
and telcos that seem resistant to fix what appear to be systemic problems. Some of these corporations
are extremely profitable enterprises prized from the public sector that even at its worst had a level of
scrutiny and accountability that has been removed with negative consequences on fees and service.
frank barbaro
states with the lowest unionization rates were “right-to-work”
states, according to the Labor Department. North Carolina,
where 2.9 per cent of workers are union members, has the
lowest rate.
workers and organizations go out there and organize,” says
Bronfenbrenner. She notes the recent Walmart workers strike
and “carwasheros” victories. “We’re not going to get labour
law reform in this country.’
Should Romney’s agenda come to pass, labour would have to
scramble to adapt. A national “right-to-work” law would make
automatic dues deduction all-important, says Bronfenbrenner.
Her research on employer intimidation during union elections
helped form the basis of the NLRB’s thwarted election
speed-up rule. ‘If you could keep automatic dues deduction,
it wouldn’t destroy the movement,’ she says. ‘In high [union]
density areas, dues deduction would be likely to continue.’
Three years after the Employee Free Choice Act failed in the
Senate and four years after candidate Obama campaigned
on its passage, that much is clear. Almost as sobering, is the
fact that this time around, President Obama needn’t make
any specific promises to the labor movement. Just like the
Democratic Party, he merely has to make clear that he won’t
try to destroy it.
‘The question is, will workers get demoralized, or will they
do what they need to do—fight back and be smart about it?
The only way [the movement’s] going to come back is if
* Jeremy Gantz was the Web/Associate Editor of In These
Times from 2008 to 2012. He is now a contributing editor to
the magazine. The original is http://www.inthesetimes.com/
article/14076/romneys_9_point_plan_to_kill_unions
The New South Wales Premier
Barry O’Farrell is regarded as a
‘moderate’. After a year in office
he was being dubbed by elements
of business as ‘a do nothing‘
Premier. This was curious given
that he had successfully removed
the right of the State Industrial
Relations Commission’s power
to award a pay rise of more 2.5
per cent to public sector workers
(with the exception of police)
without demonstrable trade offs.
The government has eroded
workers’ compensation legislation
further restricting of capacity of
injured workers to get adequate
compensation or take medical
retirement.
These actions were only a prelude to much more radical
measures taken during the latter half of 2012. These measures
included 1.7 million from education involving 800 jobs
in TAFE and 600 jobs in schools; 1.2 per cent per annum
reduction in labour costs in the public sector equating to up to
10,000 jobs and a program of voluntary redundancies in the
Rural Fire Service and more recently 700 jobs in State Rail.
In addition, the government announced that it would seek to
amend public sector awards to reduce sick leave entitlements
and leave loadings (the latter introduced by a Coalition
government in 1960s). The government has also indicated
that it will sell the electricity ‘poles and wires’, specifically
reversing a pre-election promise. Its latest announcement
is that it will introduce the position of para-professional in
TAFE who would provide ‘tutoring’ for students. They would
be paid $13,000 less than a beginning teacher in TAFE.
The government has trotted out the old chestnut that ‘only
back office jobs will go’ as if teachers, nurses and police
A ‘do nothing’ Premier
takes on the NSW
public sector
by John O’Brien*
do not need significant administrative backup. Among the
proposed cuts to State Rail are 300 maintenance workers
– hardly back office workers! The government has cited
‘Labor debt’ as the prime reason for the reductions although
the Auditor General recently found that the government has
underestimated its revenue by a billion dollars. It needs to
finance its significant infrastructure expenditure. Its proposed
North West suburbs railway is not going to be an entirely
new system. It will connect with the existing rail system
some distance from the central business district although
the existing network is currently severely overloaded. It has
demanded that the usual federal state funding split for funding
infrastructure be modified for the completion of the Pacific
Highway widening from a 50 – 50 split to an 80 – 20 split
with the Commonwealth picking up the difference.
The government initially also announced reductions in
funding to private schools. This caused outrage from the
private education sector and many Liberal and National Party
MPs spoke out against the proposals. A compromise was soon
found and there will be some delay in payments to private
schools but no fundamental change in the medium term.
Nevertheless, private school interests remained concerned.
The same Liberal and National MPs, however, had very little
to say about the cuts to the public education sector.
The government has a huge majority in the lower house but
is reliant on the support of the Christian Democrats and the
Fishers’ and Shooters’ Party for support in the Legislative
Council. The Christian Democrats were instrumental in
exempting the police from the 2.5 per cent ceiling on wage
increases. The Fishers’ and Shooters’ Party have managed
to persuade the government to open up state forests to
‘environmental’ hunting while the number of rangers are
being reduced. Nevertheless, public sector workers have
organised against these announcements. The Public Service
Association has held statewide meetings. Combined public
sector workers’ rallies have been held in Sydney even
involving police who have been largely left alone by the
government. One of the most interesting developments is
that the Teachers’ Federation has joined forces with both
public and private school Principals’ organisations, as well
as the Independent Education Union, to write to the Premier
accusing the government of evading its legal and ethical
responsibilities of providing ‘the highest quality of education
to its young people’. 4,000 people attended a rally on the 18th
November. While the Federation and the IEU have cooperated
in the past the involvement of Principals’ organisations from
the private education sector is new.
In an interesting associated development, the opposition
forces within the Public Service Association: ‘the progressive
PSA’ recently won the ballot for General Secretary of the
union and won all positions on the union’s governing Council.
The progressive PSA want a more concerted campaign
against the government and may be more willing to mobilise
members along with the more militant teachers and other
public sector unions
There is no great evidence that these decisions are having an
immediate effect on the political standing of the government.
The Labor opposition still has little credibility and while
ALP and Greens spokespeople have opposed the cuts, the
Opposition leader has taken a more grass roots approach by
undertaking an extensive program of school visits. What is
certain is that Barry O’Farrell had lost the sobriquet as ‘a do
nothing’ Premier. Public sector workers are a considerable
part of the NSW workforce. There have been times in the past
when their activities have had considerable political impact.
The O’Farrell government is probably safe for another term
but its political capital is being spent rather more quickly than
was anticipated at the time of its election.
Queensland one day,
Australia the next?
by Paul Norton & Howard Guille*
Seven months after the election of
the Liberal National Party State
government, its right-wing agenda
is becoming very apparent.
Costello mandates public sector cuts
One of the first acts was to employ Peter Costello to head
a Commission of Audit into the State’s finances. In June,
the Audit Commission claimed that Queensland’s financial
position was unsustainable, blamed the purported fiscal
indiscipline of past Labor governments, and said that growth
in public sector employee numbers and pay were a major
factor in the State’s financial situation. This was the cue for
public service job cuts. Total losses were set at 15,000 in the
September Budget and, despite earlier Government promises,
these involve forced redundancies and cuts to front-line
services including health.
The LNP pushed through amendments to the Industrial
Relations Act that removed job security for all Queensland
public sector workers other than police, removed the
requirement for workers to be consulted about workplace
changes, and provided that regulations that reduce employees’
conditions will no longer have to be legislated. These
measures seem to breach enterprise agreements and certainly
by-pass the State Industrial Commission.
Preparing for privatisations
The Commission of Audit was asked to look at the
encouragement of private sector funding and provision of
public services. The June report makes strong comments
about the imperative to change the method and level of
delivery. A second report was required in November.
However, the Treasurer has announced that the Government
will not release this publicly. This follows the Walker critique
undertaken for the Council of Unions that argues the audit is
“intellectually dishonest” and fails to
observe basic accounting standards.
Even so, it is clear that out-sourcing
of services to a mixture of private
for-profit and community ‘non-profit’
organisations is on the agenda. So
are privatisations as the June report
proposes asset sales to provide $25-30
billion of debt reduction from 201415. QBuild, QFleet and Goprint are
obvious targets as is electricity and
possibly water. However, given that the
privatisation of rail and ports was one
of the reasons for Labor’s big loss, the
LNP Government has said there will
be no privatisations in this term.
Restrictions on
NGO funding, and
other measures
to disempower
their civil society
activity, have
been a hallmark
of neoliberal
governments and
their supporters in
recent years.
Environment under siege
The Newman government is also
conducting a war on environmental
laws and programs. On assuming
office, it announced the shutdown of State climate change
programs on the pretext that the Federal government’s carbon
pricing policy (which it opposes!) made them unnecessary.
The functions of the former Department of Environment and
Resource Management were severely stripped back, returning
resource management functions to developmental departments
and even placing National Parks under the control of the
Tourism and Fisheries minister.
Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney declared that wild rivers
protection in Cape York will be replaced by a plan that would
fast-track development, including strip mining, in the Cape
York wilderness. Though, progress on this has slowed with a
‘consultative review’ announced in November.
However, the government has
intensified the Labor government’s
already strong support for coal mining
and mining-related development
along Queensland’s coast. The LNP
repudiated a UNESCO report warning
of potential damage to the Great
Barrier Reef and Newman has even
criticised Federal Government koala
protection policies as “green tape”.
Gagging civil society
The Newman government has
“defunded” a range of NGOs and
NGO-run programs. These include
the Murri Court, the Drugs Court and
the Indigenous Alcohol Diversion
Program. Half the staff have been
cut from the very successful juvenile
offenders justice program.But, it has
found $660,000 to reimburse the Qld
Police Union legal fees of police officers arising from the
death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee.
The Environmental Defenders Office and the Tenants Advice
Services have been cut. So has the HIV and men’s sexual
health program of the Queensland Association for Healthy
Communities (previously the Queensland AIDS Council).
Health Minister Lawrence Springborg claimed that QAHC
has “lost its way” and criticised its “political lobbying” over
age-of-consent laws.
Restrictions on NGO funding, and other measures to
disempower their civil society activity, have been a hallmark
of neoliberal governments and their supporters in recent
years. The Queensland Health
Department has made NGO funding
subject to the condition that they
‘must not advocate for State or
Federal legislative change’ or even
give web-links to such advocacy.
Separately, the Government has
legislated to make groups liable
to meet all legal costs (developer,
local and state government) if they
make and lose cases in the Planning
and Environment Court. In other
words, a “money gag” is to put on
environmental and community groups
who want to question ‘development’.
The political right has made
The new ‘new right’ in Australia
effective use of think tanks and
lobbying organisations like the
Centre for Independent Studies
and the Institute of Public Affairs.
A body that wants to shift public
discourse and policy even further
to the right has now arrived.
The 31 page “business plan” of the Australian Taxpayers’
Alliance (ATA) became available in early October. The
organisation was launched on 1st May 2012 and aims, in
its own words, to become ‘Australia’s leading and most
influential centre-right (sic) grassroots advocacy body.’
In its own words, the ATA is not a “think tank”, but a “do
tank”. It is a design for ‘an innovative grassroots activist body,
dedicated to fighting Australia’s crippling levels of taxation,
over-regulation, and government waste.’ It wants to ‘shift
Australian political debate in a small government direction’
and ‘to transform Australia to a new level of free market
public policies by focussing on cutting tax, regulation and
waste.’
The ATA’s position on the state of Australia is hardly
unexpected. “Big government”, it says, is turning us into
Greece. Its
warning is in the
The ATA’s words of ‘warning’
box.
Unless significant structural changes
are made to reduce the size and
scope of government, Australia shall
(sic) undergo a chronic, long-term
economic downturn, with potentially
the same disastrous consequences as
in nations such as Greece (p3)
The solutions
are to reduce
taxes, simplify
the system
including
flatter taxes,
reduce stifling
regulation and
oppose the
“nanny state” and taxes and controls on “lifestyle choices”.
The latter include restrictions on alcohol, tobacco and ‘fat
taxes’.
The ATA also claims it will expose waste in public
expenditure and try to establish ‘transparency’ in the
spending of ‘taxpayer dollars’.
The problem is stated in familiar language
The ATA’s summary of ‘the problem’
Australians pay too much tax, entrepreneurs
and small businesses – the driving force of our
economy – are crippled by over-regulation, and tax
dollars are wasted by all levels of government. Our
overall tax legislation runs for thousands of pages,
is impossible for any one person to comprehend,
and this complexity significantly hinders business
development. Billions of dollars a year in public
expenditure is wasted, destroying economic wealth
and crowding out the private sector. Furthermore,
a growing bureaucracy and the relentless
increasing intervention by government distorting
the market has led to a sclerotic economic climate
by crowding out genuine entrepreneurs. (p4)
ATA is ambitious and well-linked
The ATA wants to get a ‘reach and effectiveness ...(to)
supersede that of far more resourced organisations on the left.’
It will use the latest in web 2.0 activism and its home page is
visually powerful. The on-line membership target in the first
year is 100,000 and there is a sophisticated media programme
of getting regular spots on The Bolt Report, The Drum and
Sky News.
The ATA is well connected. Executive Director Tim Andrews,
worked in Washington with the ‘Americans for Tax Reform’
and was a participant in the Koch Associate Program. The
Koch Brothers are very, very large funders of free market
and libertarian advocacy groups in the US and, as argued by
many, the Tea Party.
Andrews has real form in organising climate sceptics and the
“Stop Gillard’s Carbon Tax” campaign. There is also ‘Free
Speech Australia’ that supports Andrew Bolt, wants the repeal
of the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and opposes media
regulation as proposed by the Finkelstein Inquiry.
The Board of Advisors includes Tom Switzer, Editor of
the conservative magazine The Spectator, Julian Leeser,
former adviser to Tony Abbott and Phillip Ruddock MP
and Executive Director of the Liberal Party think-tank, the
Menzies Research Centre. Another is Ken Phillips, Executive
Director of Independent Contractors of Australia and formerly
of the Institute of
Public Affairs.
The attack force
There is no
pretence about
the aims and
methods of the
ATA and few
doubts about
its dogmas. It
wants to be an
aggressive force
to implement small government and a large market. The
claim for transparency – ‘see where all your tax dollars go’ is
presented as a “right-wrong Issue”, not a “left-right” one.
However, the transparency campaign is quite belligerent. For
example, the ATA web-site has a headline ‘Climate Change
Bureaucrats Jetsetting The World In Luxury At Our Expense’
accompanied by a staged photo of partying. The danger of
this is that the ATA is trammelling on people and insidiously
debauching the trust relationships that ‘real’ conservatives put
at the heart of civil society.
At the same time, the ATA could be more open about its
sources. For example, it espouses ‘Model legislation for the
establishment of taxpayer expenditure portals drafted by the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).’ Yet it fails
to say that ALEC is funded by corporations and corporate
foundations and that is, according to the US liberal magazine,
Nation, virtually the legislative arm of the Koch Brothers.
Moreover, and going back to accountability, ‘Koch funding
has helped “tutor” hundreds of judges with all-expenses-paid
junkets at fancy resorts, where they learn about the “free
market” impact of their rulings.’
Now the right-wing agendas of ALEC, the Cato Institute, the
Koch’s and numerous other groups are being brought to a
web-site near you by the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance or
one of its associated entities.
Government neglect of
the Great Barrier Reef
by Terry Hughes*
The Queensland Government
has released a new document for
public consultation, entitled Great
Barrier Reef Ports Strategy. It
presents the State Government’s
“vision” for guiding the future
port development and planning
in the Great Barrier Reef coastal
region until 2022. According
to the Queensland report, the
Great Barrier Reef ‘remains the
most protected and one of the
best managed marine areas in
the world’. In reality, the Great
Barrier Reef is suffering death by
a thousand cuts.
Two scientific studies, published in 2004 and 2007
respectively, have shown that at least 50% of the corals on the
Great Barrier Reef have disappeared in recent decades. A
more recent report, the most comprehensive analysis to date
from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, confirms
earlier studies – the Great Barrier Reef is in trouble.
Corals are the backbone of the reef that provide habitat for
many other species, and measuring coral cover on a reef is
the simplest way to monitor its condition. Other metrics like
counts of sharks, dugongs and turtles, also show alarming
downward trajectories. In 2009, the Commonwealth’s Great
Barrier Reef Outlook Report concluded that climate change,
the continued decline in water quality from catchment
runoff, loss of coastal habitats from coastal development and
overfishing were the key pressures reducing the resilience
of the Great Barrier Reef. It concluded ‘the overall outlook
for the Great Barrier Reef is poor and catastrophic damage
to the ecosystem may not be averted’. The well-documented
decline in coral cover highlights UNESCO’s concerns about
the dwindling Universal Heritage Values of the Barrier Reef.
The key question now is what are we going to do about these
losses?
First, we need to consider why coral cover changes. The
amount of coral goes down when they reproduce less,
grow more slowly or die more frequently. Even under ideal
conditions, about a quarter to one-third of a coral population
dies each year from background mortality. They can die from
old age, disease, predation, competition with a neighbour,
erosion of their skeleton, smothering by sediment, from severe
coral bleaching, and from storms. On a healthy reef, loss of
cover is balanced by new recruitment of young corals and by
new growth. It’s just like
a human population – we
measure births, deaths
and net migration to track
demographic changes.
Measuring mortality alone
won’t help us to plan for
schools or new roads
– we need to know the full
demographic picture.
Next consider where
the loss of coral cover
is greatest. The 50 per
cent decline in coral cover is averaged over the whole Great
Barrier Reef (GBR). However, there has been no net loss of
coral cover in the remote north beyond Cooktown or on reefs
far from shore. Consequently, most reefs that are close to the
coast (and to people) have lost far more than 50 per cent of
their cover. Coastal reefs have been obliterated by runoff of
sediment, dredging and pollution. Once thriving corals have
been replaced by mud and seaweed.
The latest study of coral cover attributed 100% of the decline
solely to higher mortality, due to just three causes – cyclones
(48 per cent), crown-of-thorns starfish (42 per cent) and coral
bleaching due to climate change (ten per cent). However, reefs
have coped with cyclones for millions of years, and despite
some claims to the contrary, the number of cyclones per
decade has actually dropped slightly in the past 100 years.
Too many starfish is a symptom of the decline of the Great
Barrier Reef, not the direct cause. The Great Barrier Reef
Ports Strategy is happy to blame storms and monster starfish
for the decline of the Great Barrier Reef, because it diverts
attention from the real causes. In reality, we are responsible
for the loss of corals, not storms and starfish. Before European
settlement and the subsequent transformation of the Great
Barrier Reef catchment, corals recovered from routine shocks
like recurrent cyclones, and now they do not except in the
most remote places. We have affected their survival, growth
and reproduction, which is the real reason why coral cover has
been declining for many decades. The human population in
Queensland has grown nine-fold since 1900. Land use in the
catchment of the Barrier Reef has been transformed, with a
seven-fold increase in nitrogen use from fertilizers since 1960.
The area of land under sugar cane cultivation increased fivefold from 1930-1990. The amount of coal mined each year
has approximately doubled each decade since the 1960s. The
expansion of mining has been accompanied by major rail and
port development, near-shore dredging and unprecedented
growth in shipping, and coal today dominates Australia’s
carbon emissions. Fishing has also increased over time, as
indicted by a doubling of licenses for recreational boats in
Queensland in the past 15 years. The cumulative effect of all
of these activities, unsurprisingly,
is increased coastal pollution,
growing fishing pressure, and
rising greenhouse gas emissions
that contribute to global warming
and ocean acidification.
The rush by many reef scientists
to focus solely on climate change
research has distracted attention
from other ongoing threats to
the reef that, so far at least, have
been much more destructive.
Four outbreaks of crown-ofthorns starfish have occurred on the Great Barrier Reef since
the 1960s, and widespread damage from the first two of them
led to the initiation of formal monitoring of corals in the
1980s. There are two plausible but unproven theories about
the causes of outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish. One
suggests that dredging and runoff of nutrient pollution from
land promotes blooms of phytoplankton which speeds up
the development of starfish larvae, contributing to outbreaks.
The other surmises that the changes we have made to the
structure of foodwebs have resulted in fewer juvenile starfish
being eaten. The best way to restore foodwebs and rebuild
fish stocks is to create a network of no-take fishing reserves.
The success of the GBR green zones in rebuilding depleted
fish stocks bolsters the Commonwealth’s plan for a national
system of marine reserves.
There is no shortage of crackpot solutions being proposed
to fix the problems of the Great Barrier Reef – like covering
corals with shade cloth to prevent bleaching, moving corals
out of harm’s way, or killing millions of starfish one at a time
with a syringe. There is a new outbreak of crown-of-thorns
underway, the fourth in 50 years,
and it is far too late to stop it.
Direct intervention to kill starfish
is expensive and time consuming.
At best, it just might help to control
numbers adjacent to a tourist
pontoon, but it won’t change the
trajectory of the current outbreak.
Governments everywhere like
these kinds of quick fixes because
they give the false impression that
the problem has been solved.
To increase coral cover,
we need to improve the
conditions that help
them reproduce, survive
and grow. The capacity
for coral recovery is
impaired on a reef that
is muddy, polluted or
overfished. The ongoing
decline of corals
demonstrates that the
Great Barrier Reef is
very poorly positioned to
recover from future bouts
of coral bleaching or to
cope with accelerating
coast development and
new coal mines.
To increase coral cover, we need
to improve the conditions that help
them reproduce, survive and grow.
The capacity for coral recovery is
impaired on a reef that is muddy,
polluted or overfished. The ongoing
decline of corals demonstrates
that the Great Barrier Reef is very
poorly positioned to recover from
future bouts of coral bleaching or
to cope with accelerating coast
development and new coal mines.
The Queensland and
Commonwealth Governments need
to focus on controlling pollution
and dredging, reducing carbon
emissions, and placing a permanent
ban on new coal ports. We need a
bold plan for transforming how the
Great Barrier Reef catchment is
used, and to transition away from
unsustainable dependence on fossil
fuel industries. The Commonwealth’s Great Barrier Reef
Marine Park Authority has almost no capacity to influence
two major drivers of change that are increasingly affecting
the Reef – activities on land and in Queensland coastal waters
that degrade water quality within the GBR World Heritage
Area, and global climate change.
Unfortunately, the “vision” of both the Commonwealth
and the Queensland Governments is that the coal industry
must continue forever. The Energy White Paper released
in November by Resources and Energy Minister Martin
Ferguson, sets the stage for continued growth of Australia’s
coal and gas exports out to 2035. The Queensland report also
notes the rapid growth in shipping, from 3,583 ship dockings
within the Great Barrier Reef region in 2001, compared to
a predicted 7,448 by 2020. But both governments ignore or
misrepresent the ongoing impacts that coal ports and shipping
have on greenhouse emission and coastal environments.
Instead, the Queensland report heralds a relaxation in
permitting standards, and a dramatic upsurge in the use of
offsets. For example, damage
to the Great Barrier Reef World
Heritage Area from dredging
millions of cubic meters of
mud would be tolerated and
“offset” if industry pays for
dubious activities like culling a
few crown-of-thorns starfish or
transplanting corals.
In reality, offsets are nothing
more than a license to undertake
environmental vandalism at a
frightening scale.
* Professor Terry Hughes is
Director, Australian Research
Council Centre of Excellence
for Coral Reef Studies, James
Cook University, Townsville,
Queensland and an ARC
Laureate Fellow.
Endnotes
Queensland Government,
Department of State Development,
Infrastructure and Planning, Great
Barrier Reef Ports Strategy ,
2012, www.dsdip.qld.gov.au/
gbrportsstrategy
D. R. Bellwood, T. P. Hughes, C.
Folke and M. Nyström, ‘Confronting
the coral reef crisis’, Nature, Vol 429
No 6994, June 2004, 827-33.
Bruno JF, Selig ER (2007) Regional
Decline of Coral Cover in the
Indo-Pacific: Timing, Extent, and
Subregional Comparisons. PLoS
ONE 2(8), e711. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000711
Glenn De’atha, Katharina E. Fabriciusa, Hugh Sweatmana &
Marji Puotinenb, ‘The 27–year decline of coral cover on the Great
Barrier Reef and its causes’, Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences of the United States of America, Published online before
print, October 1, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.12089091
Australian Government Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority,
Outlook for the Reef, Outlook Online 2009, GMRMPA, 2009, http://
www.gbrmpa.gov.au/outlook-for-the-reef/great-barrier-reef-outlookreport/outlook- online?sq_content_src=%2BdXJsPWh0dHAlM0El
MkYlMkZ3d3ctcmMuZ2JybXBhLmdvdi5hdSUyRmNvcnBfc2l0ZS
UyRmtleV9pc3N1ZXMlMkZ3YXRlcl9xdWFsaXR5JmFsbD0x
See for example Charis Palmer, ‘Shade cloth over reefs? Scientists
call for ‘last resort’ measures’, The Conversation, 20 August 2012,
https://theconversation.edu.au/shade-cloth-over-reefs-scientists-callfor-last-resort-measures-8929
Australian Government Department of Resources, Energy and
Tourism, Energy White Paper 2012, November 2012, http://www.ret.
gov.au/energy/facts/white_paper/Pages/energy_white_paper.aspx
Who has the energy to care about
misogyny anymore?
Posted by Lisa Jackson on November 16, 2012 in Online Digest
The day after Julia Gillard’s famous ‘misogyny
speech’, there was a lively conversation in my
workplace – like those around Australia. The views
ranged from: “She sounds like a whinger...“Huge
mistake. She’s shown weakness, they’ll eat her alive”,
to “Women will love it...no-one rates a victim. She’s
shown real backbone, best thing she’s ever done.”
And so the conversations went. Julia’s ratings turned
skyward. The opinion pages were filled with analysis.
Academics, journalists and commentators pulled the
speech apart. It went viral on You-Tube, with well
over two million views. International leaders phoned
her. Julia got a spring back into her step. Taking on
misogyny was good for business. Peter Slipper and
Alan Jones faded away – Julia powered on. But what
are the young women out in the suburbs thinking?
I spoke to plenty. White, black, young, middle-agedbut-still-young-like-me. I was taken aback by the lack
of impact or even acknowledgement. I was universally
met with furrowed brows and stares into the middledistance. “Huh? What speech?” “What does misogyny
mean?” “Oh yeah, what was that about again? I
remember something, but I’m too busy to engage
with it all.”
Fair enough. Most working women have always been
too busy to be active feminists. But as working
woman, a mother of two young daughters and a
person with a life-long commitment to social justice,
I am dismayed at the lack of ‘cut-through’ a fantastic
speech by our first female prime minister has made.
Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech is important because
the personal is political. Always has been, always
will be. And in the current climate, where the federal
political scene is the muddiest, most mean-spirited
and downright dirtiest it has been in living memory;
it was time for the parliament to take a breath, and
a collective wash. I made my daughters watch the
news highlight of the speech. They don’t care, or even
particularly understand, but I hope that somewhere
in their sub-conscious, and in the sub-conscious of
women everywhere in Australia, an invisible line was
drawn.
It’s long been ok for women to identify sexism in
their homes and workplaces, to articulate it, and to
say that it is just not ok. But Julia has shown us the
experience is universal. We are all too busy, too tired
and too turned-off by current politics to acknowledge
it, but surely, surely, women have it in their heads.
“Far out, even the Prime Minister of this country
gets bullied in her workplace. That is just not good
enough. She stood up. I can too.” When they have the
time. And the energy.
Simplistic, yes.
Naïve, no doubt.
Hopeful? Desperately.
Be Sociable, Share!
What price a woman’s
life?
by Chris Atmore*
In September 2012, Australians
were horrified by the rape
and murder of Jill Meagher,
a Melbourne woman who
disappeared after leaving her
local bar and whose body was
subsequently discovered in
bushland. A man who, it seems,
did not know her, will face trial.
The following month, the body of
Sargun Ragi was found following a
house fire in a Melbourne suburb.
She had apparently been stabbed
to death by her sexually abusive
husband, who then died as a result
of the fire he had lit.
Both women had emigrated to Australia, and became
victims of violence which culminated in its most extreme
form, homicide. Yet while Sargun Ragi’s murder received
some media attention, it was Jill Meagher’s death that really
captured the public imagination. There are many possible
reasons for the difference in news interest, but perhaps the
most significant factor is that it appears Jill Meagher was
attacked and killed by a stranger. In contrast, most victims of
femicide know their killers, and as with Sargun Ragi, women
are most at risk from their male intimate partners. This
pattern is also mirrored in women’s experiences of non-fatal
violence.
It is simplistic to just conclude that the murder of a woman
by a stranger is more newsworthy, but there is something
particularly powerful and intractable about the stranger
danger narrative. Those of us working in the family violence
sector could not avoid speculating at first that perhaps Jill
Meagher did know her abductor, given our familiarity with
the statistics. And yet at the same time I, like most women,
continue to think more about safety when walking alone at
night, lock my doors when alone in the house, and am drawn
to stories like Jill Meagher’s because ‘it could happen to me’.
The fundamental difficulty with the stranger narrative is not
that it represents the atypical scenario of violence against
women, because as we know from Jill Meagher’s death,
women are nevertheless sometimes killed in this way, and to
suggest that this is not usually how women are murdered is
no comfort for grieving family, friends and communities. The
real problem is the grip that the attack by the stranger has on
our fears – and therefore often on proffered solutions.
In a perverse way then, the stranger danger narrative actually
links the two killings. ‘Stranger danger’ lends itself to the
present law and order approach
popular with governments. For
example, it underpins calls in
Victoria for greater proliferation
of public closed circuit TV – as
if that would stop the violence.
(You cannot install CCTV in
homes, where most violence
against women takes place, and
even in public, at best CCTV is
likely only to perhaps assist in
apprehending the perpetrator
after the crime.) Stranger danger
also lurks beneath the need for
public marches following Jill Meagher’s murder to assert
women’s right to go where and when they like – because the
ancient refrain of ‘she should not have been there/worn that/
behaved in such a manner’ is never far away.
Law and order and other conservative ‘solutions’ also suit a
climate where being seen to be politically effective is often
equated with a need to ‘get quick runs on the board’ after
being elected, or with an eye to forthcoming polls. But quick
fixes do very little to provide effective intervention when
women have been victimised, nor to make perpetrators
accountable, and certainly do not serve us well in terms of
preventative strategies aimed at stopping either kind of death.
In an era when the word ‘tax’ carries only negative
connotations, and Australian governments of both major
political parties drive for budget surpluses, law and order
strategies also often appeal because they appear to be cheap.
For example, at a recent rally outside Victorian Parliament
calling for dedicated funding for Victoria’s Systemic Review
of Family Violence Deaths (VSRFVD), the State Attorney
General, Robert Clark, responded to Greens MP Colleen
Hartland’s call for justice by announcing a legislative
amendment to increase the penalties for breaches of family
violence intervention orders. Family violence services,
feminist organisations and Victoria’s Sentencing Advisory
Council have largely opposed such a measure, arguing that the
real issue is that the current sentencing range is underutilised
by magistrates. Increased penalties may also entail more
trauma, time and cost to victims, because the matter may then
have to be heard in a higher and more formal court.
Such ‘solutions’ also only appear cheap, because they are
unlikely to reduce violence against women, and do not factor
in the real cost to Australia of not investing in longer term and
more considered response and prevention strategies. We know
that violence against women and their children has serious
impacts on health, education, employment and the economic
wellbeing of victims, families, workplaces and communities.
The economic cost of violence against women and their
children in Australia is
estimated at over $13.6
billion annually. The
VSRFVD costs $250,000
a year, in comparison to
the $2 million cost of a
homicide, and there are
about 140 family violence
homicides annually in
Australia, about 60 of
which are of women killed
by their intimate partners.
What needs to be done?
Regardless of the particular form that it takes, violence
against women is mostly committed by men. While the
causes are complex, researchers generally agree that the
most significant determinants are the unequal distribution
of power and resources between men and women, and
social attitudes and practices that encourage, condone and
perpetuate violence. This means that any and all strategies to
promote women’s economic and social equality with men will
ultimately assist in preventing violence against women.
These reforms must be accompanied by state- and nationwide programs that highlight that violence is unacceptable,
and are implemented in key sectors of Australian society such
as schools, sporting organisations, media, workplaces and
faith communities. For a while it appeared that some of these
prevention goals were beginning to be met in some States,
and via the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women
and their Children 2010-2022. However, recent changes of
State government tend to stall the process as new regimes
insist on reinventing the wheel, and the First Action Plan
for implementing the National Plan has only recently been
released, despite its completion deadline of 2013.
It is also critical that all victims of violence be able to access
resources and effective support. We need more funding for
domestic violence services to match the increased levels of
reported violence, and better access to appropriate housing
so that women and children do not become homeless upon
leaving violent relationships. Early intervention by providing
accessible legal information, advice and representation can
also prevent future violence by enabling women to protect
themselves and their children by applying for an intervention
order and linking in with police and other support services.
However, family violence courts face increasing strain due
to overcrowding, delays and safety risks, and so greater
investment in specialist courts and in free legal services is
needed.
At present, particular groups of women, such as those who
live in rural/remote areas, are Aboriginal or have disabilities,
are not only at greater risk of violence, but are even less
likely to be able to obtain effective intervention. In relation to
sexual assault, for example, women with cognitive or complex
communication disabilities who have been sexually assaulted
are often not believed when they disclose the abuse, and even
if their complaint is taken seriously, it is rare for the matter to
proceed to prosecution due to stereotypes that ‘they will not
make a good witness’.
There is still much work to be done around Australia to
ensure that all magistrates and judges receive appropriate
training about the social context of violence against women,
and that juries in sexual assault trials receive clear and fair
jury directions.
Violent men must also be held accountable for their actions.
With respect to family violence, this requires greater
investment in men’s behavior-change programs tailored
to individual need, so that more men with intervention
orders against them have the option to participate for the
time required to achieve sustainable changes. It also means
that men convicted of rape must be required to undertake
programs that comprehensively address the risks of reoffending.
Crucially, as two recent inquiries by the Australian Law
Reform Commission and New South Wales Law Reform
Commission have concluded, we need integrated service
responses to particular forms of violence against women, so
that victims do not fall through the cracks of their particular
state or territory system. Effective early intervention can help
many victims heal and go on with their lives, and where there
is a risk of ongoing violence, can prevent a woman from being
victimised again.
At the extreme end of the violence against women spectrum,
many murders can be prevented. While less applicable
to killing by strangers, international best practice is now
to review every family violence homicide in a particular
jurisdiction, to look at where there may have been missed
opportunities to protect victims and to provide system
accountability. Death reviews also identify factors and points
where women and children can be most at risk from being
killed. This is very important for improving family violence
services’ assessment and management of risk so that they
can assist victims to become safe, and therefore also helps to
prevent family violence more broadly.
Family violence death reviews have only recently developed
in Australia. Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the ACT
still do not have them. As outlined earlier, Victoria’s death
review is under threat, as may be Queensland’s. It is essential
that implementation of the National Plan includes a multigovernment commitment to establish and support death
reviews in all jurisdictions. These must collaborate with one
another and operate according to evidence-based best practice
principles in consultation with advocates and experts in
domestic/family violence.
We owe this much to Jill Meagher and Sargun Ragi, and the
women before and after them.
References
Violence Against Women
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Personal Safety Survey
4906.0 (2006)
VicHealth, Preventing Violence Before it Occurs: A
Framework and Background Paper (2007)
National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and
their Children, The Cost of Violence against Women and their
Children (2009)
http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/our-responsibilities/women/
programs-services/reducing-violence/the-national-plan-toreduce-violence-against-women-and-their-children
Family Violence
http://www.alrc.gov.au/inquiries/family-violence
Homicides
M Virueda & J Payne, Homicide in Australia: 2007-08
National Homicide Monitoring Program Annual Report
http://www.dvrcv.org.au/red-rose-rally-roundup/
* Dr Chris Atmore is a Policy Officer with the Federation
of Community Legal Centres Victoria, the peak body for 50
community legal centres, many of which provide duty lawyer
services in Magistrates Courts for victims of family violence
and assist victims of crime. The Federation co-leads the
Victorian Family Violence Justice Alliance, and is a member
of the VSRFVD Reference Group. http://www.communitylaw.
org.au/
Thank you, Hugh
Stretton
by Frank Stilwell*
Hugh Stretton is a great Australian
social scientist. Starting as a
historian – becoming Chair of
the History department at the
University of Adelaide in1954 – he
has made lifelong contributions
to understanding a wide range
of socio-economic issues and
developing progressive political
responses. He has been actively
engaged in policy analysis
and development, bridging the
academic and practical realms
with ease and distinction.
When I came to Australia in 1970 as a migrant from the UK,
one of the first books I read was his Ideas For Australian
Cities. It was a breath of fresh air, befitting a country that was
clearly in need of some rethinking about its patterns of urban
development. That book, seen with the benefit of hindsight,
helped to lay the groundwork for the Whitlam government’s
fine initiatives in urban and regional policy. It helped to
create the climate in which progressive reforms would be
widely seen as necessary, indeed long overdue. It helped to
open up the imagining of more efficient and equitable cities
in which property interests would be constrained by broader
concerns about the public good.
When I met Hugh in person for the first time – when he
and I were keynote speakers at the 1975 conference of the
Hugh Stretton has been
Patron of this journal since
its inception. The following
tributes to him indicate
the contributions this fine
public intellectual has made
to progressive ideas and
policies in Australia.
Australian Institute for Political Science – I realized what a
truly impressive public intellectual he is. I still vividly recall
his masterly address, effectively foreshadowing the damage
that right-wing policies would inflict on an increasingly
divided Australia unless a more equitable social democratic
alternative were developed and implemented. If only his
warnings had been heeded ...
His wide-ranging book Capitalism, Socialism and the
Environment set out the social and political challenges more
comprehensively, stimulating me to go back to reading his
earlier works such as The Political Sciences and, later, his
marvelous collection of Political Essays. There are just
some personal windows into his substantial work as a social
scientist: other avid consumers of his contributions will have
their own personal favourites.
For many people, Hugh’s most important contributions are
those that focus on housing – both as a key determinant of
the quality of our lives and as a matter of practical public
policy. His 1974 Boyer lectures engaged with the challenge
of making the Australian ‘dream’ of decent and affordable
housing for all a realizable reality. He drew on his many
years of experience with the SA Housing Trust to show the
necessary principles and political commitments. It is tragic
that those initiatives and principles have not been built upon
since, with the result that public housing has become more
marginalized and stigmatized while private housing has
become ever more expensive and often unattainable for people
on modest incomes.
During his illustrious career as a university academic Hugh
became increasingly focused on economics. I suspect
that reflected his recognition that many of the obstacles to
progressive social change have their origins in orthodox
economic theory and in the vested economic interests that
obstruct potentially progressive public policies. His book
Public Choice and Public Policy, jointly authored with Lionel
Orchard, identified the flaws in the mainstream economic
support for the neoliberal practices that were starting to
come into vogue. Then his big book Economics: a New
Introduction provided an alternative text. I suspect that
Hugh was disappointed that it was not more widely used in
universities. To be sure, its sheer bulk makes it a daunting
prospect but, for those willing to make the effort, it shows
that a more wide-ranging, practical and politically progressive
economics is possible.
In the preface to Economics: a New Introduction, Hugh
astutely comments that:
The resort to deregulation, privatization and smaller
government since the 1970s proves to have been a mistaken
response to the new troubles, and an active cause of some of
them. Economists share responsibility for that ‘right turn’
in economic policy. Without their expert authority it is hard
to believe that the various political and business groups who
drive the new strategy could have persuaded majorities to
support it, or tolerate it, for so long.
As he has consistently argued, all economic reasoning is
infused with values, notwithstanding the false claims by
neoclassical theorists to a value-free ‘positive economics’.
The key question is always: what values?
Hugh’s own values have been consistently social democratic,
centred on the pursuit of social justice and balance between
the private and public spheres in economy and society. Along
with other activist social scientists sharing a broadly similar
perspective – including Clive Hamilton and John Langmore,
urbanists Patrick Troy and Lionel Orchard, historians Stuart
McIntyre and Ken Inglis, economists Geoff Harcourt and
John Quiggin – he has provided an antidote to the deadening
orthodoxies that have had the more dominant influence in
Australian public policies. That cherished combination of
‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’ is ever
present in his writing and teaching.
Hugh influenced a
generation of urban
activists
by Patrick Troy*
I first met Hugh Stretton in mid
1966 as a newly appointed member
of the Urban Research Unit in
the Research School of Social
Sciences. Hugh was coming to
the end of a sabbatical year in
the History Program. He had
completed his work on the book
The Political Sciences and looking
to find ways of translating his
experience of living in a planned
environment.
Talking with him was a refreshing and challenging
experienced because he forced you to think more carefully
and in a political and historical context about the nature of
‘the urban question’. The proximity to the National Capital
Development Commission and the welcome he was given
Hugh Stretton has been – and hopefully will continue to
by Peter Harrison, its Chief Planner, and staff, gave him
be – a great source of inspiration and encouragement to
younger academics and activists who think knowledge should opportunities to explore planning issues with those charged
with implementing the Canberra plan.
contribute to a better world rather than merely personal gain.
He found congenial but challenging exchanges with those
For all this and much more - thank you, Hugh.
who actually designed then supervised the construction of
Canberra’s neighbourhoods. The results of his explorations
Suggested further reading:
Peter Gibilisco, Hugh Stretton and his Social Theory, Journal found expression in his self published book Ideas for
of Economic and Social Policy, Volume 5, Issue 1, available at Australian Cities.
One measure of the man and the strength of his ideas was in
http://epubs.scu.edu.au/jesp/vol5/iss1/5
the fact that in the history of the Research School of Social
....and, of course, any of Hugh’s own books.
Science he was the only author whose work led to a series of
seminars on different aspects of his work. The publication of
* Frank Stilwell is Professor of Political Economy,
The Political Sciences in 1969 was followed by six seminars
University of Sydney
on different disciplinary aspects of its argument. In effect the
whole of the School stopped to read and discuss his work.
The publication of Ideas for Australian Cities was followed
in 1970 by a similar long series of well attended seminars at
which his argument was subjected to searching debate.
The Ideas for Australian Cities book was reprinted as a
commercial publication and quickly was taken up by those
in the field of urban studies and town planning. The quality
of his writing and the power of his argument influenced a
generation of urban activists. Much of the enthusiasm he
revealed for the nature of Australian urbanisation influenced
the shaping of the policies being adopted by Whitlam,
Leader of the Federal Opposition, who campaigned on urban
issues. His book was used as ‘test’ for those aspiring to work
in the newly created Department of Urban and Regional
Development when candidates were asked for their views
on Ideas for Australian Cities – not on whether they agreed
with him but whether they were familiar enough with his
contemporary work to themselves have a view they could
‘defend’. The book was an effervescent success because for
the first time Australian cities were being viewed through
the eyes of someone who explored issues of the equitable
distribution of public resources. It spoke to the ambitions of
the overwhelming majority of the population.
The issues of inequity he wrote of were not simple academic
abstractions. His personal assistance to people in need
is not well known, but the beneficiaries of his generosity
can attest to the quiet way he helped many students from
underprivileged backgrounds pursue their objectives. His
personal commitment to the underprivileged was also
reflected in the way in which the profits/royalties from many
of his publications were assigned to charitable agencies
especially those who delivered housing and related services to
the less fortunate members of our society.
In the realm of public policy he accepted a responsibility to
help deliver better housing outcomes to the less privileged
members of Australian society. He did this at the state level
through his work as member of the Board of the South
Australian Housing Trust and at the Commonwealth level by
his membership of the Australian Housing Corporation. On
both agencies he employed his considerable knowledge of the
housing needs of ‘ordinary’ Australians and his empathy with
the less fortunate of them to argue for policies and programs
sensitive to the realities of their needs.
He has consistently been the very model of the concerned
and critical observer of the conditions under which most
Australians lived, offering sage advice on how individual
households should have their needs taken into account but
mindful of the social objectives of the larger body politic.
There are too few of his selfless kind.
Hugh’s major publications
The political sciences: general principles
of selection in social science and history,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
(1969).
Ideas for Australian Cities, An Orphan
Book, Adelaide (1970).
Housing and government, Australian
Broadcasting Commission, Sydney
(1974).
Capitalism, socialism and the
environment, CUP, Cambridge (1976).
Urban planning in rich and poor
countries, Oxford University Press,
Oxford (1978).
The theory and practice of privatisation
and the British experience, H.V. Evatt
Memorial Foundation, Sydney (1986).
Political essays, Georgian House,
Melbourne (1987).
Markets, morals and public policy, The
Federation Press, Annandale, N.S.W ,
(1989).
Public goods, public enterprise, public
choice : theoretical foundations of the
contemporary attack, Macmillan Press,
Basingstoke (1994).
Poor laws of 1834 and 1996 : the
fifteenth Sambell Memorial Oration,
Brotherhood of St. Laurence, Fitzroy,
Vic. (1996).
Economics; a new introduction, Pluto
Press, London (1999).
Australia Fair, Academy of the Social
Sciences in Australia, Canberra (2001).
Paul Cleary, Minefield: The Dark Side of Australia’s
Resources Rush, Collingwood: Black Inc, 2012 (206
pp). RRP: $24.99, paperback. (Also downloadable as
an eBook $10.99)
Reviewed by Ray Broomhill*
In 2011 Paul Cleary published Too Much Luck: The
Mining Boom and Australia’s Future, an outstanding
analysis and critique of the impact of the mining boom
in Australia. Now he has produced a follow-up study
that expands on the argument of Too Much Luck by
getting, in his own words, ‘down in the dirt to count
the human and economic costs of Australia’s mineral
addiction’.
Too Much Luck presented an argument for the
adoption of a radical strategy for utilising the
resources export boom to overcome Australia’s
long-term structural problems. In Minefield Cleary
elaborates on several themes explored in Too
Much Luck including the extraordinary extent of
the recent expansion of mining investment and the
devastating impact of coal-seam gas projects on
rural communities and the Australian environment.
Similarly, he again documents the extent to
which federal and state governments have been
scandalously derelict in regulating and taxing the
activities of mining companies.
Cleary highlights the expansion of mining projects
on Australia’s east coast where the intersection with
farming activity has expanded exponentially. The
NSW and Queensland governments have granted
licenses for coal-seam gas (CGS) extraction to very
large numbers of new ventures on some of the best
farmland in Australia. He identifies the negative
consequences for agriculture in general and the
devastating impact of the intrusion of CGS on farming
families though detailed case studies.
Cleary argues that, in order to avoid the pitfalls of
resource-sector excesses, serious regulatory reform
is desperately needed. In spite of the appearance of
rigorous regulations governing the resources sector,
Cleary shows that by and large mining companies
in practice are allowed to self-regulate. As a result,
Australia urgently needs a well-resourced super
regulator. While mining companies complain of overregulation, he argues that government regulations
The case for
regulatory reform
of the resourcesector
have largely been ineffective. State governments
have competed vigorously with one another to win
lucrative projects and are prejudiced in favour of
development and fundamentally lack the capacity
to oversee powerful mining interests. The resource
industries in Australia are dominated by global giants
- including BHP Billiton, BG group, Chevron, Rio Tinto
and Xstrata with annual incomes exceeding that of
the state governments that attempt to regulate them.
As in his previous book Cleary argues that taxation
of the mining industry needs major reform and he
calls for a comprehensive review of how resource
projects are taxed in Australia. State governments
have no idea how to tax the resources sector and
insist on clinging to the use of production based
royalties which are a very inefficient way of raising
revenue. Cleary points to the 50-year agreement
signed between the South Australian government
and BHP Billiton in 2011 as an example in which the
state government’s ‘hapless advisers and ministers’
didn’t insist upon a profit-based tax which would have
ensured a reasonable dividend from what may be a
very profitable venture. However, even the federal
government’s watered-down mineral resource rent
tax (MRRT) will not make much difference. The MRRT
of course only applies to coal and iron ore and in any
case the tax loopholes available to miners, especially
through extraordinary depreciation provisions, are
extensive.
Once again, Paul Cleary has produced a convincing
case for a fundamental rethink of the policy approach
by Australian governments to the regulation and
taxation of the resources sector of our economy. He
demonstrates that in this regard the stakes are very
high indeed.
*Ray Broomhill is Adjunct Associate Professor of
Labour Studies, Australian Workplace Innovation and
Social Research Centre at the University of Adelaide
The neo-liberal university and its discontents: a
review of Hil, Richard, Whackademia: An insider’s
account of the troubled university and Meyers,
Donald, Australian Universities: A Portrait of
Decline (authors?)
The future
of Australian
universities
Reviewed by Colin Long*
The beginnings of a public debate on the future
of Australian universities can now be detected. In
the pages of the nation’s broadsheets, and even
occasionally on ABC radio or television, and in
web publications like Crikey! or the Conversation,
can be found articles about worrying trends in
international student numbers, or university rankings
or the challenge posed by online learning. Many of
these articles cite Vice Chancellors, politicians and
consultants who view universities as fundamental
components of the economy whose main purpose is
to prepare graduates for the contemporary neoliberal
workplace, and conduct research that can be readily
commercialized. Although these learned folk perceive
problems and challenges ahead, they see Australian
universities as essentially in good health and ‘moving
forward’ in the right direction.
The two works under review here are symptomatic of
this growing interest in the future of higher education,
but unlike so much of the other commentary, they
proceed from the premise that the Australian
university system is in dire straits, that existing
universities are troubled enough, while their future is
bleak indeed. Here is Hil’s view:
Academics now ply their trade in a system that
encourages hyperactivity, obsessively measures
and standardizes everything, and is hell-bent on
attracting and retaining students. So entrenched
have these instrumental concerns become that in
some universities an academic’s penchant for reading
scholarly works or sitting in quiet contemplation
during office hours is seen as a monumental waste
of time. In short, today’s academics find themselves
in a strange, perplexing world of conflicting realities
in which public claims of excellence seem starkly at
odds with what routinely goes on inside the modern
university (p. 13.)
Anyone who has worked in an Australian university
in recent years will recognize the institutions that Hil
describes, and will have experienced their frustrations
and idiocies. Hil, like Meyers, is a former academic,
and can speak with years of authority. Both identify
constant change, the huge numbers of reviews,
the transformation of students into ‘customers’,
the destruction of collegiality and its replacement
with managerialism, the culture of compliance,
unmanageable workloads, declining standards,
teaching and learning fads and many more problems
as characteristic of the contemporary university.
But they also have substantial differences, not the
least being the quality of the writing. Meyers’ book
– which was, he tells us rather bitterly, rejected
by many publishers – is available as an essentially
self-published e-book. It lacks the polish and finesse
of Hil’s, and, perhaps betraying the lack of a final
professional proof reading, has a lot more typos, and
grammatical mistakes – not a great look when you
are writing for an academic audience! While both
books are polemical, Meyers’ comes across as less
considered, less nuanced, more embittered and more
nostalgic for a past world, that increasingly mythical
period known to academics as the ‘pre-Dawkins era’,
when standards were better, workloads were smaller
and Deans were elected by their colleagues (and
much of worth has been lost since John Dawkins,
Minister for Employment, Education and Training in
the Hawke government, reconstructed the system in
the 1980s).
In many ways it is strange that it has taken so long
for such books to appear. It is 25 years since Dawkins
introduced his reforms, and corporatization and
commodification of education have transformed the
sector in the subsequent period. Yet there has been
surprisingly little public debate about the direction of
higher education. For a while universities got caught
up in the ‘history wars’ and perennially get dragged
into the broader culture battles over ‘left wing bias’,
or ‘elitism’, or ‘post-modernism’. But even in these
contexts the voices of academics themselves are
often absent, the territory surrendered to politicians
seeking to make populist points. Of course, one of the
purposes of the market-driven reform of universities
was to curtail academic freedom and undermine
the idea of the public intellectual, in the sense that
marketised universities are encouraged to focus
on providing services – education and training for
students and research that can be commercialized
for business – rather than to challenge the political
and economic status quo. Dramatically increased
workloads over the last two decades have also
reduced the amount of time and energy that
academics can devote to anything other than the ‘core
business’ of teaching and research – and increasingly,
as Hil and Meyer’s complain, it is difficult to do both
of those. So, marketisation and increasing workloads,
including a dramatic increase in administrative and
compliance tasks (the proletarianisation of academic
work) have contributed to the muted critique of the
transformation of universities from within academia
itself. Hil puts it with characteristic vigour:
...the major complaint of this book is that
Whackademia – the repressive and constricting
work culture currently operating in our universities
– has turned these institutions into functional, rather
soulless commercial enterprises rather than places
of passion, spark, spontaneity and curiosity relevant
to a vibrant and truly engaged democratic society.
These attributes have been largely buried beneath a
rhetorical pile of turgid rationalist pursuits that kowtow to the capitalist market. Market demand dictates
everything inside universities, including which
programs survive and which go to the wall. Raimond
Gaita has noted that this ‘betrayal by utilitarianism’
has resulted in less rather than more choice, and has
changed the character of university education from
civic relevance to instrumental economy (p. 22).
Meyers’ and Hil’s books, then, are welcome
contributions to the critique of the current direction of
universities. But they are not only cries of complaint
about ‘the parlous state of Australia’s higher
education sector’ (Hil, p. 19), they are calls to arms
to do something about it. But having a plan for doing
something depends on the diagnosis of the problem,
and it is here that the books diverge from their
general agreement that there is something wrong
with Australian universities.
Meyers tends to place much more emphasis on the
decline of educational standards, highlighting what he
claims are real problems with literacy and numeracy
among secondary school graduates. Academics are
presented, he argues, with students who are illprepared for university, and must teach them while
trying to cope with ever-increasing administrative
and compliance demands, while trying to ignore
the inane blandishments of university marketing
departments, and avoid the attentions of what he
calls Educationalists, alleged specialists in pedagogy
at whose feet he lays much blame for the poor state
of university education. Against these wooly, postmodern ‘fads’ of ‘student-centred learning’, Meyers
places the rigour of science, drawing on his own
background as a science academic.
These are all valid complaints, but Meyers provides
almost no real evidence to back his claim of a
precipitous decline in educational standards and his
rhetoric and hyperbole frequently slip into ranting.
Underlying this problem is the unrecognized tension
between university education as a mass phenomenon
and an elite experience. Meyers claims that ‘modern
education theory’ has developed as a means to justify
lowering education standards in the competition
for students and government funding (p. 12). He
is dismissive of the idea that new approaches to
education have developed in answer to social justice
challenges. He might be partially right, but he doesn’t
take seriously the challenge for education of moving
from an elite to a mass higher education system, or
the reality that ideas for improving education don’t,
and can’t, arise in the way that scientific research
is conducted. There is no right or wrong way,
necessarily, to educate all students in all places at all
times.
Nowhere is Meyers’ failure to properly come to terms
with the challenge of the transition from an elite to
a mass higher education system more obvious than
in his comparison of academic achievement with
sporting excellence. He suggests that Australians
insist on elitism and fierce competition in sport, and
that they therefore should in education. It’s a tired,
fairly worthless comparison. Elite level sport training
- for the Olympics, say - has the task of finding high
level athletes numbering a few hundred. It can afford
to be elite because it actually only needs the elite.
An education system is completely different. It is
not choosing a tiny percentage of the population - it
is given the whole population and told to make the
best of it all. And it needs to be remembered that
the elite level of sport rests on a mass level where,
as any parent knows, the emphasis is increasingly on
participation rather than winning at all costs.
Meyers’ book contains many important and valid
criticisms – I particularly liked his attack on the
supine behaviour of the nation’s vice chancellors in
the face of ever increasing government compliance
demands (p.33) – but one is left with a rather
unsatisfactory feeling that Meyers has no real
solutions to the problem of how to provide a good
education in a mass participation system other than
a rather nostalgic (and simplistic) return to a ‘better’
time, when students knew their three Rs and could
prove it in exams.
Hil’s book is more sophisticated. His list of symptoms
of university decline is undergirded by a more
thorough-going analysis of the political-economy of
contemporary higher education provision. The key
aspects of the system are:
• universities are run like businesses, ‘embracing
“entrepreneurship” and the practices of setting
targets, developing market plans and introducing
performance controls’ (p. 51).
• Universities have become components of the
national economic effort.
• ‘student-shoppers’, as Hil calls them, have become
all-powerful, encouraged by the mantras of choice
and flexibility.
• There has been a shift from an elite to a mass
system.
Archie’s bloodstream
Archie Roach, Into The Bloodstream, LMC97, 2012
,Liberation Music, $24.99
The last few years have been challenging for singer
songwriter Archie Roach - his wife’s death, suffering a
stroke,diagnosed with lung cancer, resulting in half of his
lung being removed. How do YOU deal with Pain?
If you are Archie Roach you make a CD, that proves to be
great listening, infused with collaborations with long time
mates, a joyous feel, foot- stopping beats and memorieswith lyrics that reflect love, loss, sickness, separation and
healing.
The CD INTO THE BLOODSTREAM celebrates life- Archie’s
life. Into the Bloodstream is the first track and sets the
tenet that life like the land is precious. Heal The People is
another stand out track with the message:
“Yeah heal the people, heal the land
Then we will understand
it goes hand in hand “
Song to Sing continues the uplifting message with a
wonderful gospel chorus supported by the harmonies of Vika
and Linda Bull as well a choir of Indigenous voices- many of
them well known.
‘Mulyawongk ‘ is a tribute to the late Ruby Hunter, Archie’s
wife and soul mate and is hauntingly beautiful.
We Won’t Cry, co- written and sung with Paul Kelly is
heartfelt with a great arrangement featuring trumpet, organ
and trombone.
...........
The future of Australian universities
• There has been a reduction of government funding,
with a shift to students paying a much bigger share of
the cost of their education.
• Universities have to compete for students and
money and have become obsessed with branding and
marketing.
• Degrees are treated as commodities.
Hil is then able to demonstrate the on-the-ground
effects of these conditions under which academics
labour, including a culture of ‘busyness’, high levels
of stress and job dissatisfaction, increased regulation
of academic work, decreased academic freedom and
professional autonomy, and so on.
Hil concludes Whackademia with a long list of things
academics can do to ‘navigate the troubled waters
of their daily professional existence and retain some
sense that they are in control of their situations and
doing something toward the common good’ (p. 217).
Like much of the book, it is both useful and at times
humorous. It is good that he moves beyond critique
into a call to action; Meyers does too, although I
would argue less successfully. It is to be hoped that
these works help to galvanise a much-needed revolt
against the neo-liberal university.
* Colin Long is Victorian Secretary, National Tertiary
Education Union
Reviewed by Helen Petros
More magic occurs with a Dan and Paul Kelly
written song, I’m On Your Side, with Linda
and Vika Bull adding supporting vocals to
Archie’s voice. Little by Little continues Archie’s story of
overcoming adversity:
“Had to quit my drinking
had to change my life
I had to do it for my family
Now when I quit drinking
It got harder still
But I know there’s a will
And I won’t give up
until we are all free “
Top of the Hill has themes of don’t give up, stay strong and
is anthem-like in presentation.
The fitting end to this life journey are the reflective songs of
Archie’s childhood, Hush Now Babies and Old Mission Road,
which express loss, pain and separation.
Everyone involved in this recording have created something
very special with uplifting songs which have a a gospel feel.
The producer Craig Pilkington deserves praise and thanks .
Archie is in fine voice and his heartfelt songs will connect
with the listener. It’s only fitting Archie has the last
word:“The album has been good medicine for me”
and he wishes, ”listening to it will be the same for you!”
P.S. Get some of Archie’s good medicine into you-it has
healing qualities!
Deep southern blues
Reviewed by Jack Humphrys
Backsliders, Starvation Box, Fuse Group Australia, BSI0,
2011, website: backsliders.com.au
This long time group takes us down the road of the blues of
the Deep South in the U.S., combining traditional songs with
their own compositions. For 25 years, they have impressed
audiences with their playing both live and on record.
Afro American teenager Emmett Till is not a name that
rolls out as easily as the courageous bus rider Rosa Parks
in recent American history, but his murder by white racists
in 1955 in the Deep South and the subsequent outrage was
one of the key points in the civil rights gaining momentum in
the fifties.
Founding member and lead vocalist Dom Turner’s song
about Emmett Till is the stand out track on the album. He
has a distinctive and clear vocal style, combined with his
skilful guitar playing. Turner has plenty of talent alongside,
with drummer/vocalist Rob Hirst (formerly Midnight Oil)
and harmonica/vocals shared between Brod Smith(formerly
the Dingoes, Brod Smith’s Big Combo) and Ian Collard(ex
Collard, Greens and Gravy).
Superb instrumental work is featured on Robert Johnson’s
Preaching Blues and John Fogerty’s Feeling Blue. Similarly,
Turner’s Bowie County has some interesting storytelling and
very good playing. Hirst’s insightful No Grace has a lighter
and a more contemporary sound, with another former Oil
Jim Moginie on piano.
Lead Belly’s Relax Your Mind is as relevant to the twenty
first century as it was in the last century when he wrote it.
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According to its website members of the recently
incorporated Iraq War Inquiry Group include
former Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO)
technology director Rod Barton, former ADF
chief general Peter Gration, former chief of Army
and West Australian governor John Sanderson
and former defence department secretary Paul
Barratt.
Mr Barratt says it is already well established that
Australia committed to the Iraq conflict on the
basis of what he calls “dubious” evidence.
“They did rely on foreign intelligence which was
quite clearly cooked up to sell the war to the
British and American public,” he said.
“Our own Defence Intelligence Organisation was
advising the government then, that that was very
dubious.
“And this is not just an abstract theoretical
question, there are constant drumbeats of ‘let’s
attack Iran’, well where will Australia sit in relation
to that and how will we make that decision?
Even the former lieutenant general who led
Australian forces in Iraq, Professor Peter Leahy,
said one of the most important things for such an
inquiry would be the need for more parliamentary
oversight of the decision to go to war.

AO (71) summer 2012 - Australian Options

Transcription

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