August 29 was one such day. The journalists at Fairfax newspapers (which include the
Age, the
Sydney Morning Herald and the
Australian Financial Review) were on strike over management’s plan to slash 550 jobs.
The scabs and management at the
SMH cobbled together a paper that day but in their haste they dropped any pretence of objective reporting.
The front page screamed out the big end of town’s fury at the collapse of the Iemma NSW government’s attempt to force through laws enabling the privatisation of the energy industry. The Liberal-National opposition, which opposed the laws (mainly for opportunist reasons), was howled at for being “conservatives who said: NSW is closed for business”.
The management/scabs then added a threat to the public: “Now the state will pay, with interest”.
Finally, they cheered the Iemma government’s outrageous decision to ignore parliament and proceed with the part sale of the industry!
The big end of town only accepts “democracy” in a modern form of the ancient Athenian slave owners’ democracy. On August 21, the Business Council of Australia released a study threatening capital flight if the Rudd Labor government did not give the worst corporate greenhouse polluters even more subsidies and free pollution permits than Rudd has already offered! (See article page 11).
“Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full”, was the Rudd government’s slavish response.
The mask momentarily slipped then as well but the corporate media rushed to assure the public that big business was not angling for a “free ride” in the fight against climate change. Tell us another one!
We’re up against a ruthless and narrowly self-serving corporate dictatorship. But
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