Beyond the lesser evil
The GST, John Hewson's industrial relations policy and Kennett's even more extreme version of the same, will drive many people to vote against the conservative Coalition at the next federal election. But this should not obscure the fact that Labor, while clearly a "lesser evil", can only be expected to continue the abrogation of social justice and the assault on the living standards of the great majority and the environment.
Labor and the Coalition parties have demonstrated their bipartisan support for the "economic rationalist" agenda: including privatisation, tariff cuts and labour market reform. They differ only on how to achieve these objectives and at what pace. Labor boasts of the ALP-ACTU Accord's proven record of wage control and forced industrial peace. Labor boosted profit share of national income to a postwar record, at the expense of wages and jobs. Labor also cut the taxes of the highest income earners and corporations.
Incredibly, the Coalition parties promise to deliver more — in order to distinguish themselves from right-wing Labor but also because they are gambling Labor may have sufficiently weakened and demoralised organised labour to allow a more confrontationist policy to succeed.
Hewson, Groom and Kennett may have miscalculated and major sections of big business are signalling this much, as did the November 17 editorial of the Financial Review:
"John Howard must now clearly distance the federal coalition from the Kennett Government's bumbling attempt to reform the Victorian labour market. For all Mr Kennett's amendments, the Victorian legislation is still objectionable. It is not in the long-term interests of Victorian workers or employers. It will do great harm to the cause of labour market reform and, Mr Keating senses, to the Federal Opposition".
The AFR went on to warn that Kennett "will send Victorian workers back into the arms of the unions for protection — an extraordinary gift to a union movement that has seen its membership fall from 48% of workers in 1982 to 41% now".
The bottom line, the editorial concluded, was that the long-term interests of big business would be served by policies which "achieved widespread acceptance of labour market reform". The ACTU has promised to continue to actively support such a project, as long as the top officials are guaranteed a place in the system via forced union amalgamations.
The nervousness in the employers' ranks is not cause for complacency for while some employers are not convinced that the time has come for a Kennett-style confrontation, if he succeeds in Victoria, they will undoubtedly change their minds.
A hesitant fightback or one that fails to go beyond the flexing of residual union muscle to win the hearts and minds of the broader public will give Kennett and his ilk the confidence to pursue their attack. Kennett has already boasted that he will wear the union movement down in a dragged out industrial struggle and he is consciously trying to play the unemployed, consumers and youth against strikers. A united political campaign is needed to counter his strategy.
We have to resist the Liberal's attacks with the greatest unity but we cannot expect much better under another term of federal Labor government. Under Labor the principle of union solidarity was eroded with the smashing of the Builders Labourers Federation and the pilots' strike. Last year the International Labour Organisation officially complained of the serious restrictions on the right to strike in Australia.
The challenge facing all who are targeted by the right-wing Labor and Liberal governments is to build a political alternative, daunting as that prospect may seem. The meteoric rise of the Alliance in New Zealand (a coalition of the NewLabour Party, the Greens, the Maori Mana Motuhake party and other smaller parties) indicates that a break from the two-party monopoly is possible.
But an effective political alternative to Labor and Liberals will have to be more than just another parliamentary party. While it should contest elections it must also be committed independent mass action, to the mobilisation and empowerment of many more people than really have a say to the discredited parliamentary circus. If this "new politics" does not emerge the only reaction to the social vandalism confronting us will be an epidemic of personal alienation and despair.