Joe McDonald Vindicated on Site Safety

When a video was released some months ago showing West Australian CFMEU Assistant secretary Joe McDonald arguing with a building boss about his right to have a meeting of CFMEU members on safety issues, the anti-union lobby went berserk.

Chief among them was ALP Opposition leader Kevin Rudd, who demanded Joe's expulsion from the ALP. Joe had apparently insulted the dogs of the nation by calling the building boss a "fucking , thieving parasite dog".

But at 9am on Thursday July 5, a metre-square concrete slab plummeted 16 storeys to the ground, prompting workers to walk off the job and call for Joe to assist them.

"I am so glad that no-one has died here today," said Joe.

Sixteen floors above the Perth CBD we have had cement panels collapse exposing up to 50 workers and the general public to potential death and serious injury."

Referring to the incident which had caused Rudd to lose his marbles, McDoanld said "On that day I swore. Today tonnes of concrete collapsed from the 16th floor. Which of these is more serious?"

Neither construction company Q-Con nor Kevin Rudd were prepared to comment.

P.S. Joe's a real fashion plate. In the photo above, his braces are adorned with the Eureka flag.

But this lot below are pretty good too!

A Treaty, an apology, schools, housing and health

There can be no reconciliation between the indigenous peoples of Australia and the settler peoples until a Treaty exists acknowledging Aboriginal and Torres Strait people’s prior ownership of this country. The Treaty must acknowledge that the essence of the relationship between indigenous and settler Australians was that the invasion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands was essentially accomplished by force and violence or the threat of force and violence. It must promise to protect indigenous culture in the form of real and lasting Land Rights.

There can be no reconciliation between the indigenous peoples of Australia and the Australian Government until there is a formal apology given to the Stolen Generation by an Australian Prime Minister.

These are the two essential obligations on the settler peoples and their Government towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

No lasting positive outcomes will be found to the problems described in the Little Children Are Sacred report until settler Australia formally declares its respect for indigenous peoples as the original owners of this country.

And those outcomes will not occur as a result of a reinvasion of indigenous lands by a task force of police and army personnel whose purpose is to expedite the process by which mining companies will remove resources from those lands.

It will come when more resources – extra teachers, health workers and better housing – are put into indigenous lands and are given the support and conditions that will make their presence a long-term proposition.

Housing

Housing needs to be such that the chronic overcrowding on the one hand, and homelessness on the other, endemic throughout indigenous communities, is alleviated.

How can children not be unaware of adult sexual behaviour when eight to ten people share mattresses in a room? When twenty people in a house is not uncommon? Why would kids struggling to sleep in blankets next to a campfire on a cold desert night bother to “rise and shine” and head off to school on time? Who’d swap a cold blackboard for a warm blanket and the chance to catch up on some shut-eye?

Indigenous Affairs Monster Mal Brough paid a flying visit to several Aboriginal communities yesterday (July 5). At the Ltyentye Apurte (Santa Teresa) community 85km southeast of Alice Springs (right), he was told that “housing is a big problem here”.

Santa Teresa senior Aboriginal community police officer Phillip Alice said that in his 16 years at Santa Teresa he had never seen child sexual abuse, but he had seen plenty of problems with alcohol and housing. “We need to ask the Federal Government for more housing because there is overcrowding here,” he said.

The same message was presented to Brough when he reached Imanpa community, formerly part of the giant Angus Downs cattle station halfway between the Alice and Uluru. Imanpa community housing manager Deidre Finter said only four of the 19 houses in the 160-member community were habitable. The others had leaking pipes and sewerage, bare concrete floors, no power and no space.

“Every report on the dire situation of indigenous people recommended fixing the overcrowded, grim housing situation first,” she said. “All the other issues flowed from poor housing…the most vulnerable are living in these terrible conditions.”

And Brough’s response?

“Building more houses is not the answer,” he said (Advertiser 6/7/07).

Education

Education, according to the Little Children report, is “the key factor”: “As the Inquiry has been told, the powerless need to be empowered with information before anything else can be done” (p. 152).

Yet, as the report also notes, “staffing decisions are based on attendance and not enrolments. This means that even if all Aboriginal children turned up at their local school tomorrow, there would not be enough teachers, classrooms and resources for them” (p. 150)

The staffing formula is (teacher: student) is 1:26. The Wadeye school (left) southwest of Darwin is staffed for an enrolment of 300, when there are estimated to be between 760 and 900 students who are eligible to attend. Some other schools are closed more often than open, in part because of poor attendance and in part because the NT Education Department can’t get teachers and principals and other support staff to stay. Another school halfway between Katherine and Tenant Creek had ten changes of principal in the one year and a complete change of registered teaching staff from 2006 to 2007. The average teacher tenure in 50 remote NT schools is six months, with three changes in principal.

The Little Children report reinforces the position of the NT branch of the Australian Education Union, namely, that the NT Department of Education (DEET) must change its staffing formula and must “adequately cost out how much is needed to undertake the task of properly educating all Aboriginal children in the NT irrespective of where they live” (p. 152). It “urges DEET to reduce class sizes, especially in the lower grades” (p. 153) and calls for incentives packages to encourage teachers to stay in remote locations for up to three years (p. 154). These are just some of the ten main and 24 sub-sets of recommendations on school and community education in the report.

Yet when Opposition leader Kevin Rudd finally shed his parrot costume to say something different to John Howard – offering to fund an additional 200 teachers in remote Aboriginal schools, Howard and Brough rejected the idea, claiming that they funded enough student places in the NT already! (Australian 2/7/07)

Health

Indigenous Australians die younger on average than settler Australians.

In remote communities, Aboriginal people have chronic health problems associated with poor nutrition, alcohol, drug and substance abuse, boredom, low self-esteem and a now near-sedentary or sit-down lifestyle. These are problems of acute physical and psychological deterioration. Health workers do what they can, but they are too few and too removed from the communities they try to serve. The Mutitjulu community at Uluru receives a paltry $400,000 from the Uluru admission fees which are $25 per person per day for somewhere around million visitors, yet there is no dialysis machine, power and water supply.

Mutitjulu community leaders Dorothea and Bob Randall said recently, “There is money set aside from the Jimmy Little foundation for a kidney dialysis machine at Mutitjulu, but National Parks won’t let us have it. That would create jobs and improve indigenous health but they just keep stonewalling us. If there is an emergency, why won’t Mal Brough fast-track our kidney dialysis machine?”

“We welcome any real support for indigenous health and welfare and even two police will assist, but the Howard Government declared an emergency at our community over two years ago -- when they appointed an administrator to our health clinic -- and since then we have been without a doctor, we have fewer health workers, our council has been sacked, and all our youth and health programmes have been cut.” “Some commentators have made much of the cluster of sexually transmitted diseases identified at our health clinic. People need to understand that the Mutitjulu health clinic (now effectively closed) is a regional clinic and patients come from as far away as WA and SA; so, to identify a cluster here is meaningless without seeing the confidential patient data,” they said.

The Australian Medical Association called for about $450 million to be spent in the latest Federal budget to address the indigenous health crisis, yet when the budget was announced it was a fraction of this cost.

The identification of child victims of sexual abuse and the prosecution of perpetrators is long overdue. The problems have been known about for ages. But the identification must be done sensitively, and invasive vaginal and anal examination is not the only, and not the preferred, method for many, including medical practitioners who have warned that compulsion in these matters may lay them open to charges of assault.

And whilst child abuse is a problem in the indigenous community, it is no less a problem in the settler community as well. An unidentified prison officer, with 8 years experience in NSW and the NT, wrote on an ABC chatline (July 2, 2007) that “I can assure you that I have locked up far more white paedophiles than black, same for alcohol and drug offences etc, etc.” William Elliott, a Wirraduri man, wrote in the same chatline “The issue I would like to address is about the Governments storm trooper tactics and hidden agenda around Child Protection. I work in the field of child protection as a PANOC counselor, and child sexual, physical, psychological abuse is not just a BLACK ISSUE. It exists ACROSS CULTURES, it is also White urban and rural, cities and country. CHILD ABUSE IS NOT A BLACK ISSUE, although it is very severe with Indigenous populations.”

Unfortunately, Howard and Brough have made child abuse a “black issue” as a smokescreen for their dismantling of Aboriginal Land Rights on behalf of the giant multinational mining corporations whom they serve.

Their “concern” for the indigenous communities is expressed through their vehement opposition to a Treaty and an apology, to their opposition to funding for education, housing and health in Aboriginal communities.

Howard and Brough stand condemned as men of evil.

Mining Companies Behind Howard's "Emergency" Action

Prime Monster John Howard’s decision to declare that a state of emergency exists in relation to Aboriginal child abuse in the Northern Territory is not a knee-jerk reaction to the Wild-Anderson Little Children Are Sacred[1] report.

The elements of his response that have suggested a “land grab” to many people – scrapping the entry permit system, the seizure of indigenous land for five years, the empty promise of “compensation” (more flour, sugar and tea?) for lands not returned after the expiry of that five years, replacing communal title to land with individual title to homes on 99-year leases, or renting at market rates – were signaled last year in Mal Brough’s Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (DFCSIA) discussion paper Access to Aboriginal Land Under the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Rights Act – Time for Change?[2]

The discussion paper was released in October 2006 with submissions due by 28 February 2007.
Despite a nod in the direction of “respecting the integrity of Aboriginal land”, the purpose of the discussion paper was clearly to support Brough’s view that “Liberalisation (of the restrictive permit system) would also bring economic benefits that would help to promote the self-reliance and prosperity of Aboriginal people in remote communities.”

There was no spelling out of the “economic benefits” that a removal of the entry permit system would bring to Aboriginal people. Nevertheless, abolishing the system was seen as facilitating “the normal interactions necessary for social and economic development.”

Alarm bells should have started ringing when these phrases were trotted out.

Did Brough have it in mind that only by removing the entry permits would Aboriginal people in remote communities be able to own a McDonald’s or a Jim’s Mowing franchise?

Because if that was the intention, the communities could have exercised their right to allow such businesses to be established by Aboriginal people and still have kept their legal right to determine who would enter their lands.

Clearly, something much bigger was at stake.

That “something bigger”, whatever it was, was clearly dissatisfied at changes introduced in the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Act 2006 that already, as the discussion paper noted, “significantly relaxed the permit system in leased townships” (one assumes that “leased townships” rather than open bush country is where most “normal interactions necessary for social and economic development” might have occurred).

The 7-page discussion paper picks up speed a bit in the section entitled “Problems under current arrangements”. The “problems” are essentially two-fold. Firstly, the permit system has “contributed to denying Aboriginal people access to the normal advantages of mainstream Australian society. External scrutiny, from the media for example, while sometimes unnecessarily intrusive, acts as a check and balance on unhealthy or even criminal behaviour.” Without debating the propositions that the media promotes violence and sexual obsession in “mainstream society”, and that it needs crime in all its sensationalized manifestations in order to boost audiences or circulation figures, the idea that a clutch of journalists might have such an impact on each of 60 or so remote indigenous communities that criminal and unhealthy behaviour might be brought into check, is frankly laughable. The track record of the media in relation to indigenous issues does not inspire that level of confidence.

The second “problem”, according to the discussion paper, brings us back to the economic argument: “The permit system…has hindered effective engagement between Aboriginal people and the Australian economy…Individual Aboriginal people who have wanted to engage in the market economy or mainstream Australian society have, in effect, been prevented by gate keepers.”

Having identified these two “problems”, it is not surprising that the top two, of eight, “principles of a new system” are:

1. Ensure the normal interactions of society can occur, including external scrutiny.
2. Allow individual Aboriginal people to engage with and benefit from the market economy without hindrance.

It is a fact of Australian mainstream political life that no parliamentary party, when in office, sends out a discussion paper or engages in community consultation, without knowing in advance the outcomes that it seeks to achieve. Thus, the discussion paper presents five “options”, four of which suggest modifications to the current permit system. The shortcomings and drawbacks of each of these are outlined. The fifth option is to “Remove the permit system altogether”. Normal laws of trespass, with any necessary modification for Aboriginal land (i.e. sacred sites and ceremonial grounds) would operate. This option would “normalize access arrangements for Aboriginal land”. The only “problem” is that “The vastness of the Aboriginal land estate and associated coastline would however present difficulties for effective trespass enforcement”.

Clearly the preferred option and the outcome that the Federal Government was seeking from its October 2006 discussion paper, the removal of the permit system and the normalizing of access arrangements for Aboriginal land had been planned well in advance of the release in May 2007 of the Little Children are Sacred report.

The real intended beneficiaries of such a change are not Aboriginal people. Point 2 above might be more accurately reworded as “Allow giant multinational mining and agribusiness corporations to engage with and benefit from the Aboriginal lands without hindrance.” According to Gavin Mudd, an environmental engineer with over ten year’s experience of visiting remote Aboriginal communities in which mining companies have an interest, “It is no coincidence that many of the communities targeted for ‘military style intervention’ are also areas that are heavily targeted for minerals exploration, particularly uranium, as well as for potential nuclear waste dumps.”[3]

It is interesting to note that not long after the discussion paper was released last year, a Senate Standing Committee released recommendations under the heading; “Unfinished Business: Indigenous Stolen Wages”[4]. This referred to the “flour, sugar and tea” days of 40 years ago when pastoralists and government officials refused to pay or underpaid wages and withheld welfare entitlements from Aboriginal people. The Senate Committee called on the Federal and State Governments to act on its recommendations “as a matter of urgency”. Needless to say, teams of police and armed forces personnel have not been dispatched to archives rooms to assist in the recovery of wages stolen from indigenous people.

However, the Pastoralists and Graziers Association of Western Australia, where there are about 300 remote Aboriginal communities and outstations, have applauded Howard’s emergency measures. President Sandy McTaggart said “We’ve been suspicious of the way that Aboriginal affairs have been going ever since there was the equal opportunity and wage case decisions that were made back in the sixties.”[5]

So another way in which Aboriginal people might “engage with and benefit from the market economy without hindrance” is to return to employment as cheap labour on un-Australian Workplace Agreements (they remove the “hindrances”) in the pastoral industry. And what better way to “encourage” a return to pastoral employment than to quarantine up to 40% of some families’ welfare payments.

No wonder Pat Turner, one of the country’s most senior Indigenous officials, has denounced Howard’s “concern for abused children” as a Trojan Horse concealing a land grab[6]. (The Trojan Horse was a huge wooden “gift” presented to the Trojans by the Greeks, who were pretending to lift their ten-year siege of Troy. As the Trojans slept that night, the Greek soldiers concealed inside the hollow horse unbolted the city gates and gave entry to their armymen who pillaged the city and took its inhabitants into slavery – an apt metaphor indeed!)

While some aspects of the Prime Monster’s “emergency measures” show the signs of a hurried response (the intrusive medical checks, the bans on grog and porn, the rejection of suggestions for more teachers and better housing), the land grab that they concealed has been long in the planning and will be the one aspect of this sorry mess that will prove to be a sustainable component.

[1] Ampe Akelyememane Meke Mekarle: “Little Children Are Sacred”, Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, 2007.
[2] Access to Aboriginal Land Under the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Rights Act - Time for Change?, Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, October 2006.
[3] Using children to nuke Aboriginal land rights, Gavin Mudd, Crikey website, June 27, 2007
[4] Unfinished Business: Indigenous Stolen Wages, Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, December 2006.
[5] WA pastoralists back Govt abuse plan for NT, http://www.abc.com.au/news/stories/2007/06/27/1963483.htm
[6] Aboriginal alliance says government plan ‘unworkable’, http://www.nit.com.au/news/story.aspx?id=11795

Mutitjulu Community Statement

Conversation: Mutitjulu Community Statement
Subject: Mutitjulu Community Statement

*Dear friends*
*Please pass this on to as many people as possible. Send to the Media

- These are the questions which need to be asked.
.................................................................

LEADERS OF THE MUTITJULU COMMUNITY TODAY
QUESTIONED THE NEED FOR A
MILITARY OCCUPATION OF THEIR SMALL COMMUNITY.

We welcome any real support for indigenous health and welfare
and even two police will assist, but the Howard Government
declared an emergency at our community over two years ago -
when they appointed an administrator to our health clinic -
and since then we have been without a doctor, we have less
health workers, our council has been sacked, and all our youth
and health programmes have been cut.

We have no CEO and limited social and health services.
The government has known about our overcrowding problem
for at least 10 years and they've done nothing about it.

How do they propose keeping alcohol out of our community
when we are 20 minutes away from 5 star hotel? Will they
ban blacks from Yulara? We have been begging for an alcohol
counsellor and rehabilitation worker so that we can help
alcoholics and substance abusers but those pleas have been
ignored. What will happen to alcoholics when this ban is
introduced? How will the government keep the grog runners
out of our community without a permit system?

We have tried to put forward projects to make our community
economically sustainable - like a simple coffee cart at the
sunrise locations - but the government refuses to even consider
them.

There is money set aside from the Jimmy Little foundation
for a kidney dialysis machine at Mutitjulu, but National Parks
won't let us have it.

That would create jobs and improve indigenous health but
they just keep stonewalling us. If there is an emergency,
why won't Mal Brough fast track our kidney dialysis
machine?

Some commentators have made much of the cluster of
sexually transmitted diseases identified at our health
clinic. People need to understand that Mutitjulu Health
Clinic (now effectively closed) is a regional clinic and patients
come from as far away as WA and SA; so to identify a
cluster here is meaningless without seeing the confidential
patient data.

The fact that we hold this community together with no
money, no help, no doctor and no government support is a
miracle. Any community, black or white would struggle if they
were denied the most basic resources. Police and the
Military are fine for logistics and coordination but healthcare,
youth services, education and basic housing are more
essential.

Any programme must involve the people on the ground or
it won't work.

For example who will interpret for the military?

Our women and children are scared about being forcibly
examined; surely there is a need to build trust. Even the
doctors say they are reluctant to examine a young child
without a parent's permission. Of course any child that is
vulnerable or at risk should be immediately protected but
a wholesale intrusion into our women and children's
privacy is a violation of our human and sacred rights.

Where is the money for all the essential services? We need
long term financial and political commitment to provide
the infrastructure and planning for our community. There
is an urgent need for 10's of millions of dollars to do what
needs to be done. Will Mr Brough give us a commitment
beyond the police and military?

The Commonwealth needs to work with us to put health and
social services, housing and education in place rather than
treating Mutitjulu as a political football.

BUT WE NEED TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT:

1. There is no evidence of any fraud or mismanagement at
Mutitjulu - we have had an administration for 12 months that
found nothing.

2. Mal Brough and his predecessor have been in control
of our community for at least 12 months and we have gone
backwards in services.

3. We have successfully eradicated petrol sniffing from our
community in conjunction with government authorities
and oil companies.

4. We have thrown suspected paedophiles out of our
community using the permit system which our government
now seeks take away from us.

5. We will work constructively with any government,
State, Territory or Federal that wants to help aboriginal
people.

Lightnin' Slim:Cummins Prison Farm

Blues is the musical expression of a pre-revolutionary consciousness of the oppressed. It's a way of dealing with despair and hardship by articulating it in song, either in order to draw attention to the cause of the problem, or in order to deal with it by making fun of it or the person or thing that has caused it.

Sure, a lot of it is a man putting down a woman or vice versa, but much of it stands as social commentary, reflecting the life stories of men and women at the bottom of society.

Lightnin' Slim was born as Otis Hicks in 1913 in southern Lousiana. Some biographers are dismissive of his lack of musical originality (“Slim's stock-in-trade had mostly fallen off the back of other people's trucks,” declared Tony Russell in The Blues from Robert Johnson to Robert Cray), but the man who recorded him at the start of his career has a different view:

“…I'll listen to anyone that will come to my studio…If you see an ole country boy, that's your blues man; not your other guy that knows his music on a higher level – because he's not a blues man no more….If they don't feel the material they're singin' - that's it. People can distinguish whether they're authentic or not or whether it's just a synthetic singer and that's all…Now Lightnin' Slim, of course as far as knowledge of music I would say he knows less about knowledge of music than anyone else that I record, but for all that he's one of my best sellers for the simple reason that what he does, he does feelin' it. His father was a tenant farmer and they lived out there in the country and after the men would get through work they used to sit out there and they'd start to playin' and singin' you know. And they'd sing these ole blues and the blues was generally bad luck and the troubles they have…Slim seems to give out more of something real…” (J. D. Miller, recording studio owner, Louisiana, in Conversation with the Blues by Paul Oliver, Cambridge University Press).

The song I've transcribed below reflects black prison life. (There is also a version by Magic Sam that I don't have, but if anyone has got it and can help me with the line I found hard to transcribe, I'd appreciate it.) The Cummins Prison Farm’s history of brutality and torture has been documented (like the use of the "Tucker telephone" - right - used to administer electric shocks to prisoners until the mid-1970s) and links to various articles can be found at Wikipedia or here at Answers.com: http://www.answers.com/topic/cummins-unit

Prof. Randall G. Sheldon has an article on the Blackcommentator website that explores the place of various types of slavery in the capitalist system. He makes the point that: “It can also be said that the use of inmates as a form of cheap labor has been part of the capitalist system from the beginning, as owners seek to maximize profits however they can, including using the cheapest form of labor, whether it be slaves, immigrant labor, or inmates. In fact, taking advantage of those imprisoned (in various forms, including slavery) has been common among nations for centuries.”

I downloaded this version of Cummins Prison Farm from the excellent “Honey, Where You Been So Long” archive of pre-WW2 blues material.

CUMMINS PRISON FARM

I was born in Missoura
Across the line from Arkinsaw
Oh yes I was
I was born in Missoura
Across the line from Arkinsaw
Oh yeah
Didn't have any money
I got in trouble
With the law

It's hard being a prisoner
Down on Cummins Prison Farm
It's hard being a prisoner, y'all
Down on Cummins Prison Farm
Oh yes it is
Down there start thinkin'
Till you're some of 'em and that's all
{I'm pretty sure this line is wrong, but can't get any clearer}

I hadn't been there but one day
And I learned that you don't play
I hadn't been down there but one day
And I learned that you don't play
Oh no you don't
Been there forever
Tomorrow gonna be a long
Hard day

Yeah…

Warden be a good man
You oughtta free me from this mess
Warden now be a good man
You oughtta free me from this mess
Warden look me in the eye
Down here with Slim
We have a lot of good men

Howard's New Tampa - Aboriginal children overboard

(Below is the text of an article by Jennifer Martiniello which will be forwarded to major newspapers in Australia. Please pass on to your networks. Jennifer Martiniello is a writer and academic of Arrernte, Chinese and Anglo descent. She is a former Deputy Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, and a current member of the Advisory Board of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the ANU. Please see Jennifer's website - address below -and read her excellent poetry on indigenous issues - Mike)

Howard's New Tampa - Aboriginal Children Overboard Howard's new Tampa children overboard are our Aboriginal children. The Little Children are Sacred report does not advocate physically and psychologically invasive examinations of Aboriginal children, which could only be carried out anally and vaginally. It does not recommend scrapping the permit system to enter Aboriginal lands, nor does it recommend taking over Aboriginal 'towns' by enforced leases. These latter two points in the Howard scheme hide the true reason for the Federal Government's use of the latest report for blatant political opportunism.

It has been an openly stated agenda that Howard wants to move Aboriginal people off their lands, and has made recent attempts to buy off Aboriginal people by offering them millions for agreeing to lease their lands to the Federal Government, e.g. Tiwi Islands and Tangentyere in Alice Springs. There was also the statement by the Federal Government that it could not continue (?!) to provide essential services to remote communities, which raised an uproar of responses in the press. The focus on the sexual abuse of children is guaranteed to evoke the most emotive responses, and therefore command attention, just like the manipulation of the Tampa situation. But while the attention of the media and the public is being emotionally coerced, what is being sneaked in under the covers?

Two issues specifically - mining companies have applied for more exploration permits in the Northern Territory, the Jabiluka uranium mining operations at Kakadu have already hit the media because of the mining company's applications to the Government to significantly expand its operations, including establishing new mines at Coronation Hill, and another critical issue - nuclear waste. The Howard Government has already mooted that nuclear waste should be dumped in the Northern Territory, on Aboriginal lands. Aboriginal traditional owners are absolutely opposed to this. We have a long history of deaths and illness from radiation, from the atomic tests at Woomera in the 1950s to the current high incidences of carcinomas in the community at Kakadu near the Jabiluka site. The main obstacle to the Federal Government's desired expansion of mining operations in the Northern Territory and nuclear waste dumping is, of course, the Aboriginal people who have occupancy of, and rights under the common law to, their traditional lands.

Following the stages of the Howard Government's usual modus operandi (defund, blame, eliminate), defunding of critical programs for remote Aboriginal community projects began in July 2004, with coerced changes to funding contracts, and monies for critically needed youth and health programs in remote areas being the first dollars to go. Take Mutitjulu for example, which was notoriously profiled by the ABC's Nightline program. I say notorious because one of Senator Mal Brough's personal staffers was the so-called ex-youth worker interviewed on that program, and the content of that interview was laden with myths and mistruths. The staffer in question failed to appear when summoned before a Senate inquiry to explain and the Senator's office is yet to issue a statement. When the community lodged a formal protest to Government, it was raided and their computers seized. But the program did show the effects of the Howard Government defunding of essential programs on that community, in particular the youth centre and health centre. The people at Mutitjulu also just happen to be the traditional owners of Uluru, one of this country's most lucrative tourist attractions. The Howard Government would not like us to ask who benefits by the people of Mutitjulu being forced off their community. Under the amendments to Native Title made by the Howard Government, once Aboriginal people have left their traditional lands, forcibly or otherwise, their rights under the common law that every other Australian enjoys over their land are significantly impaired.

Progressive defunding of Aboriginal art centres has also begun, with a range of community art centres not having their funding renewed by DCITA in July 2005 and 2006 in the Northern Territory, from communities in Arnhemland to mid and southern Territory communities. The art production facilitated by those Aboriginal art centres are the only means through which members of those communities can actually earn a living, as opposed to being on welfare. But then, dependent people are easier to control by means of that dependency. The Howard Government's failed Shared Responsibility Agreements (SRAs) have also been the catalyst for further blame shifting and progressive defunding, take Wadeye for example.

Our Aboriginal communities are being squeezed further into dysfunction and disenfranchisement by carefully targeted political engineering, the systemic and ruthless roll-out of a planned agenda. It is no accident that Howard's scheme to address what he calls the urgency of the Little Children are Sacred report's 97 recommendations was trotted out so very quickly, and addresses so very few of those recommendations. It is sheer political opportunism to advance an already in motion agenda, and to score points in an election year. After all, The Little Children are Sacred report is not the first of such reports, nor are its findings and recommendations new. The Federal Government has had the 1989, 1991, 1993, 1997 and 2002 reports gathering dust and deliberate inaction on its shelves. Perhaps Mr Howard has been saving them up for a rainy election year? And of course Mr Howard's scheme targets only Aboriginal communities, despite the fact that the findings specifically state that non- Aboriginal men, that is, white men, are a significant proportion of the offenders, who are black-marketeering in petrol and alcohol to gain access to Aboriginal children. What measures is the Howard Government going to take about non-Aboriginal sex offenders, pornographers, substance traffickers and the like? Nothing according to the measures announced, but then, they're not Aboriginal and they don't live on the Aboriginal communities where their victims live.

So who are the real victims here, the silenced victims of John Howard's scheme? Aboriginal children, of course, who will be subject to physically and psychologically invasive medical examinations, irrespective of their home and family circumstances, and who will deal with the mental and emotional fall-out from that? Aboriginal men, too, who become the silenced scapegoats, painted by default by John Howard as all being drunken, child-raping monsters. Perhaps the fact that almost every picture shown of Aboriginal men in the media these days shows them drunk, with a slab, cask or bottle under their arms leads Mr Howard to expect that one to pass unchallenged, irrespective of the fact that statistics show that only 15% of Aboriginal people drink alcohol, socially or otherwise, compared to around 87% of non-Aboriginal Australians. The greater majority of Aboriginal men are good, decent people. Perhaps the media would like to rethink its portrayals of Aboriginal men? How about some photos of the other alcoholics, you know, the white ones. There's more of them.

And what of our communities? The Howard Government also hasn't mentioned that the majority of Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory are already dry communities, decided and enforced by those communities. But then that would spoil the picture Mr Howard wants to paint of our Aboriginal communities. Other large communities, such as Daly River, have controlled the situation by only having alcohol available from the community's club and enforce a strict four can limit. Also forgotten in the current politically opportunistic furore is the fact that Aboriginal communities around Tennant Creek and Katherine have been lobbying Governments and town councils for decades to restrict the sale of alcohol on Thursdays, when Aboriginal community people come to town for supplies. So far their pleas have been rejected. Nothing in Mr Howard's plan to facilitate that, either. Or about the control of alcohol when those people, once forced off the communities into the towns, bring their problems with them, child abuse or alcoholism and all the rest. Of course that would make access to Aboriginal children a lot easier for white offenders, they won't have to go so far to find a victim.

One last word on focus of attention. In the famous Redfern Address, the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating asked perhaps the most important question for all Australians to consider. He said 'We failed to ask the most basic of questions. We failed to ask - What if this were done to us?' What if this were done to us - to Mr and Mrs Average Australian, to our schools, youth centres, health centres, access to medical care, communities, homes, children, grandchildren? After all, current national health reports from a wide range of health organisations name sexual abuse of non-Indigenous Australian children as a crisis area in need of urgent attention. And the numbers of victims are higher. National reports into mainstream domestic violence, alcohol and substance abuse also call for urgent action, again the issues are at crisis level, and the numbers of victims and abusers are far higher than in the Little Children are Sacred report. None of the recommendations in all of those hundreds of national health reports recommend compulsory sexual health tests for every Australian child under sixteen. Not one of them recommends that a viable solution is closing down youth and health programs, in fact they all advocate that more are needed. None recommend that the victims' or the offenders' communities and homes should be surrendered to the Federal Government and put under compulsory lease agreements, and none advocate processes which would lead to either the victims or the abusers losing their rights under common law to their property as measure to control or remedy the occurrence of abuse. Would the Howard Government even dare to contemplate such as that? I think not. It would be un-Australian, and the Government it would expect immediate legal repercussions on the grounds of impairment of human rights, extinguishment of rights under common law, discrimination, and a raft of other constitutional issues. Besides, Mr and Mrs Average Australian don't, for the most part, live on top of uranium and mineral deposits or future nuclear waste dumps.

But seriously, the most critical question for all Australians to ask themselves in the lead up to this year's Federal Election is just that - What if it were done to us? With full acknowledgment of what has already been done to workers, trade unions, student unions, public primary, secondary and tertiary education, elderly care, palliative care, medicare, crisis health care, nurses, teachers, multicultural affairs, migrant groups, women, child care, small businesses and artsworkers, among the many, through the exercise of policies of social engineering and fear, your answer at the polling booth may just determine whether it will be done to you, or continue to be done to you. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald 25th June, the Howard Government last week used the military to seize control of 60 Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, which are now under military occupation. This is not Israel and Palestine. The Northern Territory is not Gaza or the West Bank. This is Australia - but is it the Australia you thought you lived in? Walk in our shoes, Aboriginal Australia's, and ask yourselves, what would it be like to have this done to us? And then, walk with us.

Jennifer Martiniello

Warning: This email may contain creative spelling!

Jennifer Martiniello e: kemarre@optusnet.com.au m: 0423629470 w: http://www.kemarrearts.com.au

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and that is, an idea whose time has come". Victor Hugo.

Andrew Biven: Communities Overboard

(I am posting this article as it helps clarify the issues at hand. The writer, Andrew Biven is currently working at Maningrida in Arnhem Land - prior to this he was the Director of the South Australian Network of Drug and Alcohol Services.)

Dear people who are in my Address Book,

My apologies for contacting you out of the blue - however numbers of us Balanders (whitefellas) up here have decided we needed to contact as many people as possible and begin to get the message out that what Howard and Brough are proposing is not the way to go.

Picture sixty Aboriginal communities in the NT floundering in the sea of national indifference for decades. Suddenly, in a time of political crisis for the ruling party, an emergency that has been slowly emerging during those decades is grasped and radical, ill conceived (and some would say entirely cynical) measures are imposed with expressions of general self righteous indignation and opprobrium at the behaviour of those communities in flinging themselves and particularly their children, into the waters of dysfunction.

Shame and blame are two powerful weapons of the dominant culture and can only spell a further deterioration in the conditions for Aboriginal communities. I urge you to contact your local politician and in all other ways help to bring to light the ill-conceived nature of the responses Howard and Brough announced last week.

Few would question some of the desired outcomes protection of children, greater participation, motivation and self-esteem. However, what has been proposed is short-term, imposed, misdirected and unsupported by decades of evidence of what works and particularly, what patently doesn¹t work. To make impositions on functional as well as supposedly dysfunctional communities make even less sense.

It is, of course, difficult for anyone to speak out as it is so easy to brand them as indifferent to the plight of abused children. It is also so easy and convenient to trample the rights of whole communities in the scramble to remedy a situation that has been known and ignored for at least the last ten years and has it origins 200 years ago.

Let¹s leave aside our cynicism about why this issue suddenly needs such focus and closely examine what is being proposed to see if it can be done and if it will work. First though, a word about situations where perceptions of child sex abuse may in fact be children exposed to sexual situations leading to assumptions that the kids are directly the targets.

This is not to deny that there are not situations of direct physical sexual abuse. However, the more common situation may be less shocking.

The average household occupancy in this community is 17 people. Houses are small, miniscule by McMansion standards. People mostly sleep on foam mattresses scattered around the floors with two, three or more to a mattress. People don't like to be alone anywhere - you don't go out without a couple of family or friends - too scary. Privacy is rare and children from their first years no doubt witness sex occurring in all its manifestations much as they do in all societies where there is communal sleeping. Therefore, the knowledge even very young children have about sexual acts is very much greater than in our single person per room culture.

In those circumstances it would be understandable that some young children might play act the scenes they witness most nights. It’s also pretty lively in these homes at night with lots of people coming and going, tvs on, card games, lots of conversations and laughing. Kids don¹t get a lot of sleep sometimes. And it is pretty exciting with half a dozen brothers, sisters, cousins in your bed. If some of those brothers, sisters, cousins happen to be at the age of sexual awakening naturally there will be lots of ’investigation¹ and that may involve very young children. Not a good thing, but when you see how and why it arises you have an insight into how to begin to address it. It¹s hard to see how medical examinations will help, easy to see how improving housing will. Certainly pornography doesn¹t help yet we have been slow to do anything about it anywhere. Parent education and support is a big one too the collapse of communities has eroded parents’ knowledge and authority. Dysfunction is passed from one generation to the next. Alcohol and other drugs are in the mix and need addressing see below.

So what are the proposals for this emergency of the last decades? Will they work? And if not these proposals, what?

1. Compulsory health checks for all aboriginal children under 16. Doctors and health clinics currently struggle to cope with the burden of chronic disease and primary health care needs. There are severe shortages of all medical staff in remote areas, just as there are in most rural towns across Australia. To draft in the legion of extra staff to conduct these tests requires simple things like accommodation there are no hotels, motels, no available rooms so it will require a building program or a tent city a building program is hardly within the emergency response time proposed. If its hard enough to attract medical staff with current incentives, the prospect of tent city is an unusual strategy to incline minds towards volunteering. So send in the army for maximum publicity, minimum impact.

Medical examination is one tool in identifying sexual abuse, patient and sensitive inquiry a more likely successful one. In many NT communities English is the second, sometimes third or fourth language spoken and not well understood by most people. Effective inquiry requires that the investigator not only speaks the primary language of those being investigated, but speaks it so well and understands the cultural environment so well as to be able to interpret the nuances of oral communication. And what do we do on discovering evidence of possible sexual abuse/activity?

Remove them from these situations? Our foster care system for indigenous children is already at the point of collapse due to lack of places. There is no foster care in remote communities another branch of the family steps in but there are 17 or more in their household too! Do we reopen Colebrook and similar institutions of the past? Probably not a good idea.
Intervene in the family situation? Ah counselling . well yes Mal and John, do we have legions of culturally attuned social workers able to speak an Aboriginal language (at least one of the 13 dialects in this community) and ready to fly in to remote communities with sufficient on-the-ground knowledge to be able to understand the dynamics of the family and to know the best option for the child, motivated to stay in a tent city, and self-assured enough to feel protected from the anger of parents and relatives?

2. Linking welfare payments to school attendance in the long run not such a bad idea but to simply impose it in a short time frame ignores the inability of the education system to cope and the reality of many children who are not attending for very understandable reasons if you don¹t get much sleep the night before because of all the people partying in your room, if you are too shamed to go to school because you don¹t have adequate clothes compared to those who are at school (because you share all your clothes with everyone else your size in the house), if you¹re hungry in the morning and there¹s nothing in the house ’cause all those people eat anything as soon as its bought and anyway you can¹t store it if the fridge isn¹t working and no-one knows how to fix it. And your parents don¹t understand the importance of school they never went either.

Who will act as the truancy officers? The teachers are great for building trust and rapport and great for personal safety too. The police - they are going to be both very busy and very unpopular and at the moment community police spend a lot of their time cultivating trust and cooperation as they know that force will never control a community. Well then, let¹s employ truancy officers - that would be a popular job likely to attract very suitable characters into a traumatized community wouldn¹t it? Don¹t fantasize that you could get community people to do this they would be even more at risk of reprisal than would an outsider.

If all school-aged kids did all turn up on the same day here, there are nowhere near enough classrooms, chairs, teachers and education resources.

The school needs to double in size. Right John, lets fly in a whole bunch of teachers but where do they stay? Tent city? And where do they teach?

And where are they now because the education system has been trying to recruit them for the last 10 years. Let’s getting cracking with the building program, the training of teachers who want to work out here, the support for them doing what must be the most challenging teaching job in Australia. We might get somewhere in about 5 years minimum.

Education is central to improving Aboriginal communities. At present many community organizations struggle to find Aboriginal people with the skills and commitment to work in them. Sadly, after 50 years of schooling, training and apprenticeshipping there are very few young local Aboriginal people working in full wage paying jobs most are in work-for-the-dole CDEP positions and earning a ’top up¹ for extra hours worked beyond the required 20 per week. CDEP promotes underemployment but it successfully disguises the high levels of unemployment in communities so Mal and John can quote a figure of only 13% unemployment for Indigenous Australians those of you who have visited remote communities - do you believe that? There are some older Aboriginal people who trained in the seventies and eighties who do have the skills and are the Health Workers, Rangers, Works Supervisors of the community. However, they are retiring, getting sick, dying from the burdens of responsibility for their communities. There are so few younger ones coming through to replace them. In this community there are training positions leading to full paid work in most organizations health, council, services, retail, industry and all struggle to get anyone local to apply, let alone complete. Balanders (whitefellas) do most of the work. Again, the reasons are complex and require long-term solutions. Attending, prospering in and completing schooling is the key. Blaming is no solution and only serves to undermine any remaining self-confidence a community may have. Force simply will not work.

3. Banning pornography not too many arguments there, but hey, that opens up a good black market doesn¹t it and with the roads open due to abolition of the permits system, there looks to be a few bucks to be made there. And let¹s not believe trafficking in pornography will be done only by Aboriginal people - there are plenty of very dodgy whitefellas in the Outback and Top End frontier land seems to attract them.

4. Banning alcohol on the surface it looks promising but our experience over the last half century of dry communities is that:-
**People leave to drink in towns and cities, sometimes leaving children to be looked after by already overburdened extended family. Those who leave are often young to middle-age and who should be the backbone of the community.
**Black markets for alcohol, gunga, kava, petrol and other drugs quickly develop.
**Alcohol remains that elusive substance to be consumed in as great a quantity and at as great a speed as possible because it is expensive, precious, illicit and it does quell the physical, emotional and spiritual hunger, if only briefly.

Rather, we need programs that encourage responsible consumption of alcohol, where there are rewards for sensible drinking and sanctions for irresponsible drinking. We should also encourage (not impose) non-drinking as a best option (wouldn¹t that be a challenge to the alcohol industry in mainstream society). This community has one of the best models I have seen it would of course be a lot better if it had resources to back it up. Here, you can apply for a permit to drink up to two cartons of beer a fortnight, or 8 bottles of wine (for us balanders). You start off on light beer and if you go OK on that you can apply for full-strength after three months. If you bugger up any violence, breech of other rules (such as sharing with people on a ban), neglect, missing work too much, etc., you lose your permit for three months and have to reapply a committee of balanders and locals make the decisions. It¹s not perfect but is a realistic attempt to encourage responsible patterns of drinking. It¹s a long-term process at the moment the role modelling around alcohol consumption is very negative how can kids grow up with a different relationship to alcohol when all they see is binge drinking or their parents leaving them to go and drink in town.

Alcohol is not going away anytime soon so somehow and sometime Aboriginal people are going to have to learn other ways to deal with it.

5. Taking control of Aboriginal land and abolishing the permit system ahah, are we finally getting to the real agenda? Many Aboriginal people believe so and the evidence for them rests with the decision to abolish the permit system. It makes no sense to them to open communities up to a whole lot more people wandering in and out. Trafficking in alcohol, drugs, pornography and sex suddenly becomes a whole lot easier. It certainly makes no sense if indeed it is a “crisis” normally a time when restrictions are imposed, not lifted. Look at our response to terrorism.

In their announcements Johnny and Mal talked vaguely of removing some of the rights of Traditional Owners, instituting different rent arrangements in remote communities (as distinct from outstations or homelands), moving towards individual land ownership. We all know that relationship to land is the defining difference between Indigenous and mainstream culture. There may be a case for changing some land arrangements in some places. However, there is little evidence available to encourage Aboriginal people to trust Johnny on this one. And there is ample evidence of the conservative agenda to deny the special rights and place of Aboriginal people in Australia .

One would hope that they will treat each community individually as there is such a diversity of experience and relationship in the different parts of Australia some communities may lend themselves to conversion to individual landholdings, in others it could spell the destruction of all traditional relationships and cultural values. Communities in Arnhem Land are very different to Noel Pearson’s home community on Cape York. Here language is alive, culture is practiced every day. The Queensland Government of the past had a conscious and largely successful policy of eradicating language and much culture heritage.

The latest calls to arms for volunteers send shivers through communities - the last thing needed are ill-informed, ill-prepared and ill-supported hordes of volunteers descending on these communities to peddle their own brands of concern, judgement and condescension. You can't say this situation has not been known about for years - genuine volunteers are or have been here already.

There are solutions you have no doubt picked some of them up in the course of reading this. There are many more suggested by others more knowledgeable than me. Solutions require patience and cooperation, are long-term, difficult, expensive and achievable. We need a national commitment beyond the electoral cycle.

Please note these thoughts of mine follow barely a month in residence here I don¹t profess to have all the answers, some of what I say may well be misinformed but I, at least, am prepared to stand corrected. If you are in a position to speak out about this situation or to inform others, please grasp it.

Regards,
Andrew......
Andrew Biven
C/- Malabam Health Board
PO Box 136
Maningrida NT 0822
Phone: Home (08) 8979 5755
Work (08) 8979 5772
Email: andrew.biven@adam.com.au

Smash the “Iraq” solution to indigenous problems

Proving yet again that he is the worst Prime Monster in Australian history, John Howard has seized on the deplorable state of remote aboriginal communities to once again play the race card prior to a federal election.

British imperialism invaded the aboriginal lands of Australia from 1788 onwards. Violence, or the threat of violence, was the core factor in the “settlement” of Australia by the British.

Indigenous Australians carry with them on a daily basis the devastating effects of the loss of their land.

With the release of the report Little Children Are Sacred, the Prime Monster has found a way of grabbing the moral high ground from his Labor opponent (are they really in different parties?) Kevin Rudd.

Howard’s response to the report on the sexual abuse of aboriginal children is like his craven support for the US imperialist invasion of Iraq. Things can be settled by the imposition of force from outside. There is no need to respect or understand the viewpoint of those whom we are “saving” – might makes right!

And so we have the first contingent of Federal police - to be joined by members of the armed forces – “farewelled” from Canberra as they leave for remote Northern Territory aboriginal communities. It’s like farewelling the Sudan Contingent in 1885 (see left).

Then Aboriginal Affairs Minister Brough, who has an armed forces background, tried to calm fears of what might happen when the taskforce arrives by declaring that the first task will be to “secure the sites”. Isn’t this what we did so brilliantly in Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan? It is language that is appropriate to a state of war with a foreign power, and not to the processes required for solving problems in indigenous communities within our own country.

Howard is imposing two “invasives” on indigenous communities: personally invasive body inspections of children under 16, and territorially invasive practices of denying indigenous communities the right to traditional lands and who can enter them.

Behind all of this stand the giant mining and other companies who want to have unfettered access to aboriginal lands.

It is shameful that a Government that states its intention to protect aboriginal children from paedohiles, sly grog merchants, dope and porn peddlers immediately removes the permit system that enabled aboriginal communities to have some say on who entered their communities.

Victory by Teachers on WorkCover

Sleepy Hollow has been active the last couple of weeks!

First, the nurses lodged a claim for a 14% pay rise over 2 years and were given the South Australian Government’s “best offer” of 10.5% over 3 years. Public opinion, already firmly behind the nurses, became more strongly pro-nurses when it was revealed that State pollies would get an automatic 6.7% per year flow-on pay rise following that granted to Federal pollies.

At about the same time, teachers began a campaign (see earlier posts) against cuts to education, ambulance officers placed a ban on charging people for their services following a breakdown in their wage negotiations, dentists in the State dental services slapped a ban on charging patients for services for the same reason, and psychiatrists in public hospitals filled out mass letters of resignation as part of their dispute which includes the employment of 15 extra psychiatrists to offset workload problems.

Now it has been announced by the Premier that the WorkCover levy will not proceed.
This 11th hour decision was announced as final plans were being made by teachers and schools for tomorrow’s strike, supported by more than 80% of AEU members.

This is a great initial victory for teachers and parents in their campaign to stop cuts in public education. However, we need to bear in mind that the WorkCover levy represented about 10% ($16.9m) of the total savings ($170.3m) required over four years. And only $104m of the "savings" were actually identified in any case - there's still $64m in cuts as yet unidentified and unannounced. As an example of these, schools are just discovering that the "Security" and "Fire" lines in their Repairs and Maintenance Statements - previously paid by the Government - will now be passed onto schools for payment. This could be anywhere from $6000-$10,000 per year. We have to be vigilant that the Government does not pass on what it expected to be saving by getting schools to pay for WorkCover into other charges and levies on schools.

The AEU Executive has announced that in the light of today’s announcement by the Premier, tomorrow’s strike will be postponed, and that the Government will have until August 17 to negotiate in good faith around other elements in the cuts.

CD Review: Ry Cooder, "My Name Is Buddy"

Any song that begins with the lines:

Down on the farm we had a pig
J Edgar was his name

is OK with me.

And any CD that has a song that begins with those lines is OK with me too.

I’m talking about Ry Cooder’s newie, My Name Is Buddy. Set during the Depression of the 30’s, it’s a three-way combination of Woody Guthrie’s union and children’s songs, Neil Young’s thematic/concept CD Greendale, and Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions.

And none of its songs would sound out of place in that eclectic mix that is Bob Dylan’s weekly Theme Time Radio Hour program.

Let’s judge the CD by its cover first. The only clue on the front is a pencil drawing of a cat. This is Buddy Red Cat, the central figure in the series of songs on the CD, and also the protagonist in the little children’s story book that is part of the CD’s packaging. (There is one short chapter in the book complementing each song on the CD.)

Buddy is joined by traveling companions Lefty Mouse and the blind Reverend Tom Toad (a nod in the direction of Tom Joad from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath).

It is the accidental coming together of Buddy and Lefty that provides us with our first sense of political direction. Buddy has to overcome his narrow upbringing which taught him to stick with his own kind. But in giving Lefty shelter in a storm (my nod in the direction of Dylan), Buddy gets some lessons in life:

“I never knew anything about unions and solidarity before I met Lefty. Back home, you just worked all your life and died poor….Lefty showed me we have to work together in this world if we want to get something done and make things better for everybody.”

Buddy gets caught up in a strike by zinc miners, hearing some singing that he thought might be a birthday party:

It was miners and their families
They had left the mine that day
Walked out for safe conditions,
On strike for decent pay.

He gets thrown in jail with the miners, then released, then jumps back in through a window to rejoin the singing of miners’ songs.

There is reference to a brief love affair with a “little union kitty” named Nellie, who spends all winter on the Ladies’ Garment Workers picket line.

The chapter that accompanies the lament called “The Dying Truck Driver” begins:

“The American worker-citizen is fed a daily diet of garbage and lies that makes him sick. Lefty Mouse likes to think of the power elite as a bunch of garbage collectors in reverse…”

The song relates how Buddy, Lefty and the Rev. Tom Toad making their way up Highway 99 come across a dying truck driver by the side of the road. They suspect he may have been done in by either a vigilante gang or a ranch-boss, but he tells them that it was the meatloaf special he had just eaten in a roadside diner. They revive him with whiskey and join him for the trip to Frisco town, singing:

Now the working man must be well-warned
Whenever headlines scream
“Your rights must yield, the bombs must fall
To save democracy”
The flag they fly, their stew of lies
Served up at voting time
Like poison under the gravy
On Highway 99.

“Red Cat Till I Die” is a song about staying loyal to who and what you are, sticking to your politics no matter what. “One Cat, One Vote, One Beer” references John Lee Hooker’s classic “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer” and attacks (contemporary) intereference with the voting process in the US. “Cardboard Avenue” is structured a bit like an abridged version of Dylan’s “Desolation Row” and is a tribute to the American underdog.

The CD’s 17 tracks pay more than one tribute to the pioneers of the musical Left, including the cowboy junkie Hank Williams. “Three Chords and the Truth” sings the praises of Joe Hill, Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger (Seeger plays banjo on “J Edgar”) - for all three, see below.

Perhaps more than anything, the CD pays tribute, although there is no acknowledgement of this, to Cooder’s parents, supporters of the Communist Party of the USA who Cooder has previously spoken of as having introduced him as an infant to the music that influenced his life.

A great album at a critical time!











(Left: The body of Joe Hill, executed by the state on false charges, but really for his labour agitation and union songs)

(Above: Great singer, great communist Paul

Robeson, picketing for civil rights)

(Right: Folk singer Pete Seeger, testifying before McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee hearings which sought to persecute communists and other progressive activists in the USA)

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.”

What CFMEUs McDonald said to the boss

Under Federal Government legislation, building industry unions had their rights of entry to construction sites removed. They had to give notice to the bosses in advance, and gain approval, for meetings to be held with members on site. As the banner above says, "Defiance Becomes Our Duty, When Injustice Becomes Law".

The CFMEUs Joe McDoanld has exemplified the great working class spirit of defiance and has attempted to hold meetings on building sites in Western Australia despite the injustice of the law.

This transcript of a radio broadcast depicts the reality of class struggle in the building industry. Opposition Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, in calling for McDonald's expulsion from the ALP becuase of this incident, has shown which side he is on.

M - Union tape released by court [This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s1957091.htm]

PM - Wednesday, 20 June , 2007 18:21:33
Reporter: David Weber

MARK COLVIN: A Perth court has released a new video which allegedly shows a union official threatening a construction boss.The footage shows CFMEU Assistant State Secretary Joe McDonald calling the builder a "thieving, parasite dog" and warning him his days are "numbered".The judge agreed to release the footage after an application from media organisations.David Weber was in the Perth Supreme Court today. A warning: by the nature of the story, this report contains crude language.

DAVID WEBER: The ABCC (Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner) video recording is one of two that show Joe McDonald confronting managers on worksites.Mr McDonald is holding what appears to be a meeting of union members at a site on St George's Terrace earlier this year.Company managers arrive and can be heard asking Mr McDonald and another union official to leave.(video excerpt)

JOE MCDONALD: I just want five minutes to meet them about union business. You… anyone here got a problem? Shut up, fat man! Anybody here got a problem?

COMPANY OFFICIAL: I'm the occupier of the site, so I'm asking you to leave.

JOE MCDONALD: Anybody got a problem with a union meeting?

COMPANY OFFICIAL: I'm asking you to leave the site.

JOE MCDONALD: Anybody got a problem with a union meeting?(shouts of "no" from workers)JOE MCDONALD: We'll go have a union meeting, leave us and we'll get out of the way.

COMPANY OFFICIAL: Joe, this is a notice for you to leave the site. I'm asking you to leave the site.

JOE MCDONALD: We'll get out of the way.

COMPANY OFFICAL: Please take the notice and leave the site.

JOE MCDONALD: You just… get the fuck…

COMPANY OFFICIAL: You don't… you don't… you don't have right of entry for here, Joe. You don't have any right…

JOE MCDONALD: It's a union meeting.

COMPANY OFFICIAL: …You're trespassing. Mick and Doug, I need you to leave the site, you don't have right of entry here.

JOE MCDONALD: Fix your safety, mate we're… (inaudible)(end video excerpt)

DAVID WEBER: Amid the commotion, there's joking and laughter.However, the company's management can clearly be heard repeatedly asking Joe McDonald to leave the site. (video excerpt)

JOE MCDONALD: Let's go for a safety walk… (inaudible) …we'll show you how bad your safety is (inaudible).

COMPANY OFFICIAL: You haven't followed… (inaudible) you need to leave the site.

JOE MCDONALD: Anybody here feel threatened by the union meeting?

COMPANY OFFICIAL: Joe, I'm asking you to leave

JOE MCDONALD: Shut up! Will you shut up? You're interrupting me all the time, you…COMPANY OFFICIAL: You are illegally here. You're trespassing…

JOE MCDONALD: Has anybody here got a problem with…(shouts of "no" from workers)(inaudible)

JOE MCDONALD: They don't want you, they want me. They hate you.(laughter)

COMPANY OFFICIAL: … please leave the project.

JOE MCDONALD: If you are hated more than me, you've got fucking problems.

COMPANY OFFICIAL: Joe, I'm asking you to leave the project.(end video excerpt)

DAVID WEBER: Then, Joe McDonald agrees to leave. But before he does, he makes a gesture towards either a company official or an ABCC employee. He says his days are numbered, and he'll be working for a fast-food company before too long.(video excerpt)

COMPANY OFFICIAL: Joe, I'm asking you again. Leave the site.

JOE MCDONALD: (inaudible) …but I'm not going because Jello here said so but I really have got some important union business to do. I'm quite happy to go under the walkway down there and have the meeting if you are, or we'll have it here. I'm easy. This fucking thieving, parasite dog's days is numbered. He'll be working at Hungry Jack's when I'm still a union official.(end video excerpt)

DAVID WEBER: Broad Construction is in the Supreme Court seeking orders to ban Joe McDonald from entering its building sites. Justice Rene Le Miere has already granted an interim injunction, but last week he refused to allow the videos to played in court because he'd already seen them in private. He believed there was no need for them to be made public.Media organisations appealed and today, the judge agreed to release them. The Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey says it's a clear case of intimidation.

JOE HOCKEY: Well this sort of behaviour is unacceptable in modern Australia. Kevin Rudd has to stand up to these union thugs. This union is the biggest donor to the Labor Party in Australia. More than $6 million comes from these sort of people to Kevin Rudd's Labor Party. He has to stand up to these people, disaffiliate the CFMEU and walk away from these union bosses.

DAVID WEBER: Mr Hockey believes Kevin Rudd has set a precedent in relation to the behaviour of union bosses.He says the Labor leader must take similar action.

JOE HOCKEY: Kevin Rudd must react to this. He can't throw out Dean Mighell and turn back the ETU's funding in the Labor Party and accept Joe McDonald, Kevin Reynolds, Noonan and all that mob, and accept the CFMEU's money.

MARK COLVIN: The Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey ending David Weber's report.

Mighell Defends CFMEU's McDonald

Electrical Trades Union leader and former ALP member, Dean Mighell, has sprung to the defence of Joe McDonald.

Mr McDonald is facing expulsion from the Labor Party after a Perth court released a tape showing him abusing an employer on a Perth construction site.

Mr Mighell has told ABC radio that Labor is suffering from a John Howard induced identity crisis.

He says Mr Rudd still doesn't understand unions or the passionate commitment of militant union leaders like Mr McDonald.

"If he understood the battle we face and how hard it is to represent workers .. and people like Joe and I were very passionate," he said.

"We love representing workers and that's what we do with a passion and we'll fight to the death for them."

Collective Bargaining OK for Bosses but not for Workers

This morning’s copy of the Murdoch rag the Advertiser once again features ads for government assistance with collective bargaining.

Collective bargaining has long been one of the basic rights of working people, a right won from the capitalists in bloody struggles of the past.

In Australia, those rights were taken away from many workers when they were forced onto individual contracts, the un-Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), legislated for by the Federal Government.

Australia has rightly been criticized by the International Labour Organisation for destroying the right to collective bargaining by workers.

(Interestingly, the Canadian Supreme Court has just handed down a 6-1 decision confirming that the Canadian Charter of Rights upholds the right of workers there to collectively bargain with their bosses. Australia does not have a Bill of Rights.)

In a piece of breathtaking hypocrisy, this same federal Government is now lauding collective bargaining - for businesses!- to the skies.

Their ad reads in part: “Collective bargaining enables businesses of all sizes to work together cooperatively. Small businesses can benefit by joining together to negotiate with a larger business, who is their common customer or supplier.”

Previously, the Trade Practices Act, 1974, prohibited companies engaging in boycotts as part of bargaining. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission pointed out: “A collective boycott occurs when a group of competitors agree not to acquire goods or services from, or not to supply goods or services to, a business with whom the group is negotiating, unless the business accepts the terms and conditions offered by the group.”

The Government has recently changed the Trade Practices Act to make possible collective bargaining by businesses. Hence the ads.

Don’t expect Labor to do much if it wins office in this year’s Federal elections. As I write, the Party is demanding the expulsion of yet another trade union official in the construction industry where the bosses regularly kill and main workers (see my earlier post on Dean Mighell and the Labor Party). This official had the temerity to resist being thrown off a building site, and had called the building site supervisor a “fucking thieving parasite dog”.

As noted by Charles Power, a workplace relations specialist in lawyersweekly.com, “Far from ‘tearing up’ the Work Choices reforms, the proposals contained in the Labor Party’s ‘Forward with Fairness’ policy paper accept many of the principal features of the Coalition’s industrial relations model.”

See also former South Australian Trades and labour Council Secretary Chris White’s take on Labor policy here.

Australian workers have a proud history of struggle. Some new chapters are about to be written.