by Spirit of Eureka – South Australia
This article was a leaflet given out at the May Day rally in Adelaide
May the 1st is International Workers Day. Since 1886 it has been celebrated by workers around the world as an expression of their international solidarity and shared political aspirations for freedom. There is much to commemorate about past achievements, however the working class have many struggles ahead of them.
THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION
The worker’s lot around the world has worsen because:
· global economic crisis continues
· unemployment is still growing
· poverty is worsening
· growth is virtually stagnant
Capitalist government’s economic austerity programs have:
· forced the working class and the poor to carry even greater burdens
· been a windfall for the big banks to profit from the credit/debt squeeze they created
· seen the developments of huge mass movements in many countries against these austerity programs
Imperialist aggression, particularly United States Imperialism’s insistence of world supremacy has seen:
· relentless attacks against, and subversion in many countries e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Venezuela etc
· growing conflict with other centres of capital such as Russia and China
· US Government sanctioned murder via it’s drone and other notorious programmes
· expansion to its military bases and facilities in other lands, with Australia being an important site for its ‘Asia Pivot’ military strategy
THE AUSTRALIAN SITUATION
· The five pillars of our people’s livelihood – housing, transport, health, education (public and free), and employment – are continually under assault by the Abbott Government.
· Indigenous Australians still suffer the Intervention to take away their economic survival and children; and more recently the forced closures of their homelands to deprived them of their connection to land and sovereignty.
· A rise in racism against refugees, in particular Moslems, which has been fanned by the Abbott Gov’s cruel treatment of asylum seekers and war mongering in sending Australian troops into battle in Iraq.
· A major campaign by big business to attack worker’s penalty rates.
· the Big 4 Bank’s corruption keeps getting bigger and bigger e.g. ANZ has been forced to return $30m they ripped-off their customers.
· Corporations tax avoidance has been exposed but the government does little to nothing in stopping it.
· Australia is enmeshed within the United States strategy of global dominance e.g. Trans Pacific Partnership (‘free trade’ bloc), the US military ‘Asia Pivot’ and still helping America fight their wars of unwinnable aggression in the Middle East.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA SITUATION
· The SA Gov will close down local public hospitals (such as the treasured Daw Park Repatriation General Hospital) and centralise their services, therefore disadvantaging patients from the outer suburbs.
· Open the door wider for the hazardous nuclear industry in SA to expand from mining into enrichment, energy and storage.
· Implement a regressive land tax and let big business off the hook by eliminating stamp duty, payroll and insurance taxes.
· The SA Gov has reversed its security of tenure policy for all public sector workforce.
· South Australia faces de-industrialization with the car industry moving off-shore to low wage countries and the Abbott Gov abandoning the ASC Osborne ship works for Japanese built Australian submarines.
Around the world there is a growing disillusionment with the continuing global economic crisis, their governments’ economic austerity policies and aggressive military adventures. Workers as always shoulder the burdened. This has resulted also in the disenchantment with parliamentary political parties as can be seen in Greece and Spain today.
Similarly in Australia, there is not much enthusiasm for politicians and their parliamentary wagon trains. The working class is not represented by the major parliamentary political parties.
Most people only see the Australian Labor Party as an organisation to apply pressure on and certainly not one to rely on! These parties are only loyal to the class interests of the rich.
Witness the ALP’s efforts to outdo the Liberal’s in schemes to privatise, deregulate and impose intolerable burdens on ordinary people. Plus both only see the future under United States domination.
Consequently our parliamentary system of government is the captive and play thing of the big corporations. They run the country and parliament is their minder.
The only real alternative for workers and their allies is to undertake an INDEPENDENT WORKING CLASS AGENDA, that is free of parliamentary parties so as to pursue their just demands and democratic rights.
This is the key to further advancing an independent working class cause, namely that it serves to focus and intensify the voice of the voiceless, to give confidence to those without much hope for the future, to unify and strengthen those who instinctively understand that their interests are not being represented in the parliamentary talking shops.
By developing an enormous mass movement of working people, through their communities and unions etc, only then will we be able to wrest political and economic power from the ruling corporations and start the journey to creating new institutions for a Just, Democratic and Sovereign Australia.
