Peter Boyle

The Greens and the Socialist Alliance have condemned the ALP’s support for the Coalition government’s reactionary legislation on pharmaceutical benefits, “free trade” and “anti-terrorism”.

Greens Senator Bob Brown said that it is now clear that there will not be much change if Labor wins the election, as the ALP has agreed to the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement (in the House of Representatives), and to the 21% rise in Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme script costs for consumers.

“Labor’s non-intuitive cave-in will leave many Labor voters angry”, Brown said in a June 25 media release.

In a media statement on June 22, Greens Senator Kerry Nettle slammed the ALP for “choosing to hit the sick to fund election promises whilst agreeing to tax cuts to top income earners”.

“The ALP have voted to give a $14.7 billion hand-out to top income earners and today decided to slug the sick with a $1.1 billion increase in their medical bills.”

The ALP previously said it would consider blocking the Free Trade Agreement if it threatened the PBS, noted Nettle. She added that if the decision is “an indication of the ALP’s commitment to the PBS and essential medicines we have every reason to be concerned about a future cave in on the FTA” when it goes to the Senate.

Lisa Macdonald, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Reid (in Sydney’s western suburbs) and a national co-convenor of the alliance, said that federal Labor leader Mark Latham had narrowed the choice in the coming federal election with his recent spate of support for reactionary Coalition policies.

“The PBS decision, which robs the poor and sick to give tax cuts to the rich, rubs salt into the wounds of the worst-off in Australia. Billions of dollars have already been transferred to the rich through the GST and other previous tax changes, through cuts in social services and through anti-worker industrial laws. We need to take that back, not give the wealthy another handout!

“Add to this outrage at the second round of anti-democratic `anti-terrorism’ laws that the ALP has supported and Latham’s retreats on the number of troops he promises to pull out of Iraq if Labor is elected, and you have to ask if this isn’t shaping up as another disgraceful `shoulder-to-shoulder’ election campaign.”

Macdonald added that the ALP’s backdown on the PBS was not surprising as the Hawke/Keating Labor governments had raised PBS script fees by 320% in 13 years.

“Further, as Alan Ramsey reminded us in the June 26 Sydney Morning Herald, it was also a Labor government that, in 1990, included pensioners in the PBS fee-paying regime for the first time in 42 years.”

The ALP clearly remains committed to the profits-first, economic rationalist agenda pursued by the Coalition government, said Macdonald.

“Latham has made it clear he wants to please the corporate elite first and NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr has come back from a visit to the US with a blunt public warning to Latham to exercise the `utmost diplomacy’ on withdrawing troops from Iraq, urging him to accept the US free trade deal `the sooner the better’.”

From Green Left Weekly, June 30, 2004.
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