CFMEU
Gary McCarthy's tirade against the CFMEU NSW construction division [Write
On,
GLW #486] cannot go unanswered. The CFMEU does not claim to
have led the anti-apartheid movement or the green bans of the 1970s. The
Building Workers Industrial Union and, in particular, the Jack Mundey[-led]
BLF played key roles in these struggles.
The CFMEU across Australia, including NSW, has continued this tradition.
If McCarthy is unaware of the union's ongoing involvement in green bans,
he should go to a less spectacular scale Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo,
or Erskineville Park, or the Museum of Contemporary Arts at Circular Quay
— all saved by CFMEU NSW construction division green bans.
McCarthy, rather than slandering the union, should also recognise the
outstanding work done by the union on the current campaigns against mandatory
detention of refugees and in support of the Palestinian people. McCarthy
talks tough and left, but is never seen at left rallies or pickets.
Peter McClelland
NSW president
CFMEU construction
division
Lidcombe NSW
Federal budget I
The recent federal budget is yet another example of a federal government
which sees politics through a narrow prism of marginalising and excluding
those who are vulnerable and seen as different.
The history of this government is littered with attacks on uni students,
the unemployed, the assets of older Australians who have to go into nursing
homes, refugees and other Australians who rely on government assistance
to survive.
The attempt to increase the cost of prescription drugs and restrict
the availability of the disability pension should be resisted and rejected.
It is generally accepted that the government wants to reduce the numbers
on disability pensions by 200,000, through their normal review processes.
This represents a loss of $52 per fortnight for a recipient who is forced
on to Newstart.
Most recipients of the disability pension are older Australians who
have little chance of gaining meaningful employment. By tightening the
work practices and medical tests a new disability pension applicant will
just about need one foot in the grave to qualify for a pension.
The proposed increase to the cost of prescription drugs for Australians
again places the burden on those who can ill afford it.
We must continue to agitate for radical change in Australia where everyone
is seen as an equal and of the same value, not marginalised, excluded and
powerless. Only then will Australia be a society that cares and nurtures
its people for everyone's benefit.
Beverley Hicks
St Helens Tasmania [Abridged]
Federal budget II
There is nothing positive in the latest federal budget. In the 2002 budget
there are not even promises of jobs, training, no new public homes, no
education opportunities and no vision for most of the long-term unemployed
or those with disabilities.
Pay As You Earn “baby boomers” paid their taxes and earned their pension.
Now the government is bleating about too many baby boomers to pay them
a pension. People with back problems are also being attacked when the fault
lies with continuing bad Australian work practices in the past. A message
to Tony Abbott: Not everyone pushes a pen for a living. Some have done
heavy work since their teenage years and wear and tear shows on the backs
after 30 years of such work.
Whatever happened to the GST? Wasn't the GST going to pay for increases
in government spending? Where has it all gone? Has it been a complete failure?
I am fed up with hearing that the country can no longer afford to be mutually
obligated to its citizens.
Mary Jenkins
Perth [Abridged]
East Timor
East Timor has been an independent nation for one hour now. World leaders
are in Dili for the celebrations — including John Howard, Gough Whitlam
and Bill Clinton. One question they should ponder is how many East Timorese
their policies helped to kill.
Australia exported Steyr rifles and ammunition and trained Kopassus
special forces at Canungra near Nerang. Britain sold Hawk jets and numerous
other military materiel while the US was the biggest military benefactor
supplying helicopters, M16s, naval vessels and training.
Ordinary Australians in their thousands came to oppose Australia's complicity
in genocide. Forty thousand protested in Sydney on September 11, 1999,
over the post-referendum butchery and the world's complete inaction.
Few protesters have made it to Dili to join in the celebrations because
too many bigwigs are there all expenses paid. One can only hope that Richard
Woolcott, Gough Whitlam, Alexander Downer, Gareth Evans and others will
ultimately face justice for complicity in crimes against humanity. Now
that would be a celebration!
Gareth Smith
Byron Bay NSW
Charlie Chaplin
Phil Shannon's review of David Robinson's biography of Charlie Chaplin
(
GLW #491) was first class. So is Chaplin's
My Autobiography
(1964). In it, he tells of returning from school. His mother lay unconscious
from starvation. I attended the same Kennington Road school as Chaplin,
a generation later. The Chartist movement, whose long march (1837-50) began
in northern England, held its final rally in Kennington Park adjacent to
KR school.
Simon Bracegirdle
Kelvin Grove Qld
Illegitimate
I would go further than Willy Bach [Write On,
GLW #490]. We not
only do not need this government serving a four-year term, there should
be a blocking of supply by the Senate, and another election. The Howard
government has no legitimacy — it came to office on the back of lies and
deceit. The refugees have no comeback on the slander thrown at home by
Howard and his mates, and the bunch of shonky lawyers that passes for the
Coalition leadership, knew that.
A double dissolution has been put forward by many others. It is time
it was taken up seriously. The people in power that call themselves a government,
and are about to try to put through “anti-terrorism” legislation that even
mild-mannered commentators say will turn this country into a police state,
has no legitimacy. It lied its way into power. The people of this country
must have the chance to get rid of it.
Stephen Langford
Paddington NSW
Unemployment
Not content with the disgraceful budgetary attack on disability pensioners,
employment services minister Mal Brough has declared his ambition to dramatically
worsen the lives of “cruising” unemployed people. This reminds us of two
characteristics of government politicians — their extraordinary priorities,
and their lack of respect for differences between people.
The passion to prevent a minority of unemployed people from receiving
a supposedly excessive income is unmatched by a comparable zeal to ensure
that millions of higher-income recipients do not receive an unjustly large
income and that most unemployed people do not receive an unjustly low income.
Due to genetic and/or social factors, some people are much keener on
paid employment than others. A good society accommodates, as far as is
practical, people with unusual or unpopular preferences.
Some bias towards employment is justified on economic incentive grounds
to ensure adequate tax revenues to properly finance public goods and support
for the most disadvantaged. Beyond this, however, governments should not
favour marketplace production.
A just government strives to achieve a low level of inequality of wellbeing
between people, and allows the extent to which wellbeing derives from paid
employment to be determined by individual preferences — not by an illiberal,
productivist state ideology.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere NSW
From Green Left Weekly, May 29, 2002.
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