Dave Riley
A day after admitting that he took policy leads from interstate ALP governments and New Labour in Britain, state Coalition leader Lawrence Spingborg accused Queensland Labor of policy theft. "This is just plagiarism", he said, "at the most extraordinary level."
Sharing the same rhetoric and chasing the same policy essentials, the major parties seem determined not to do anything that may upset the main theme of guaranteeing "stable and responsible" government.
While it is clear that Labor will be returned to government, probably with a reduced majority, the election period has highlighted how conservative this government is.
Premier Peter Beattie's early campaign pitch for the environment vote and Green Party preferences — by offering a $150 rural compensation package to phase out broad-scale land clearing in the state — has drawn attention to his government's shameful neglect of this issue.
Around half a million hectares of bushland is cleared each year in Queensland. This is more than three quarters of all land cleared annually throughout Australia. While the 2000 Vegetation Management Act was supposed to stop clearing in high-conservation areas, since the act was introduced the state government has given out permits to clear more than 700,000 hectares of bushland — an area almost six times the size of Brisbane.
This should have been a welcome policy gesture, but years of Labor inaction on the issue have meant it has been met with general cynicism. If Labor has been so tardy over such a core environmental concern, then the message is that we shouldn't be holding out for more. Despite a later election pledge not to dam the wild rivers of Cape York, the future for the Queensland environment is bleak.
As the Queensland Greens pointed out, "the record of a government during office holds considerably more weight than a promise made in the weeks before an election."
If there is cause for concern about those issues where Labor is making promises, then what about those where they aren't?
Stolen wages is one such issue. For most of the 20th Century, the Aboriginal and Islander work force in Queensland — on missions, reserves and pastoral stations — were routinely paid 40-60% less than the standard award rates received by equivalent white workers.
Through a system of compulsory charges and wage garnishing, the state government also levied Aboriginal wages. The levy went into maintaining reserves, or into poorly administered trust accounts, the dividends from which were often reinvested.
While the state government recognised in 1979 that underpaying reserve workers was illegal, reserve workers were still getting 75% of award rates as late as 1984. In 2000, after losing a series of court cases on under-award wages, the Beattie government made an initial $25 million available to pay all workers. The payout did not include mission workers.
So far, one in every four people who have applied for compensation has been knocked back by the state government. As Socialist Alliance candidate for South Brisbane Lynda Hansen told Green Left Weekly: "Currently the Queensland Labor government is offering up to $4000 to each person affected by 'stolen wages'. Not only are Indigenous people often enduring Third World conditions, they are being offered a settlement that would cause the CEO of Nike to blush!"
While both major parties have pledged to lift the ceiling for stamp duty exemption for first home buyers, the Beattie government has been quietly cashing in public housing stock. While dwelling commencements or purchases have fallen from 900 in 1997-98 to a projected 300 this year, receipts from the sale of government-owned public housing have soared from $24 million in 1998 to $73 million in 2003 — with only 17% of being sold to tenants. Public housing waiting lists have now grown to a record 31,760.
With a state-wide real-estate boom, this ready liquidation of public assets is pulling in top dollar. But figures collected by Shelter Queensland suggest that around 25,000 people are homeless in this state.
Given that Queensland has the nation's lowest percentage of public housing supply, even the Nationals have tried to tackle Labor from the left on this. Robert Schwarten, the shadow housing minister, has insisted that under Labor, "the only thing going up in public housing is the waiting lists. Public housing should be about people not profits."
You could expect that, since the Labor government has a massive majority of 43 seats in the one-chamber parliament, it would be free to do as it pleases. But that hasn't happened — nor is it likely to.
Legal reform of abortion is formally a part of the ALP platform. Abortion is still listed in the state's criminal code but Wayne Goss, when ALP premier, excluded abortion from any review of the criminal code, as did the Nationals in 1996. Beattie has simply ignored the issue and won't be drawn on it.
Women's rights activist Coral Wynter told GLW, "We call on the premier to carry out some major reforms in the coming term". Wynter, the Socialist Alliance candidate for South Brisbane, was clear where the priorities should lie. "For a start", she said, "the ALP could easily repeal the anti-abortion laws in this state, and remove abortion from the criminal code once and for all — as the great majority of Queenslanders, women and men, favour."
A similar take has been advocated by Adrian Skerritt, the Socialist Alliance's candidate for the seat of Inala. Skerritt has been actively campaigning against public housing sell-offs — approximately 400 public houses have been sold off over the past four years in the Inala district alone. He has already been arrested for protesting the selloffs.
As Jim McIlroy, a spokesperson for the Socialist Alliance election campaign, told Green Left Weekly, "Beattie won't change tack unless we force him to. To that end, this election can be part of a broad process of ensuring that there are some issues in this state that we won't let go away."
[Dave Riley is a member of the Socialist Alliance. Visit <http://www.socialist-alliance.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 4, 2004.
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