VIETNAM-FRANCE / AUSTRALIA Australia: the collapse of "designer capitalism" ALMOST eight years ago the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was swept into government in this country's Federal parliament. Many people saw incoming prime minister Bob Hawke, who had been president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), as a radical antidote to the Toryism of Malcolm Fraser, the Liberal "born-to-ruler" who had been Installed by the "Kerr coup" of November 11, 1975.' JOHN TULLY
HEIR hopes were cruelly dashed. The Hawke government is often described ironically as the "best ever Liberal goverment". It has broken strikes and unions; sold out the oppressed Aboriginal population; slashed millions of dollars from the "social wage"; and betrayed those environmentalists who looked to it for a way to stop the rape of the earth. It has robbed the poor to swell the bloated purses of its super-rich "Mates"2
The government has pursued vigorous "free market" policies, pressing ahead to privatize state-owned enterprises, slash public spending and end state subsidies to manufacturing industry. This "level playing field" approach by Treasurer [finance minister] Paul Keating differs little from the policies associated with Britain's Margaret Thatcher. Today, as the winds of recession and trade war bite into the fragile Australian economy, it is obvious that "the World's Greatest Treasurer" has engineered a disaster.
A country racked by crisis
Hawke and Keating preside over a country racked by accelerating economic crisis. One index of this is the level of unemployment. Officially around 750,000, it may really be as high as 1.5 to 2 million and the downward trend shows no sign of bottoming out. In contrast there were just 26,900 job vacancies in February 1991, a slump of 52% over the past year. Only 16,000 of these vacancies were in the private sector.
Small and not so small businesses, squeezed by high interest rates, are going bankrupt all over Australia. Rural Australia is in the throes of the deepest depression since the 1930s, with many thousands of small farmers being forced off the land. Rural misery is leading, indeed, to the growth of sinister fasciststyle movements in the countryside. In January many thousands of rural demonstrators came to the city of Melbourne to hear right wing bigots denounce socialists, feminists, gays and blacks as the cause of their plight.
Treasurer Keating's "designer capitalism" is a dismal ruin. Australian industry last year invested the lowest share of its output since 1975 in new plant, machinery and equipment, despite the government's incessant rhetoric about a "smart" Australia with a "high-tech" manufacturing base. The inflationary bubble of the 1980s, which saw the rise of speculative entrepreneurs like Alan Bond, has been pricked.
Australia's national debt is the world's fourth largest. This was incurred partly as a result of overseas borrowing for minerals and energy development projects. But it also resulted from the speculative activities of the "Order of Mates". By 1989 the Australian dollar was the world's sixth most traded currency as speculators shunted currency around on world markets in search of quick profits. The Mates also borrowed heavily overseas in order to 1. The ALP is a social democratic party affiliated to the Socialist International. Formed in the 1890s depression following the defeat of union struggles it has since enjoyed close ties with the union movement. The Liberal Party, which is usually in coalition with the reactionary agrarians of the National Party, is a conservative party in the mould of Britain's Tories. The "Kerr coup" refers to the removal [in 1975] of former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam by the Govemor-General Sir John Kerr. Kerr, an unelected figure nominated by Whitlam himself, was the representative of Australia's Head-of-State, the English queen. The situation is a hangover of Australia's former status as a British colony. 2. In Australian parlance "mate" is a close friend. The word is part of the male working class ethos and is exploited by Hawke. Unfortunately for him, his use of the term to describe his friendships with the mega-rich 25 has rebounded and is now a term of derision. April 29, 1991 #205 International Viewpoint
AUSTRALIA finance an orgy of takeover bids, property speculation and other unproductive ventures. The now-failed entrepreneur Alan Bond ran up 10% of the foreign debt financing a conglomerate business empire that encompassed everything from television to brewing, mining and brokerage.
From Mates to spivs
Many of the Mates' business empires have collapsed as a result of overextension and inability to repay their massive loans. A number of them, including Alan Bond, Christopher Skase and Laurie Connell, are facing charges of criminal financial malpractice. Overnight, many were dubbed "spivs" as Hawke and Keating tried desperately to distance themselves from their former Mates.
Meanwhile the taxpayers have been left with the bill. The government has consistently preached the sermon of hard work and increased productivity to working people, claiming that "wage restraint" and sacrifice of hard-won conditions (abolition of "restrictive practices" in Hawkespeak) would be rewarded. Keating said he would "bring home the bacon" and that"the light was at the end of the tunnel"
The clichés masked the truth. Whilst Bond and his ilk have come and gone, the more prudent or lucky super-rich are still wallowing in the profit trough. Meanwhile at least two million Australians — out of a population of 17 million - live below the poverty line. Despite Hawke's 1988 election promise that no child would live in poverty by 1990, 17.5% of Australia's children were in that condition in 1990 compared with 7.2% in 1973. Tens of thousands live in the streets, prey to pimps, drug dealers and the police.
That this "socialist" government has repeatedly refused calls by church groups for an inquiry into wealth should come as no surprise, for it has been Hawke's deliberate policy, in alliance with his cronies in the ACTU, to try to rejuvenate Australian capitalism at the expense of the working class.
Under a series of "accords" between the federal government and the ACTU there has been a massive transfer of wealth away from the working people to the capitalists. Between March 1983 and September 1988, for instance, the real value of wages fell by 9.45% for car workers; 12.34% for meat workers; 9.12% for shop assistants and 9.34% for wharfies.
Between 1982-83 and 1987 the share of wages in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined from 58.3% to 51.6%, while that of profits rose from 10.8% to 13.9%. The wealth of the very rich increased by 250% whilst the country's overall wealth rose by only 20%. Between 1983 and 1990 real wages fell by 8%. Put another way, between 1982-83 and 198826 89, real unit labour costs fell by 15%, whilst the corporate gross operating surInternational Viewpoint #205 • April 29, 1991 plus as a percentage of non-farm GDP increased from 11.3% to 16.5%.
The rhetoric of the accord also included promises to increase spending on the social wage. The reality is that the poor and the "new poor" created by the government's policies have overwhelmed a welfare system weakened by government spending cuts. By 1990 the government had turned a A$5.7bn budget deficit into a A$5.5bn surplus, largely at the expense of the social wage and without any inroads into the perks dished out to big business. In fact the amount of company tax paid has been steadily declining compared with that amount collected from ordinary PAYE [Pay As You Earn — tax deducted directly from the wage packet] taxpayers. Government moves to crush resistance
At the same time the government moved to crush any resistance to its policies by militant working class organizations. Any trade union which tried to break the accord and fulfill its traditional role of defending the members' wages and conditions has been attacked by the full force of the state with the consent of the ACTU
Despite Australia being a signatory to the ILO (International Labour Organization) Charter which supposedly guarantees union rights for Australia's working people, it is extremely doubtful whether the right to strike exists in this country. Employer groups linked with what is called the "New Right" have taken civil action for damages against striking meat, mining and confectionery workers and have been awarded enormous sums of money. Other unions have backed off when faced with similar action.
In addition amendments to the Federal Trade Practices Act made by the former Fraser government have not been repealed. These outlaw so-called "secondary boycotts", that is sympathetic industrial action to support other workers in struggle.
Now the Federal government is belatedly introducing right to strike legislation in parliament. This has been prompted by the sabre-rattling of the opposition Liberal Party's leaders who are stating that, if elected as the next government, they would use the military to "clean up" the waterfront unions, an alleged hotbed of "restrictive practices."
But Hawke cannot place the blame for the erosion of union rights solely on the New Right, loathsome though they may be. The Hawke government is guilty of gross hypocrisy in its new found concern for workers' rights, and is obviously trying to placate disgruntled voters.
It was Labor Federal and State [provincial] governments which crushed the Maoist-led Builders' Labourers' Association and the industrially militant Australian Federation of Airline Pilots.
Both unions have virtually ceased to exist in the face of an unholy alliance of government, state and employer bodies, together with "yellow" unions and the ACTU leadership. In the case of the pilots, Hawke, acting directly in the interests of his long-time Mates in Ansett airlines, used the Royal Australian Air Force as scabs to break the union.
Reactionary foreign policy pursued
This dismal record is repeated in almost
(Three of) Labor's broken promises
* The Aborigines are the indigenous people of Australia. They were dispossessed of their land by the white settlers after 1788 and by the 1920s were considered a "dying race". Over the past 25 years in particular they have struggled hard for land rights and social justice. Hawke pledged support but backed off under pressure from white mining corporations and pastoral interests. The Aboriginal people, despite gains won by their own struggles, still suffer Third World conditions in a First World country.
* Ecology: Australia is a huge continent, but it has a fragile environment which has been catastrophically affected by white settlement. It is estimated for example, that 30% of the continent's topsoil has been lost since 1788. Two thirds of trees in the state of Victoria have been cut down since 1830 and some tributaries of the Murray River are three times as salty as the ocean. Despite an earlier alliance with a section of the environmental movement, Hawke is now pressing ahead with "National Resources Legislation" which will guarantee developers access to scarce timber and to the subsoil. This will result in further environmental deterioration.
*East Timor, until 1975 a Portuguese colony, lies just to the north of Australia. It was invaded by Indonesia in that year, with the compliance of the US and Whitlam Labor government in Australia. The Hawke government has continued to support Indonesia's illegal occupation of the territory and has turned a blind eye to the killing of between 100,000 and 200,000 East Timorese.
every area, from foreign policy to ecology. Portugal is taking Australia to the World Court after the shameful carve-up of East Timor's oil by the Australian and Indonesian governments
And in the pattern of reactionary Australian premiers from the Boer War onwards, Hawke didn't even wait to be asked by George Bush before dispatching frigates to assist the US-dominated coalition in the Persian Gulf. In this he rivalled the arch-Tory Robert Menzies, who in 1965 sent troops to aid the US and its puppet regime in Saigon before even being asked.
Small wonder that the government is "on the nose" to working class people. Recent opinion polls have shown support for the ALP at around 30% as opposed to 54% for the Liberal/National coalition. ALP members are leaving the party in droves, disgusted by the Thatcherite policies of their leaders and the inability of the rank-and-file to make their voices heard. Some senior Labor figures have been heard wondering who will do the "shit" work for them in elections.
Those elections will be a disaster for the ALP. Unless Hawke can perform a miracle by 1993 the Liberals will be elected on a landslide.
Already the Thatcherite Liberal leader John Hewson is flexing his political muscles, signalling that he is hell-bent on a showdown with the trade union movement and a roll-back of those conditions which have escaped the effects of the accord.
Hewson's party has steadily moved to the right as a result of Hawke's usurpation of its traditional place on the political spectrum and would act against the organized working class, women and minority groups.
Whilst working people should shed no tears for the coming political demise of the ALP government, they also have to prepare for a Liberal onslaught.
Unfortunately eight years of the corpor atist accord has gutted the union movement. Over the last five years the proportion of the workforce in unions has fallen from 46% to 41%, with the most marked decline in the private sector.
Put another way, the accord cost the union movement 437,000 members between 1983 and 1989. Whilst the decline is partly due to unemployment and changes in the nature of work, the main cause is worker disillusion with organizations which seem little more than arms of government.
"Super unions" are paper tigers
The ACTU bureaucrats are in the process of "rationalizing" the union movement into "super-unions"; huge conglomerates which bear no resemblance to industrial unions.
AUSTRALIA / AROUND THE WORLD
These will be even further removed from control by the membership. They will be true "paper tigers" when confronted by the victorious Liberals after the next election.
A Liberal victory will end the cosy corporatist relationship which the ACTU leaders have enjoyed with the ALP government.
It will also leave the working people of this country with a weakened trade union movement led by bureaucrats who could not even spell the word struggle, let alone wage one in defence of workers' rights and conditions.
Paradoxically the left has been in