Thursday, June 21, 2007

Joe MacDonald's Statement on Refusing to Resign from the ALP


Australian Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd has demanded the resignation from the party of CFMEU Western Australia Branch Assistant State Secretary Joe McDonald for refusing to leave a building site, and for swearing at a boss.

Rudd is to be thanked for the line that he has drawn between himself and genuine working class leaders in the ALP. There is no doubt that some of those leaders are still convinced that the ALP is the party of Labour, and that the Liberals are the party of Capital. They have an admirable loyalty towards what they see as "their" parliamentary party.

But the ALP was never a genuine party of the working class, even when it had its famous "socialist plank" in its policy platform.

As Lenin said, Australia is a rather peculiar place where the Conservative party is called the Liberal Party, and the liberal party of the bourgeoisie is called the Labor Party.

Events are proving that now, more than ever before, Australian workers need a genuine party of their own, one that is free to pursue the interests of the workers without commitment to the political institution of capitalism, Parliament, and beyond the confines of the economic system of private ownership of the means of production.

McDonald's statement follows:

June 21, 2007:

"On an average one worker is killed on a construction site every week.

“Both of the jobs where I was filmed were plagued by safety issues and continue to be.

“This whole debate is a huge distraction from the real challenge confronting building workers.

“I hope that when Kevin Rudd speaks of zero tolerance on lawlessness he means that bosses who kill workers with unsafe work practices will be jailed and workers who have had their entitlements stripped away by employers with the backing of the Howard Government will see justice.

“That is why I joined the Labor Party and why I would still like to see them elected at the next elections.

“Since coming to power, the Howard government has put in place the most draconian set of industrial laws in the Western world.

“Building workers now face massive fines for taking industrial action even when that action is to fix safety problems and they can be jailed for six months for refusing to answer questions from the ABCC (Australian Building and Construction Commission) about what happens at a union meeting.

“Yet a negligent boss who kills a worker or robs entitlements from his employees still retains his right to silence.

“It is an appalling double standard, something the public has come to expect from the Howard government.

“I would like to tell the Labor Party how hard it is to represent workers in the building and construction industry under the Howard government's industrial laws.

"It's a story I intend telling them during the expulsion proceedings they are going to bring against me.

“For this reason I am not going to resign.

“These are the real issues facing workers in the building and construction industry.

"Whether I remain in the Labor Party or not, I will continue to campaign to protect the rights and entitlements of building workers.”

1 comment:

Adelaide Gamer said...

Hear! Hear! Good old ALP, haven't changed since expelled Adam Smith for having temerity to organise the numbers and get the socialisation of productive capital onto the platform for all of 24 hours in the thirties! Keep on blogging, fellow slave.