THEY LIED! LABOR
PARTY RE-STARTS PRIVATISATION OF QUEENSLAND’S STATE ASSETS! MOBILISE WORKERS TO
REVERSE PRIVATISATION AND REDUCE THE COST OF LIVING!
08-03-15 - It was a lie. Just one
day before the recent Queensland state election, Australian Labor Party (ALP)
leader of the then opposition Annastacia Palaszczuk stated “Under Labor,
Queenslanders will own Queensland’s assets and the jobs they create.” (QT
website 30-01-15) In fact, the whole election campaign run by the ALP focused
on the Liberal National Party (LNP) plans to sell $37 billion worth of state
assets, and a claim that the ALP would not entertain this. This was
transparently false. Barely a month after the narrow election victory, Premier
Palaszczuk announced that there would be selling of public assets, such as
“old” public housing stock, as part of “day to day business transactions”!!
(ABC news website 03-03-15) The ALP Deputy Premier Jackie Trad stated that
assets that are “non-strategic” could be slated for being sold, i.e.
privatisation. Trad claimed this was not a broken election promise, as the ALP
had only committed to not selling strategic assets. Trad also indicated that
some major asset sales, for which contracts had already been signed, would go
ahead. (Brisbane Times website – 05-03-15)
The lessons for the working class
are clear. No capitalist party – the ALP, the LNP, or any other, can be trusted
to do scarcely anything other than serve the interests of millionaires and
billionaires, at the expense of workers, pensioners and students, and others
struggling to get by. The ALP, just like the LNP, governs for the elite
sections of Australian and international capital, and is prepared to use any
amount of taxpayers resources to help bail out capital in the midst of the
worst capitalist economic crisis in history. During times of such crisis,
illusions in social-democracy actually increase, not decrease. In the absence
of genuine class struggle, the idea that “all we can do” is to vote for the
ever so slightly more liberal major party appears as the only option. Hence at
times such as these it is more necessary than ever for pro-working class Union
members and left parties to agitate for the breaking of illusions in
social-democracy, which in our case largely takes the form of support for the
ALP, and to a lesser extent the Australian Greens. This needs to be done in the
process of agitating for, and attempting to spur on, class struggle.
The idea that workers can vote
against privatisation, and have privatisation halted, within the existing
parliamentary system, has been exposed as fraudulent. Yet this is precisely the
false notion that almost the entire Trade Union leadership promoted and carried
out in the lead-up to, and during the election campaign. The Queensland Council
of Unions (QCU) initiated and funded a “Put the LNP last” campaign. The
implication was that they were not calling for a vote for any party, but only a
vote against the LNP. Yet this can be seen through like a pane of glass.
Without saying so openly, the call to “Put the LNP last” was, in the context of
a corporatised two party system, a call to vote ALP. Yet it was the ALP who
began the privatisation of state assets in Queensland, which dramatically
escalated under former Premier Anna Bligh. The ALP’s privatisation of roads,
freight rail, ports and forests was the main reason why the ALP was almost
wiped out as a parliamentary party in the 2012 election, and it was the LNP’s
continuation of privatisation which led to its dumping earlier this year. No
sooner do we have the ALP back in government the privatisation of state assets
begins again! Nor is voting independent a guarantee against privatisation
either. Peter Wellington, the independent member for Nicklin, who has made some
valid criticisms of the excesses of the former LNP government, agreed that the
sale of land should go ahead, and that he was only opposed to sales of
“necessary infrastructure”. (Sunshine Coast Daily – 06-03-15) This is an
identical bogus claim to oppose privatisation as that of the ALP, who has
incidentally rewarded his support for forming government with the position of
speaker of parliament.
The Electrical Trades Union (ETU)
has been the most active in building campaigns to oppose the privatisation of
state assets in Queensland. It has organised a “Not4Sale” drive which has been
active. However, the leadership of the ETU ensured that it was tailored almost
entirely towards electoral ends. There were many pickets and actions organised,
outside speaking engagements for the former Premier, or any LNP member. While
some of these actions are indeed useful, the only political message put forward
was essentially that voting ALP will protect public assets. This was false, and
Union members’ money was effectively used to campaign for the ALP. And more damage
is done in reinforcing illusions amongst workers not only in the ALP, but in
the capitalist system. By continually insisting that there is a more liberal
wing of the Australian ruling class that will look after you if you only give
it a go, the ETU leadership set up the workers for more and more defeats – as
we have now experienced with the ALP committing to selling off more public
housing. The pro-ALP ETU leadership was unfortunately joined by some leftist
parties, who uncritically endorsed the “Not4Sale” campaign, with its unstated
call to vote ALP. By contrast, we in the MLF refused on principle to join the
implicit vote ALP campaign, albeit under the rubric of “Put the LNP last”. We
called on workers, in the absence of any genuine pro-working class candidates,
to cast a blank ballot, but commit to class struggle outside and where
necessary, against parliament.
It’s an old saying, but it still
rings true. That is, if you vote for one of the two major parties as a lesser
evil, you end up with both the lesser evil and the greater evil combined. At
election times, many workers come under pressure of their own conservative
Union leaders and other liberal wings of the ruling class, to cast a vote for
the ALP regardless of how often or how poorly the ALP treats them. It’s a zero
sum game. Firstly, it tends to delay serious class struggle for several more
years, at which time workers are again called upon to vote ALP, even if in a
disguised way such as “Put the LNP last”. The focus on elections and
parliament, consciously fostered by treacherous Union leaders, assisted by
opportunist left parties, demoralises workers more and more, as they can feel
their material well-being, and that of future generations, getting worse and
worse. What is urgently needed is a switch of focus to serious class struggle,
which can take many forms, but ultimately must include Union led industrial
action. It is through this struggle, rather than the endless cycle of parliamentary
elections for parties of the ruling class, that has the potential to win real
gains for working people, which will then flow on to other areas such as the
provision of public services and the genuine preservation of the natural
environment. The mobilisation of working people for this task can include
workers running their own candidates for election to the rulers’ parliament,
but it can never afford to be subordinate to this parliament – ultimately an
anti-worker organ.
The only assemblies that workers’
should respect are the representative bodies that form as a result of a
successful revolution, with the establishing of a workers’ republic. And these
bodies themselves will be a transitional form subordinate to the struggle for
workers’ rule in Europe, Japan and the United States, joining with the existing
socialist states. Until such time, workers in Queensland need to embark on the
path of class struggle to win immediate gains now. There are many negative flow
on effects from the relentless drive to privatise, including mass unemployment,
unaffordable electricity, water and public transport costs. To contain any
struggle against these elements, the government are also trying to normalise
the militarisation of public areas and public transport, using fully armed
police, combined with Translink ticket inspectors dressed in para-military
get-up, who are simply there to harass and prosecute citizens. Enough!
We cannot afford to go even further backwards. Some of the
demands that we suggest should be raised and fought for immediately are:
-
Stop and
Reverse Privatisation! Full public ownership of the roads, ports, railways,
electricity generation, distribution and supply, water services, state forests,
state land, state primary and secondary schools!
-
To
address unemployment, a shorter work week with no loss in pay!
-
Stop all
public housing sell-offs, and dramatically increase public housing stock!
-
Abolish
all water charges! Abolish all toll roads! Halve electricity costs!
-
For
concession prices for the unemployed on public transport! Halve all public
transport costs! Abolish the Tertiary Transport Concession Card!
-
No armed
cops on public transport! Stop the intimidation of public transport users! No
prosecution for not having a ticket or go card!
MARXIST-LENINIST FRONT
0421 408 692
WWW.MARXISTLENINISTFRONT.BLOGSPOT.COM.AU
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