Quarterly Essay
Issue 49 2013
'Not Dead Yet: Labor’s post-left future'
By Mark Latham
Black Inc 2013
Margaret Thatcher may be dead, but Thatcherism is alive and well and living in the bowels of social democracy if Mark Latham’s contribution to the latest Quarterly Essay, “Not Dead Yet: Labor’s post-left future”, is anything to go by.
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WikiLeaks released an enormous treasure-trove of classified US government documents in 2010. It included US military logs from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, over 250,000 diplomatic cables, and Collateral Murder, a video depicting the killing of 12 civilians by a US helicopter gunship in Iraq.
The source of the leaks, US Private Bradley Manning, acted on his conscience. He believed that people have a right to see the information he had been privy to as an army intelligence analyst. He was prepared to risk his life and liberty to reveal that information.
Bolivia is demonstrating to the world why nationalising natural resources is a crucial first step for any government seeking to put people and the environment before profits.
On May 1, 2006, less than four months after becoming president, Evo Morales decreed the nationalisation of the country’s gas reserves. This move restored state control over the strategic resource.
The Kinetic Energy theatre company, a Sydney-based independent company, has just returned from its first national tour of the year: four weeks of performing our Village Space theatre-in-education program in Tasmania, Melbourne, Gippsland, and the Riverina, across April and May.
Over the years, we have developed an engaging way of educating young people about social justice. We focus on issues such as poverty, inequality, refugees, Indigenous struggle and the environment, and how these issues are interconnected.
An important summit of global significance, held in Brazil May 16-20, has largely passed below the radar of most media outlets, including many left and progressive sources.
This summit was not the usual type, involving heads of states and business leaders.
Instead, it was a gathering of social movement representatives from across Latin America and the Caribbean -- the site of some of the most intense struggles and popular rebellions of the past few decades.
The May 22 attack in Woolwich yesterday was horrific. There can be no justification for a murderous attack on an individual soldier in the streets of London. It must have been awful, too, for the local people who witnessed it.
Unlike with most terrorist attacks or indeed other crimes, we have been able to see film footage of the perpetrators, hear testimony from the witnesses who saw or talked to them. So we know what these men say motivated them.
Over 1000 people - organisers said 1600 - marched through the streets of Perth in opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the company Monsanto (which is one of the foremost proponents of GMO technology).
As part of its federal election campaign this year, the Socialist Alliance is calling for the mining industry, the big banks and the energy companies to be put back into public hands, so that they can be run in a way that respects the environment and social justice.
But several other important industries should also be in line for nationalisation under workers' and community control in future.
This statement was released by Socialist Alliance on May 25.
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The Gonski review into school funding showed the need for an immediate injection of funds into public schools.
The independent Gonski review into school funding reaffirms what many teachers and parents already knew. Current school funding arrangements are dysfunctional and inequitable. The failure to reform the way we resource our public schools has come at a big social and economic cost.
Gonski’s recommendations are far from perfect — it recommends continued public funding of elite private schools.
I had to spend some time in waiting rooms for medical checkups recently. It was an opportunity to glance through glossy magazines.
In its latest issue, National Geographic magazine has an article entitled “Is Australia the Face of Climate Change to Come?”. It said that after a major spike in extreme weather over the past few years, scientists were looking at “the lucky country” as a “bellwether for the Earth's changing climate”.
It may not be so lucky for us but I guess being a bellwether is useful.
At the Australian Hotels Association award night on May 22, Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles said the NT's drinking culture was a "core social value". The ABC reported on May 23 that Giles said “‘having a coldie' in a pub should be 'enshrined' as part of Territory life."
Alcohol indeed is a disturbingly central part of life for many Territorians. The NT has the second-highest alcohol consumption rate in the world, and the highest rate of alcohol-related deaths in Australia.
Socialist activists are involved in political struggles across many different issues. From equal marriage rights to defending education, refugee rights to the environment, socialists help organise and lead these campaigns, and seek to win important political reforms around them.
It might seem contradictory for socialists to fight for reforms. Since socialists oppose capitalism and the capitalist state, why is it that they campaign for measures that encourage the expansion of the capitalist state?
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