Peter Boyle

Share prices for BHP Billiton (Olympic Dam uranium mine) and Rio Tinto (Ranger mine) leapt up when Labor leader Kim Beazley announced that he would campaign to overturn Labor’s “no new uranium mines” policy at the next party conference.

“We are in the business of being serious about government and this is part of that process”, said Beazley. The key word here is “business” — big business to be exact. Uptown, champagne bottles popped.

Did these two biggest mining companies in the world [pop!] really need Beazley’s bonus? BHP Billiton was predicted to be about to declare a record $13.8 billion [pop!] profit this year. And this after last year’s record $8.5 billion profit. Rio Tinto is expected to declare a $4.7 billion [pop!] profit, a 62% increase on last year.

In the same week, the Australian Council of Trade Unions was begging the new Fair Pay Commission (turn in your grave again, George Orwell) for a 4% pay increase for the lowest-paid workers in Australia. If granted, this would simply adjust their wages to keep up with inflation. Last year, the working poor received a measly 3.6% ($17 per week) increase.

In the same week, 200 unemployed people were kicked off benefits under the Howard government’s new penalties for welfare recipients.

“This is the first time that Centrelink has imposed an immediate one-strike-and-you’re-out policy and these early figures are very troubling”, says Gerard Thomas, from the Welfare Rights Centre in Sydney. “Most of the major welfare-to-work changes that will bring more vulnerable people into the penalty system have hardly begun.” For some of these people, the “sudden-death compliance system” would mean “beg, borrow or steal”, Thomas warns.

We haven’t touched on the latest gory chapter in the undeclared wars-without-end, but it’s enough to show that this is a monstrous system. Anyone with a conscience today knows there is an urgent need to fight for change, but Labor pledges to maintain the rule of the corporate rich. Shame!

Green Left Weekly, a voice for radical change, is trying to raise $250,000 for its Fighting Fund this year. Last week we raised $2459, bringing the total so far this year to $100,887 or 40% of our whole-year target. Can you chip in to the Fighting Fund this week?

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