Punish Howard and Latham

Sam Watson

The abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission is the final straw in the ongoing campaign of terror and intimidation that PM John Howard's regime has perpetrated against the Indigenous nations of this land. Indigenous nations cannot afford to allow this cold-blooded thug to carry out this final phase of his grand design to totally remove Indigenous people from the mainstream of Australian society.

Howard and treasurer Peter Costello geared the federal budget towards the core constituency of the Liberal Party, totally abandoning 75% of Australian workers. Their plan is to drive women out of the workforce and use them as breeding machines. If the ALP had any political integrity and guts it would block this budget, along with the minor parties, and rewrite it so that real money and real relief would be delivered to the 75% of Australian working-class families who are being punished.

The people of Australia must use the next federal poll to make Howard accountable for his crimes against the Australian people, and Aboriginal people in particular. The living conditions of Aboriginal Australians have deteriorated since 1996. For them, unemployment is hovering around 65-70%, homelessness has trebled, as have rates of imprisonment and deaths in custody.

Howard and his political machine have sought to crush the life from the Aboriginal race and cast our bones upon the scrapheap of white history. But the Socialist Alliance is one political party that will never allow Howard's insanity to prevail.

The Aboriginal nations can seek no sanctuary within the confines of the Australian Labor Party. Labor leader Mark Latham and Howard are both seeking to align themselves with that intense racist core that lies within the darker heart of the Australian nation. Aboriginal people and our comrades must use their vote to punish both Howard and Latham, and to elevate progressive parties to a higher standing within the Australian parliament.

From Green Left Weekly, May 19, 2004.

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From GLW issue 582