“I have never believed in class warfare,’’ declared Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his speech to the National Press Club in Canberra on July 11.
Has St Kevin found the solution to the class divisions that have plagued human society for thousands of years?
I say “St Kevin” because he appears to have produced a more spectacular miracle than any performed by Pope John Paul II, who the Vatican is about to make a saint.
The latest Newspoll has the ALP and the Coalition equal at 50% each on a two-party preferred basis — a huge turnaround from the ALP wipeout predicted just before Rudd was returned to the leadership.
That is a bloody miracle in anyone's terms. And isn't it a joy to see the Coalition's Tony Abbott and Joe “Cocky” Hockey flailing around desperately in their media appearances?
All good so far for St Kevin on the miracle front but he is doomed to disappoint if you expect him or his ALP government to end class divisions. If you listened to his speech you would have heard exactly why.
His solution to class warfare is simple. One side, the working class (which includes most people in Australia today) should stop resisting the demands from the other side, the billionaire capitalist class. One solution — capitulation.
Rudd urged us to work harder, to work together with our bosses, to reduce the environmental and other regulations on the capitalists to achieve the magic productivity target of 2%.
But workers in Australia are already working harder. We work longer working days on average than a decade ago — including an estimated 2.14 billion hours of unpaid overtime — worth $72 billion — each year.
We've become immensely more “flexible” for the boss at a painful price. Only 60% of workers in Australia are in full or part-time ongoing employment, leaving 40% in insecure forms of work.
On the regulation front, we already see mining companies on an environmental rampage.
When it comes to climate change, Australia has the status of a rogue nation because of the size of the nation’s coal exports. Plans for a gas export future — to make this country the “Qatar of gas” — will ensure Australia keeps that shameful status for generations to come.
Government regulations are too weak to control coal seam gas companies who want to drill in prime food growing and water catchment areas. It is only the valiant struggle of communities that are slowing the CSG monster.
But the economists have told us that productivity has fallen, so we must sacrifice even more.
However, anyone who read about the “decade of lost productivity” knows that the reason for this decline in productivity (the ratio between all inputs and the goods and services produced as a result) is the huge level of investment in the mining sector and in the privatised energy sector.
These are largely irresponsible investments by the billionaire class that locks Australia into its climate change rogue nation status.
Productivity can only return once there is more output from those massive investments in gas hubs and power stations. Workers and society as a whole are being asked to sacrifice more to make up for the delay.
Green Left Weekly will continue to make the case that there is another way forward.
We can have a society based on social justice and ecological sustainability. But only if we truly end class divisions can we have an end to class warfare and put a silver stake through the fossil fuel profit-driven nightmare vision for the future that both Labor and Liberal parties support.
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