Protect the Great Artesian Basin! Stop Olympic Dam!

Arabunna elder Kevin Buzzacott told Directors and shareholders of BHP Billiton today (Thursday Nov 26 2008) at the Melbourne AGM to “close down the Olympic Dam uranium mine immediately” and to “stop taking the sacred water out of the Great Artesian Basin”.

This courageous and defiant call was made by a man who has spent his life standing up to some of the giants in mining, industry and politics on behalf of his land and his people.

The local (South Australian) media have buried Buzzacott’s comments and it’s been left to a New Zealand site to give voice to his anger at BHP Billiton.[1]

Olympic Dam

The Olympic Dam mine, sometimes also known as Roxby Downs from the name of the nearby town at which the miners live, is an underground copper and uranium mine originally opened by Western Mining Corporation in 1987[2].

WMC was bought out by BHP Billiton in 2005. BHP Billiton has plans for a massive expansion of the mine using open cut methods. The mine will become the largest in the world[3].

Great Artesian Basin

The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) is an underground aquifer covering nearly 25 per cent of Australia. Bores sunk into the GAB frequently released high volume and high temperature water with a wastage rate estimated to be around 80 per cent.


Several decades ago, the flow rate from bores diminished forcing governments to seal a number of wells in an effort to preserve the resource[4].

A decade or so ago, a debate erupted about the nature of the GAB. Government and industry sources favour the view that the GAB is an open system replenished by rainfall in Northern Queensland[5].

However, a different view has been put by others, most notable Prof. Lance Endersbee, who contends that the GAB is a closed system of non-renewable plutonic water, and that continuing to use the waters from this source has huge implications for, amongst other things, “potential recovery of oil and gas”[6].

Expansion of Olympic Dam

BHP Billiton currently draws about 35 megalitres of water per day from the GAB for mining purposes. This water comes from two borefields north of Olympic Dam. It does not pay for this water. Therefore there is no incentive not to waste the water, nor to limit the future draw on the borefields. When the mine is expanded in a couple of years’ time, it will require at least an extra 125 megalitres per day. However, artesian pressure in the borefields is declining and BHP Billiton has announced plans for a desalination plant in the north of Spencer’s Gulf.

Who wins and who loses?

In addition to waters required for mining, GAB water is used for stock, for domestic purposes and for township supplies. The Queensland city of Toowoomba announced on October 18, 2008 that it would become the first major urban centre to draw water from the GAB, having rejected proposals for the use of recycled and treated effluent. The town is expected to draw 2000 megalitres of water from the GAB each year.

Ultimately all of these users will be losers for, even if the “open system” lobbyists are correct, the rate of usage is many times more than that claimed for acquifer recharge by infiltration of rainwater[7]. And if they are wrong, and Endersbee’s “closed system” is correct and accounts for the major part of GAB water as a non-renewable source, then we collectively - as a nation – are in for very bad times ahead.

Aboriginal custodians

Which brings us back to the Aboriginal custodians of the land.

No-one has more to lose than these people. Some of the major concentrations of Aboriginal communities are found on land above the GAB.

Their knowledge of the water resources is the accumulation of many tens of thousands of years of practical experience in surviving and maintaining communities on the driest continent in the world.

As the Aboriginal worker sacked from the Challenger gold mine is reported to have said, water in the centre of Australia is like a spider’s web of streams under the ground, and they knew where to dig for it[8].

In the southern sweep of the GAB, adjacent to Olympic Dam, are a series of mound springs that provided a continuous flow of water. These mound springs are now endangered and some have dried up, threatening rare native flora and fauna[9].

As custodians of the land, with obligations of tradition and custom attached to it, Aboriginal people don’t want to see the waters wasted, nor to have them disappear, literally beneath their feet.

People hesitant to speak out

Nor do many non-indigenous people living in the outback.

However, BHP Billiton is a formidable opponent. It has the power to make its presence felt. It wields very large economic and political sticks, and has the resources to play divide and rule games, as did its predecessor WMC[10].

“We’re too afraid up here to make too many waves,” one person told me. “Many here in the outback have no confidence in the mining operations being beneficial in the long run.”

Another summed it up, saying “He who holds the gold and silver makes the rules. Melbourne and Adelaide might be about to run out of water, but the carpetbaggers are about to rampage our state. Without free water for BHP there’s no mining.”

Even online, some websites are showing evidence of people’s outrage at BHP’s water grab.

“Alex” responded to a Coober Pedy Regional Times posting of Endersbee’s “plutonic waters” article with the comment that “The GAB give-away has got to stop, BHP and the rest of the consortium know it’s a steal…sucking the lifeblood out of this beautiful nation”. “Christina” highlighted the risk of “permanent radioactive pollution of the GAB through uranium mining”, whilst “InTheKnowRoxby”, a former miner at the site wrote that “Most workers who come out of Roxby have either been carelessly radiated and buggered off. Or they are appalled by the practices around water which are nothing short of a criminal coverup…what we ex-Olympic Dam workers predict as the end of the Great Artesian Basin”[11].

Bullying the elders

The Olympic Dam operation was exempted from the requirements of nearly every relevant state piece of legislation back in 1982[12]. As the current owners of Olympic Dam, BHP Billiton must consult with traditional owners and get their consent to development activities; however, BHP Billiton can choose who to consult with and how to consult, and can determine the level of protection, if any, to be accorded to Aboriginal heritage sites.

At the moment, BHP is in a hurry to get signatures of approval for the expansion of the mine from a group of Kokatha elders who are being dragged into a meeting on December 14, 2008. However, there is some resistance from within this group. One source reports that some of the elders are not only reluctant to sign, but want to withdraw signatures already obtained from now-deceased elders. BHP is confident that even one signature will suffice to provide evidence of consultation and consent.

“The traditional aborigine is not interested in the Aussie currency, it’s only the new generation,” a resident of Roxby Downs told me. “However, the elders have the first right to signatures. It seems like they (BHP) can’t wait for them to die out. They (the elders) are always accused of just wanting money, which amuses me as isn’t that what companies like BHP want??? Pot calling the kettle black especially with BHP being an offshore company.”

Mineral rich, water poor

Our illustrious Premier keeps bragging that we are mineral rich, that we are set to become the “Saudi Arabia of uranium mining”.

Nowhere does he alert us to the fact that pressure in the GAB has dropped dramatically.

BHP Billiton continues to bleed the GAB dry without paying a cent for its water wastage. Cyanide used in mineral recovery (leaching) and radioactive wastes lie about as surface waters, poisoning wildlife and filtering back into local shallow aquifers. Not content with what it has already, BHP Billiton is currently trying to buy properties along the Birdsville Track...they need MORE water than the GAB can deliver.

For the sake of the shareholders of an already bloated multinational, South Australia and other parts of the country are being damaged for all time[13].

This must stop.

We must take an interest in this issue and put country first.

The legal exemptions granted to WMC and inherited by BHP Billiton in the form of the SA Roxby Downs Indenture Act must be repealed!

The voice of Kevin Buzzacott must be heard in South Australia!





[1] http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0811/S00507.htm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Dam,_South_Australia
[3] http://www.bhpbilliton.com/bb/ourBusinesses/baseMetals/olympicDam.jsp
[4] http://www.pipa.com.au/docs/GAB.html and http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2005/s1436479.htm
[5] http://www.anra.gov.au/topics/water/overview/sa/gmu-curdimurka-wellfield-a.html
[6] http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=614 and http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=993
[7] http://news.rosettamoon.com/?p=185
[8] http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2008/10/challenger-mine-challenges-social.html

[9] http://www.sea-us.org.au/roxstop97/msinfo2.htm
[10] http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/nfc/mining/roxby/watered-down-negotiations-wmc-picks-both-sides
[11] http://cooberpedyregionaltimes.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/the-plutonic-waters-of-the-great-artesian-basin/
[12] http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/nfc/mining/roxby/indenture
[13] http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/737/38157

Masters of war invade the classroom

While everyone’s attention yesterday was on the Industrial Commission where the Australian Education Union and the SA government were at loggerheads over a planned 24 hour strike, State Premier Mike Rann was at Aberfoyle Park High School launching a “partnership” between the school and US arms giant Raytheon.

(Nuclear "bunker busters" used by Israelis against Palestinian freedom fighters are made by Raytheon.)

Rann is 100% behind the militarization of the state’s economy, meaning, inevitably, its integration into the US military and industrial complex. The government actively promotes SA as the “Defence state” and pursues the strategic goal of “growing Defence presence in SA”.

Google Raytheon and you get the normal corporate presentations which should be looked at to get some feel for the scope and nature of its operations. It is the fifth-largest defence contractor in the world, and the fourth largest in the US. It is a manufacturer of the million dollar Patriot missiles (right) and the so-called “bunker buster” bombs currently in use in the Middle East and Afghanistan. It also produces radars, satellite sensors and military communications equipment.

Wikipedia has a useful entry which records, among other things, a Raytheon employee’s attempt to censor the site, together with various legal malpractices for which it has been convicted.

The Corpwatch website has useful critical information, but one of the most interesting and inspiring stories relating to Raytheon concerns the unanimous jury verdict acquitting the Raytheon 9 who, in August 2006, trashed the Belfast office of Raytheon at the time of the war in Lebanon. They mounted a legal defence based around the argument that they were decommissioning the company to prevent it committing war crimes during the war.

Raytheon is establishing a growing presence in Australia. Last year it entered into a $1 million partnership with Questacon, Australia’s National Science and Technology Centre. This was described at the time as the company’s “largest community initiative undertaken by Raytheon outside the United States.” The partnership allows Raytheon employees to act as “guides” in a travelling exhibition organised by Questacon aimed at inspiring young Australians to choose a career in science and maths.

(A couple of old war criminal buddies, Ratheon boss, left, and then PM Howard in June 2007)

Raytheon underwrites similar “educational initiatives” in the US aimed at entrapping aspiring scientists and mathematicians in the manufacture of advanced weapons systems for the US war machine.

Most recently in Adelaide Raytheon announced that it had signed an agreement to lease a new facility in the commercial precinct of Techport Australia that will become the Raytheon Australia South Australian Engineering Centre. In SA Raytheon acts, amongst other things, as mission systems integrator for the Hobart Class Air Warfare Destroyer program.

The company did suffer a setback last year in the Northern Territory when Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald rejected an application from the company for an exemption designed to allow it to exclude from employment people whose race or nationality were deemed to be a security threat to the US military. In an unusual move, Fitzgerald published the reasons for his rejection, depsite the company having withdrawn its application. It makes interesting reading (here).

An unusual secrecy descended over Aberfoyle Park High School in the days leading up to the launch of the Raytheon deal.

According to teachers who spoke to local organisation Progressive Educators, they had no knowledge that the deal was in the offing until Wednesday afternoon when they were told that there would be the launch of a commercial partnership and a few heavies around the school the next day.

On Thursday, the science area was apparently cordoned off (the school recently erected a 2 metre high spike-topped perimeter fence that makes it look more like Stalag 13 than a pace of public education). Later that morning, in front of a select group, the state Premier revealed the school-Raytheon partnership which will provide $150,000 per year for three years to provide laptops to the school’s “gifted” students program. In return, Raytheon engineers and scientists will have access to the “gifted” students and “mentor” them in the direction of possible future employment with the company.

(One wonders if the company will be so honest as to warn any students whose race or nationality will make them unacceptable to Raytheon as future employees, not to bother with the "mentoring"!)

Only at the end of the day were the staff informed, by a circular from the principal, about the deal.

This sets an amazingly ugly precedent for the incorporation of South Australian public education into the needs of the corporate world. (A local primary school was recently told that a local land developer had been placed on the panel to select its next principal. The education union protested and prevented this from happening).

No consultation with staff or students. One presumes, but not with any great confidence, that the school’s governing council, which has parent representation, was consulted, but that would have been as far as any consultation with parents went.

No discussion of the ethics or morality of engaging teenage students with the recruiting agents of one of the world’s largest manufacturers of weapons of death.

The whole process is contemptuous of democratic and peaceful values.

And the fact that Rann, who has been unable to find the time to deal with the year-long dispute between his government and education workers, can prioritise his time to include blessing such a profane event speaks volumes of his supposedly social-democratic government’s real values.

Taxi Strike in Chongqing

(Reprinted from the on-line Caijing magazine. Further links at the bottom. Photo shows police arriving to inspect a taxi overturned during the strike.)

Chaotic Taxi Strike Pays Off in Chongqing 11-15 10:47 Caijing Magazine comments( 0 )

The official response to a walkout by thousands of Chongqing taxi drivers quelled tension and satisfied some demands.

By staff reporter Li Weiao and Deng Hai

A two-day strike by more than 8,000 taxi drivers in Chongqing, China’s largest municipality, ended peacefully after the city government pledged to address grievances and allow formation of a long-sought trade union.

Calm returned after taxi drivers returned to work November 5. The incident formally closed the next day, after the local Communist Party secretary, Bo Xilai, called for a taxi driver union during a roundtable discussion with drivers and citizens.

But tensions ran high in the city of 13 million during the walkout, which began on a Monday morning. Taxi drivers refused to take passengers, forcing commuters into packed buses. Businesses were disrupted, rendering the city dysfunctional.

Violence erupted as well. Strikers attacked some of the few drivers who stayed on the job. Drivers who picked up passengers had their cars blocked, or even smashed (see photo, below).

Why Strike?

What prompted such a large-scale strike by taxi drivers? The municipality’s deputy secretary, Cui Jian, offered a four-point explanation.

First, he said, drivers were upset about the management fees collected by taxi companies. In the past year, Cui said, companies set fees arbitrarily, charging each driver between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan a year.

In addition, some drivers think the base fare – 5 yuan – is too low. Fuel shortages, which led to long queues at filling stations, was a third complaint. Another reason for the walkout, Cui said, was the prevalence of unlicensed “black taxis” whose drivers compete against legitimate taxis for customers.

Disgruntled drivers who spoke with Caijing also cited the rising cost of living.

“I think the real reason is that living costs are going up,” a driver who refused to be named said November 6. “Our people’s incomes have not risen at the same pace or level (as costs). Instead we earn less than before. We only earn 2,000 yuan per month, no matter how hard we work.”

Wang Shaolong, a driver with the Gaobo Taxi Co., said take-home wages have actually fallen over the past decade. “Ten years ago, we earned more than 3,000 per month,” Wang said. “But now we only earn 2,000. We earn less even though we work harder.”

A taxi driver well known in Chongqing for filing a lawsuit against local traffic police, Yang Xiaoming, said reasons for the strike can be found in the official statement as well as on the street. But he argued that a fundamental reason is the method of profit distribution at taxi companies.

Tension caused by conflicting interests in the local taxi industry has been growing, Yang said, and the bubble was bound to burst someday. Moreover, drivers lack job protection, which affects their benefits such as social security, as well as labor relations and workloads.

Government Action

Amid the turmoil, party secretary Bo called in department heads to analyze the strike. Immediately, a plan was launched: Public transportation was expanded, taxi companies were urged to encourage drivers back to work, supplies of the natural gas that fuels local taxis increased, and the city pledged to fight black taxis more strenuously.

The party faulted the city transportation commission for “not being responsible for a long time” and said it “should be held responsible.” The party and city administrators ordered transportation chief Ding Chun to pinpoint mistakes, name those responsible for the strike, and impose penalties.

Ding submitted a punishment report to the party committee November 5. Afterward, police said they were investigating persons who allegedly manipulated the strike. In a November 7 interview with Caijing, city government spokesperson Zhou Bo said those involved in the violence against picket line-crossing drivers had broken the law and should be punished.

“But we should differentiate between deliberate behavior and the normal appeals of drivers,” Zhou said. “We should not impose theoretical concepts on normal behavior.”

Four press conferences were held by the city government between the afternoon of November 3 – the strike’s first day – and the afternoon of November 5. Thus, city officials on the one hand dealt directly with the matter but, on the other, tried to win media support through public relations. “In today’s Internet era, hiding things does not help,” said Zhou. “It will only make things worse.”

Meet the Drivers

By 6 p.m. on November 4, some 80 percent of the city’s taxi drivers had returned to work. And by 8 a.m. the next day, transportation was back to normal.

But the city government had more work to do. To defuse the tension, a meeting was arranged by Bo and other government officials with 40 taxi drivers, 20 citizen representatives, five taxi company representatives, and two fuel station representatives.

The discussion was aired live by a local TV news channel, a radio station, the Xinhua News Chongqing channel, the People’s Daily Net and other media. It was also podcast live on the Internet.

Bo and other officials sat among the taxi drivers. The atmosphere was relaxed; no one at the table sat behind a name card. The conversation lasted three, peaceful hours. People spoke freely.
“We did not arrange (the discussion) or decide who would speak or when,” city spokesperson Zhou said. “Otherwise, the audience would know and feel anxious, which would make things even worse.”

Bo brought a stack of paper that a participating official told Caijing was “a collection of the most outrageous critiques from the Internet about the drivers’ strike.”

The insurance issue was raised by one driver, even though another driver who attended told Caijing that his “company leader told us we should not raise medical and pension insurance issues at the meeting.”

At the end, Bo made several promises, including pledges to “crack down on black taxis,” ease the fuel crunch, and reduce the management fee. Also, government officials said they would continue negotiating with taxi companies in hopes of lowering management fees.

The open discussion led to positive media coverage and Internet reviews, and many have argued that it improved the government’s credibility.

Taxi Driver Association

One incredible aspect of the strike was that almost every driver in the city was involved, even though none belong to an organized union.

A proposal for a taxi driver union was raised as early as 2005. But the plan was rejected. Drivers later repeated their wish from time to time, but never was the request well received.

“We thought a labor union would be impossible,” Yang said. “So we did not mention it again.”

So it was quite a surprise when, toward the end of the meeting with drivers, Bo embraced the union idea.

“We have an association for taxi companies, but we do not have an association for taxi drivers,” he said. “I think in the future taxi drivers should have an organization to more effectively and regularly make their appeals.”

Forming an association for taxi drivers is “a systematic guarantee,” Bo said.

Yang said he “will definitely compete” for the position of leader of the future union. Such a union chief should have integrity and represent the interests of drivers, he said.

Would an organized and empowered drivers’ association strengthen to the point of competing against the government, making it more difficult for the government to deal with similar cases? Zhou said city officials don’t think so.

“This is surely a difficult question that Secretary Bo answered for us,” Zhou told Caijing. “We will not see a taxi driver association as a rival against the government, but as a communication channel to better understand their wishes and requests. We have confidence and the ability.”

.................

See also: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=3bc5993b042267bc07b0be3fee459d0e

http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/100340

Desalination Plant: Why the rush?

(Port Stanvac, above, was originally opened as an oil refinery owned and operated by Standard Oil and Vacuum Oil, two of the world's largest oil companies. A few years ago, then owner Mobil Oil closed the site down, leaving a badly contaminated site which has yet to be remediated by Mobil. According to the SA Minister for Water Security, Karlene Maywald, the cost of puchasing the site, and its remediation, are part of the $1.34 million estimated cost of the desalination plant. It's lucky the taxpayers have such big pockets!)

The rush to proceed with the desalination plant at Port Stanvac is driven by two things:
- the need by government to be seen to be doing something about Adelaide’s water crisis,
- the commitment by the government through Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements to hand over opportunities for infrastructure investment to big monopoly companies.

One cannot fault a government that attempts to address the water crisis providing two circumstances apply:
- solving one problem does not lead to other problems occurring in its wake,
- the project represents value for money and is a benefit to the community.

The proposed desalination plant fails on both grounds!

Environmental Problems

The most obvious negative effect of the plant is the pumping out into the Gulf of St Vincent (left) of a plume of brine which, given its density and the sluggishness of Gulf waters, will settle like a blanket over a wide area of the seabed, destroying sea grasses, fish and mollusks. Larvae of species such as prawns, razorfish, scallops, abalone and sea urchins will be sucked into the intake pipes and killed. The plant is the most wasteful option in terms of the energy required for production of potable water.

We reject the EIS which minimizes and dismisses these problems!

Paying for Private Profit (PPPs)

All PPP projects are required to develop a Public Sector Comparator (PSC) to establish that they are better value for money than traditional methods by which governments meet the cost of infrastructure growth.

In practice, most PSCs never see the light of day, hidden under various “commercial confidentiality” clauses until well after the signing of contracts.

Not only will the plant need to be run for the financial benefit of private company profits and dividends to shareholders, but it is almost certain that a “take or pay” clause will be inserted in the contract to ensure that the government will keep channeling taxpayer dollars to the private operators at a certain agreed level whether or not the community requires water from it at a particular point in time.

The government has acknowledged that the consumers will be hit with annual price hikes in their water bills. Hendrik Gout, in the Independent Weekly (Nov 14-20, 2008) provides further evidence of how high these costs might spiral.

The SA Auditor-General, in his June 2008 report (written before Foley’s recent disclosures of SA exposure to the financial melt-down), warned:

"The credit market crunch experienced in 2007-08 and continuing at the time of finalising this Report, raise the credit and financing risk of the PPPs. In such extraordinary circumstances, progress of these transactions should be done with high degree of caution and may indeed need review of assumptions and information used to date. This may be a significant risk to the fundamental premise of whether a PPP provides a net benefit to the public compared to conventional public sector procurement."

Rather than proceeding with “a high degree of caution”, the government is pushing full steam ahead for a PPP desalination plant.

We reject the PPP as a model for public infrastructure development!

No to the desalination plant on environmental grounds!

No to paying for private profit for a public utility!

Demand a return to the social responsibility of governments!


The Organising Group for the Spirit of Eureka Committee (SA)

Contact: soeurekasa@gmail.com

From the Spirit of Eureka Charter:

16. The acceptance by government that infrastructure such as education, health, public transport, energy, telecommunications, postal services, water and community services is vital to the collective well-being of all citizens and must be publicly owned and managed, and acceptance that the efficiency of public services must be measured in terms of the quality of service provided as well as economic cost.

20. Protection and promotion of a healthy and sustainable environment.

Rann forces Dublin residents to take Marathon waste

In the late 1990s, a watchtower housing an armed guard who never slept was erected near Dublin.

This was no Irish joke, but a very serious protest by residents of the tiny South Australian town on the road between Adelaide and Port Wakefield.

The object of their protest was the planned Inkerman landfill or waste management site proposed by the then Liberal state government of Premier John Olsen.

What had begun as a few simple slogans on banners attached to fences became a celebrated display of quite sophisticated public art as residents developed momentum behind their opposition to a private dump next to their homes.

A giant cockroach and other remarkable constructions appeared over the next few months.

The protests delayed the development of the landfill site, but with the support of the new Labor government of Premier Mike Rann, site owner Waste Management Pacific (SA) opened for business in 2005.

In 2004, TPI (TransPacific Industries, as Waste Management Pacific SA) was successful in winning a 10 year contract with Wastecare SA, (a regional subsidiary comprising 6 local government councils) for an effective public private partnership (PPP) for the delivery of waste management infrastructure and service.

Under a design build and operate (DBO) contract, TPI completed an $11 million Resource Recovery and Waste Transfer Station (RRWTS) owned by Wastecare SA to receive waste and dispatches residual waste under a separate long term contract at its Inkerman landfill.

The Inkerman Landfill has just been announced as the lucky recipient of waste from Marathon Resources’ required clean-up of materials illegally buried at Mt Gee in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. Marathon had an exploration licence and was drilling for uranium samples within the Sanctuary.

Leigh Creek and Hawker had previously rejected the waste.

Now Rann is using the fact that the Inkerman Landfill has been declared by the state government to be a “major project development” under the state’s planning control to bypass the local community and help kickstart Marathon’s clean-up at Mt Gee.

This is likely to anger local residents who believe that it is their “ability to ‘keep the bastards honest’” that has led to the Landfill operating within acceptable bounds. This was the view of Mr John Stewart, previously an anti-Landfill campaigner, who supported an application last year by TPI for a Landfill Excellence Award.

“Under the ever watchful eye of the community, the overall appearance of the landfill is very neat and tidy,” wrote Mr Stewart.

But the dumping of the Marathon wastes goes beyond neatness and tidiness.

Wakefield Regional Council CEO Phil Barry also wrote, in June 2007, in support of TPI’s application for the award, saying “Incorporated in the professional approach is ongoing communication with the local community and Council, including the continuation of a landfill consultative committee involving Council and community representatives.”

That was June 2007. Now, Mr Barry complains that the local Council had no say about taking the exploration waste from Arkaroola.

“We would expect the state system to be communicating to the local council and local community on the matter,” he said.

“We have had a say in the past…the operators had set up a community consultative committee to which community members and the council were represented, but it’s also known that the local community committee only gets told possibly what it needs to get told….there’s been no feedback to that community committee or the council on that latest matter.”

So here we have the arrogant, aloof and out-of-touch Rann Government not bothering to take the time to consult a local community known to have had serious past concerns about the operation of a major landfill on its doorstep, and convinced only that its own watchfulness is “keeping the bastards honest”.

Instead, the “pro-growth, pro-mining and pro-business” so-called Labor government displays the worst features of a crony capitalist regime in working to a timeline that suits the interests of Arkaroola environment despoiler Marathon Resources.

Mike Rann’s name needs to be added to that of John Olsen as an enforcer of toxic waste on a small rural community.

Public Education, Not Profiteers, Should Run Early Childhood

There is a huge public outcry against the Federal Government’s announced $22 million bail-out of failed private child care chain ABC Learning.

No doubt this reflects some of the anger of people around the world at the use of tax payer money to bail out the finance capitalists in the wake of the global financial meltdown.

Some of it is also directed personally at entrepreneurial owner Eddie Groves and his estranged wife Le Neve. Shareholders in particular are hopping mad at the couple, and other directors, who promoted the expansion of the company into overseas markets, only to find that the childcare colossus had financial feet of clay in the form of margin loans taken out by Groves and other directors.

Groves built an empire on the social need for child care facilities for young children belonging to working couples and single working parents. He entered a market that had been hitherto largely the province of community-based providers and competed aggressively with them for market share.
Groves was assisted in the expansion of his private company by conservative Federal governments who shared his ideology of private provision of social service. They encouraged his growth by the introduction of subsidies, guaranteeing a reliable stream of income from taxation revenue.

However, Groves and other for-profit operators should never have been allowed near child care.

And child care for working parents should never have been divorced from the issue of a public entitlement to educational development of young children in their pre-school years.

I don’t have scope to expound on the latter point in detail here. For those interested in the issue, the eminent expert in the field, Dr Fraser Mustard recently released his report Investing in the Early Childhood Years here: http://www.thinkers.sa.gov.au/fmustard.html and it deals extensively with recent research into brain development and the crucial role of the early years in the development of children. (Mustard was employed by the South Australian Government as its Thinker in Residence between 2006-07.)

One of Mustard’s key recommendations to the SA government, however, was no. 11.2:

“In keeping with the ideal of public education, the Government of South Australia should incorporate its preschool program into the programs of the early child development and parenting centres and fully fund them for all children from birth.”

If implemented, this recommendation would overthrow the existing subordination of the birth to pre-school years to day care and fee-for-service private providers and be the first real act of the Education Revolution that has to date failed to materialise in any thing other than sycophancy to reactionary US ideologues like New York City’s Joseph Klein.

Mustard’s recommendation points the way forward for the government to take-over ABC Learning, not as a bail-out that keeps it alive as a profit-oriented business, but as an act of transformation into a government provided entitlement for all children in their early years.

Working alongside community-run centres, the strength of the public sector in the provision of early childhood education and care, with complementary legislation, could see the full implementation of the raft of recommendations made by Fraser Mustard.

Public education, not private providers, should run early childhood education and care!

(For background on the ABC Learning debacle see http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2008/02/abc-learning-and-privatisation-of-early.html )

Chinese increase stake in Marathon

Just what was said between SA Premier Mike Rann and former Labor Federal Senator and SA Labor heavyweight Chris Schacht (left) when they were in China together last month?

The two were part of a South Australian business delegation promoting amongst other things, sales of uranium to the Chinese.

How terribly convenient for Marathon Resources Director Chris Schacht to have the State Premier in tow before a uranium-hungry Chinese audience.

Marathon yesterday announced a 2 for 5 share issue to raise $7.7 million (ie existing shareholders can buy two shares for every five that they now own).

But how could they possibly encourage investors to put further money into a company that has been trading as low as 22 cents per share in recent times?

Obviously some expression of market confidence was required.

Enter Chen Zeng.

Chen Zeng is the Australian-based representative of the massive China International Trade and Investment Corporation (CITIC). CITIC has had a ten-year relationship with Queenslander Ken Talbot’s Macarthur Coal and last year upped its stake in the company to just under 20%, thus avoiding the need for the federal government’s Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) approval.

When CITIC bought into Marathon Resources, an equal purchase was made by Talbot Group Holdings Pty Ltd. A similar pattern of matching purchases was made in relation to explorer Southern Uranium early in 2007: Talbot Group and CITIC formed a joint venture to take a 17.6 per cent stake in the company.

CITIC and Talbot currently together hold approximately 20.9% of Marathon’s shares. Chen Zeng is obviously aware that investors generally have lost confidence in Marathon and would sensibly have balked at the prospect of investing more Chinese money in a sinking ship.

Yet Chen Zeng has approved a further CITIC purchase of $2 million worth of the 32 cent per share new issue, and has Talbot right alongside promising to purchase an equal amount. Thus, $4 million or just over half of the planned capital increase has been accounted for by just two major investors.

(CITIC’s share acquisition will take it above the level allowed by the FIRB without approval, but Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan’s unease about the role of Chinese sovereign wealth funds, the approval is sure to be a mere formality.)

Two million Aussie dollars is loose change for a giant like CITIC, but even so, there must be some assurances in the air about the future prospects for Marathon.

Some sort of intelligent insider guesswork?

There would need to have been, because in addition to all of the hassles surrounding the indefinite ban on further drilling of exploration holes at Mt Gee, there is also the delicate issue of SA Green’s MP Mark Parnell’s soon-to-be-introduced Bill to outlaw any mining in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

Did Rann give any indications to Schacht about how his government would vote on this Bill? And assuming the Bill is defeated (and that’s by no means certain), were there any discussions about how the government might make a lifting of the ban on the exploration license palatable to a generally hostile public?

In their details of the share offer, Marathon says the “Board is confident that the suspension will be lifted”.

And further, “Whilst there is a risk this new bill could be passed, the Marathon Board believes the risk to be small…”

So, if the Bill is defeated, will we hear Miner Mike Rann quoting his PIRSA inspectors to say that Marathon has successfully remediated the areas at which it had illegally buried wastes; and adding self-righteously that it has learned from its mistakes, that it is genuinely working with all stakeholders, including the Sanctuary owners and the local Adnyamathanha people and that it has committed itself to undertaking all further exploratory drilling in an ecologically sensitive manner, to world’s best practice standards; and that as a consequence, it has been decided to lift the ban on further exploratory drilling whilst closely monitoring and supervising what remains of its exploration activities; that, depending on its behaving in an acceptable manner during this time, there would be no obstacles to it submitting an Environmental Impact Statement and an application to commence mining; and that the State can only benefit from the promised returns from one of Australia’s largest undeveloped uranium deposits and blah blah blah…..

Even as I write it, I can hear the irritating sound of the Premier’s voice delivering the lines….

It’s a pity Rann is so arrogant and out of touch, and so besotted with the corporate world, and so determined to recredentialise the Labor Party as “pro-business, pro-mining, pro-growth” to the exclusion of everything else, for I fear that I might be right.

Never have I longed to be so wrong about something.

Challenger Mine challenges social justice and environmental concerns

(The Challenger Gold Mine, above)

I was having a look at a post on Marathon and comments in a thread that followed in a recent edition of the Coober Pedy Regional Times (http://cooberpedyregionaltimes.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/arkaroola-cowboys-return-waste-and-damage-remain/ ).

Coober Pedy is an opal mining town in South Australia’s outback. The thread has some interesting comments about another lease at Arkaroola that I’ll follow up on shortly.

However, this comment by “Jacinta” caught my eye:

1. Jacinta, on October 30th, 2008 at 1:32 am Said:

Is Challenger in the Arkaroola Sanctuary? - cyanide killing the wildlife.

While everyone here is talking about mining - I don’t know what practices they use in the Flinders Ranges at the copper mine but we spoke to a chap today whose job it was at a mining company in South Australia to handle cyanide tablets (without gloves) and was told not to worry about it when he reported that the big tank full of cyanide was running over the edges onto the ground.

(I read on the internet that cyanide is any chemical compound that contains the cyano group (C≡N), which consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom.) but this is not very clear.

The reason he was upset was because he heard talks about their safe practices and because he is an aborigine he liked the idea of working on his own land in the desert. They said they want to employ aborigines but he was given a pretty bad job. He said they don’t really seem to like aborigines but they have to employ some because of something the goverment said.

After he got upset with the tanks spilling over he asked someone what cyanide was and found out it was poisonous. He thought it was some sort of chemical. He spoke to the bosses about the poison spilling on the ground all the time and said they should be taking care of the environment. He asked them if they got him to do that job because he was a black-fellow and why didn’t they tell him to use gloves. They sacked him. He isn’t even allowed back to pick up his belongings.

Does Arkaroola or the Flinders have a mine called Challenger over there? I only ask because of the water under the ground and this guy said it was bucketting out of this huge tank all the time like they had plenty to waste.

I notice people are talking about water a lot right now and wonder how come the mines can do all this stuff and have plenty of free water. I also heard that the government doesn’t really check as long as they pay money they can do a lot of damage and have free water. The other problem is the birds and animals that drink from water lying around the mine were dying. He said there were a lot of dead things around the place on the mine site.

He told us they use heaps of water and was worried because it might be running out. I know the aborigines are worried about the water. He said it’s like a spider web of streams under the ground and they used to be able to dig for it so it can’t be too deep and this stuff might get into it and poison some of the communities who have bores.

That’s all we’ve heard at the moment. He’s gone somewhere else now but it would be good to know how to have it checked.

Anyone with an idea about this can write to me on here cos we read it nearly every day.
thanks Jacinta

It’s a damning indictment of the attitudes of some of the other cowboys in the mining game: attitudes towards indigenous labour; occupational health and safety; environmental damage; unfair dismissal.

“Jacinta” asks where Challenger, the mine on which her informant must have worked, is. It’s the other side of Tarcoola, on the northern side of the Trans Australian Railway.

It’s a gold mine, which explains the use of cyanide, used in the leaching process to extract gold. They produce over 100,000 ounces of gold annually and the mine life expected to extend beyond 2010.

The owners, Dominion Gold Operations Pty Limited, awarded a subsidiary of the giant construction company Leighton Contractors, a 4-year contract extension worth approximately $100 million to provide a complete mining service at the Challenger operation.

Makes me puke that a company that is doing so well out of the traditional lands of indigenous peoples can treat someone with a custodial perspective towards the land and its creatures in the way that Jacinta describes above.

What are you going to do about this one, Paul “Hollowman” Holloway, Minister for Primary Industries?

What about you, Miner Mike Rann, “popular” Premier of SA (appropriately, to the right)?

(We won’t even bother asking Ministers with responsibility for indigenous affairs and the environment since they’ve long been missing in action).

Capitalist press lies about opposition to NT "Intervention"

Once again the capitalist press is doing a number on Aboriginal Australians, alleging that the women of the Yuendumu community in the Northern Territory told Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin that they “support the Intervention”. Macklin was at Yuendumu to open a new swimming pool, funding of which predates the intervention..

Articles in both the Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/27/1224955948648.html ) and the Age
(http://www.theage.com.au/national/intervention-goes-swimmingly-in-the-tanami-20081027-59t8.html) by Russell Skelton begin as follows:

PEGGY BROWN, OAM, has no doubts about the emergency intervention or having half her income managed. "It's working, no doubt about it," she said.

The traditional owner delivered much the same message to the Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin, when they met for private talks yesterday.

Skelton then concludes that the Intervention had split the indigenous community on gender lines: “The Walpiri community is split over the intervention on gender lines: the men, led by community spokesman Ned Hargraves, are bitterly opposed to income management and the women swear by it.”

All this type of misleading garbage does is to reinforce for white Australians the Big Lie that was advanced by Howard as justification for his destruction of NT land rights, namely, that all Aboriginal men are paedophiles or wife-bashers with a vested interest in opposing the Intervention.

Two things need to be said immediately: Firstly, Peggy was planning to give back her OA Medal to Macklin until the Intervention is stopped! Her speech at the pool opening was cut short by white staff running the pool opening because it was too fiery! Secondly, a journalist for rival paper the Australian, who also printed that "women like the Intervention", got given a copy of the petition Yuendumu people gave to Macklin - which included 236 signatures and more than half of these were women. Community members are pretty sure (but not certain) that Skelton saw it as well.

The full text of the statement that accompanied the petition presented to Macklin by Harry Nelson, former Yuendumu Council President, and signed by the 236 residents in a meeting of the community before the Minister opened the new Yuendumu pool, reads in full:

We, the residents of Yuendumu, want you to listen to the following statement and take our message back to the Federal and NT Governments:

When John Howard and Mal Brough lost their seats, we were happy. But now you are doing the same thing to us, piggybacking Howard and Brough’s policies, and we feel upset, betrayed and disappointed.

We don't want this intervention!

We talked to the Review board, and now the Government is not even listening to the report, and is keeping this intervention going almost unchanged. It is an insult to us.

This is our land. We want the Government to give it back to us. We want the Government to stop blackmailing us. We want houses, but we will not sign any leases over our land, because we want to keep control of our country, our houses, and our property.

We say NO to income management. We can look after our own money.

We want the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 reinstated now, not in 12 months.

The Government Business Manager is useless, expensive, and we don't need them. We want our community councils back instead. We want community control, not Shires. We don’t want more police, we don’t want more contractors, we don’t want more government people.

Everything is coming from the outside, from the top down. The government is abusing us with this intervention. We want to be re-empowered to make our own decisions and control our own affairs. We want self-determination. We want support, funding and resources for things coming from our community, from the inside.

Yuendumu has a lot of things to be proud of. Our community programs, like the Mt Theo program, the bilingual education program, Warlpiri media, the Old People’s program, Warlukurlunga arts centre, childcare, the youth program, should be supported, celebrated, and used as a model for other communities.

We want to keep our bilingual education program and use our own language to teach English, maths, and other things in schools.

We want you to give us respect and dignity, and stop telling lies about our people.

We want the Government to listen to us, talk with us, consult with us, and do things proper way.

According to locals, people in the Yuendumu community are “very, very angry”, one describing the reportage as “perhaps the most insidious piece of propaganda I have seen since the Intervention started.”

The "Intervention" must be repealed, the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 restored, and the recommendations of the Little Children Are Sacred Report, shamefully ignored by both the Howard and Rudd governments, fully implemented!

DECS tries to put property developer on principal panel

The following article has been copied from the website of the Progressive Educators (http://www.progressiveeducators.com.au/index.php)

Many South Australians are starting to question the creeping crony capitalism that is emerging here.

The Australian Labor Party may as well be the Alternative Liberal Party or the Anti Labor Party, having rebadged itself as “pro-business, pro-mining and pro-growth”.

There’s not necessarily anything wrong with these three things in themselves; however, as a program packaged to the exclusion of concern for the rights of working people, of repudiation of the traditional links between the political wing and the trade unions, and with complementary preference for everything private over anything public, then it is not unfair to say that we are witnessing the reinvention of the ALP.

It is, in Foley’s terms, a “modern Labor Party… We have realised the error of our policies in the past.”

The Labor Party is for all intent and purposes a Business and Development Party.

The crony capitalism emerges in $3000 per head business breakfasts and dinners that act as fund-raisers for the ALP by allowing business people exclusive access to the premier and his senior ministers.

Prominent among those hosting such dinners are the consortia bidding for the six super school PPP contracts.

It is the sort of cronyism that one might expect in the Philippines or Indonesia.

It is therefore no great surprise that in such an atmosphere of corruption and direct commercial involvement in setting government direction, senior DECS bureaucrats have been prepared to connive in an attempt to infiltrate a local property developer onto a DECS principal selection panel!

The Executive Director of Human Resources, Mr Phil O’Loughlin, a career bureaucrat with no background in education (it’s bad enough that he’s the lead DECS negotiator in enterprise bargaining!) recently endorsed the addition of a representative of Delfin Lend Lease to the principal panel at Mawson Lakes Primary School.

The current principal has maintained close ties with the Delfin company, from which the land on which the school is built is believed to be leased. He has apparently been quite open in announcing that he is retiring early in order to take up a consultancy position with Delfin.

Whatever the truth of the relationship between the current principal and Delfin, such an astonishing step as including a Delfin nominee on the selection panel for the next principal could only have been taken by a senior DECS bureaucrat who has correctly judged the direction in which the political winds of the state are blowing.

He could only have committed to the inclusion of a commercial interest on a panel for the selection of a public school principal if he were convinced that such an unexpected and controversial step was in line with the current thinking of the government.

The AEU sub-branch at the school has condemned DECS’s insulting sell-out to commercial interests, as has the AEU Executive.

The AEU can be expected to fight this disgusting precedent for the extension of crony capitalism to the selection of school principals, and will need to make it absolutely clear that in the case of the six super schools – all schools for that matter – there is no room for property developers or real estate agents or any other commercial interests on selection panels.

Marathon shares nosedive

Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of the Shareholders of Marathon
Resources Limited will be held at the Mercure Grosvenor Hotel Adelaide, 125 North Terrace,
Adelaide South Australia on Friday, 28 November 2008 at 9:30am (Adelaide time).

(Watch this space for invitations to the footpath outside the Grosvenor!)

Despite taking SA Premier Mike Rann to China a couple of weeks ago, Chris Schacht has seen the value of Marathon Resources shares nose-dive in the last day or so to 22 cents per share!

Just like the pilots in that Qantas jet that recently plummeted thousands of feet over the briny blue sea, the Marathon Directors are trying to manually control the fall with any lever that comes to hand.

Hence this morning’s gravity-defying announcement that the company “will start more non-drilling exploration in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary from today” (ABC Radio news).

“Marathon will now complete a gravity survey program of the site at Mount Gee,” says the announcement. “The company says this will add to its evidence of a significant uranium deposit at the site.”

Will this flapping of the management’s arms be enough to restore flight to the plummeting shares of Marathon Resources?

Unfortunately for Marathon, there might not be much joy in their gravity sampling joy stick.

They are having to to rely on non-invasive techniques, such as stream-sampling where a field hand simply collects representative samples of sand and rock chips from creekbeds. They were doing this straight after the indefinite suspension of their drilling program.

Gravity surveys are also non-invasive and get them around the ban on exploratory drilling. However, it is likely to be a complete waste of money on Arkaroola. Because of the gravitation effect of the hills it will add nothing to the understanding of the mineralisation unless there are significant density differences between the ore and the host rocks. That is not to say that it could not work there - but the only way to iron out the differences due to the terrain, is to remove the anomolies caused by the extra bulk of the mountains. It would be a huge amount of data collection and processing, and likely be easily subject to error as it would need to allow for every hill and valley.

This type of survey works well in flat country where gravity highs (due to ore bodies) and lows (eg due to presence of oil or gas) are obvious, where there are clear density contrasts.

So, a desperate announcement, but unlikely to significantly reverse the fall.

This development of a rapid fall in share prices for Marathon is somewhat surprising given that Schacht obviously had a chance to get into Rann’s ear about uranium exports in front of the uranium-hungry Chinese whilst on tour there.

But consider this….

Miner BHP Billiton has been travelling rough in the share crisis, (but nowhere near as rough as Marathon Resources, which faced an inquiry of it from the ASX, 22 October 2008.)

BHP was running around $28 a share when Marathon dropped to 21 cents. Were they really part of the same global financial crisis?

Marathon had the fortunate coincidence of having one of its directors travel to China with the Premier of SA, immediately before the latest developments in the financial crisis. Not that this (in spite of their egos) necessarily caused the crisis, but what they found out, or should have, might be a crisis for both, and for Marathon and SA.

The Chinese as we know are intensely interested in cleaning up their energy use, and increasing it. Uranium is the way of the future. Midget Mike talked it up plenty, before he went to China and while he was there. Hasn’t said much since, but he must be regretting the end of the three mines policy which so hamstrung the old ALP, pre Mike and therefore (remember the ego), pre-Rudd and pre-Schacht.

The triumvirate got rid of the three mines policy. Midget Mike got to be Premier, and National President of the ALP. Schacht got to be a Director of Marathon and Rudd the Dud got to be Prime Minister.

Unfortunately, WA changed its government a couple of weeks ago, and BHP Billiton rediscovered its interest in a little known uranium deposit called Yeelirrie. Happens to be the biggest and the easiest to mine in the world. Here’s an extract:

Yeelirrie, WA

The Yeelirrie deposit is between Wiluna and Leinster, WA, about 500 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie and close to the Goldfields gas pipeline. It is also close to the existing infrastructure serving WMC nickel mines at Mount Keith and Leinster.

Western Mining Corporation (WMC) discovered the shallow and extensive deposit in 1972. It is reputedly the world's largest sedimentary deposit of its kind. In August 1978 Urangesellschaft Australia Pty Ltd bought for A $3 million a 10% interest in the deposit, but this was reacquired by WMC in October 1993. At the same time Esso was brought into the project and given 15% equity in return for a commitment to fund 80% of the Stage I feasibility study and pilot plant, then costed at A $21 million. Esso withdrew in May 1982 for commercial reasons and the share reverted to WMC.

The deposit extends over 9 kilometres, is up to 1.5 kilometres wide, up to 7 metres thick and lies mostly at a depth of 5.5 metres below the surface. It comprises a mineral resource of 35 million tonnes with an average grade of 0.15%, containing 52 000 tonnes of uranium oxide, which could readily support a low-cost mining operation producing a proposed 2500 tonnes per year of uranium concentrate with 1000 tonnes per year of vanadium oxide by-product.

An Environmental Impact Statement was produced in 1978 and resulted in environmental approval from both state and Commonwealth governments. In the twelve years to 1983 WMC and its partners (then including Esso) spent a total of $35 million preparing to develop Yeelirrie as an open cut mine, including building and operating the pilot metallurgical plant at Kalgoorlie. A $320 million project was envisaged and sales contracts were being planned. However, the 1983 federal election and implementation of the ALP "three mines policy" meant that permission to negotiate sales contracts was withdrawn in March 1983. Plans were then abandoned, and WMC's attention focussed on developing Olympic Dam.

A new state Labor government was elected in 2002 with an ideological anti-uranium stance. Pursuant to this, the 1978 state mining agreement for Yeelirrie was revoked in March 2004. However, WMC Resources retained the mining tenements and awaited future opportunities after undertaking rehabilitation of the site by the end of 2004. In 2005 ownership passed to BHP Billiton Ltd.

You can look it up yourself:

URANIUM INFORMATION CENTRE Ltd.A.B.N. 30 005 503 828
GPO Box 1649, Melbourne 3001, Australiaphone (03) 9629 7744 fax (03) 9629 7207
Copyright © 2000 UIC. - All rights reserved.URL - http://www.uic.com.au/

The same site describes Mt Gee, of interest to Marathon, Mr Rann (his home solar panels were installed by a then principal of Marathon) and Mr Schacht:

Mt Gee, SA

Working with data from earlier drilling campaigns, Marathon Resources has quantified to publishable standard the uranium resources of the Paralana ore system comprising a number of uranium and polymetallic ore bodies spread over 12 km in the north Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The Mt Gee deposit has a total of 33,000 tonnes U3O8, mostly as inferred resources and mostly low-grade (0.05% cut off) but with some higher-grade portions. Other or ebodies in the system are also prospective. The area has been drilled extensively since 1968 by Exoil, CRAE (Rio Tinto) and Goldstream. In 2007 Marathon initiated a pre-feasibility study and an environmental impact study for underground mining at Mt Gee. The results of ongoing drilling and the initial studies are expected in mid 2008.

The Mt Gee - Mt Painter mineralisation is the source of uranium in the palaeochannels around Beverley, a few kilometres east.

So, it’s a smaller, low grade, hard to get deposit, in the middle of a sanctuary. Worse, WMC clearly preferred its WA prospect to SA’s, but was foiled by a difficult (WA) government on one hand, and assisted by a compliant (SA) one on the other. It developed the more expensive underground mine at Roxby instead. WMC bailed out and BHP took over its interests, here and in WA.

Enter the newly elected WA Liberal government. BHP’s in the box seat. It can cite the global financial crisis, and point to its share slide, as a reason to defer expansion at Roxby. It can play WA against SA to see who will help it the most with its development. It has the choice – here or WA.

It’s got the uranium market sewn up with its ownership of all the major deposits. Marathon’s a minnow, valued at around $13.6m (ASX, 22 October 2008). It can’t hope to compete with ore that’s many times more expensive to mine and one third the quality of BHP’s Yeelirrie deposit which has already been brought up to pre-production stage. No wonder Marathon’s share price is dropping. Schacht doesn’t have to tell anyone to unload it while they can get a cent. Any punter worth the name in the market can see it coming.

Worse. For Midget Mike the Miner, there is the unsavoury prospect that after his trips to Chile and China, BHP will have rediscovered its interest in the larger, easier to mine Yeelirrie deposit. It might, in the name of its own financial crisis, be induced to suspend its plans for expansion at Roxby and, after a time, and with suitable inducements, rediscover its much more economic Yeelirrie prospect.

This gives Midget Mike much to think about, and explains the trip to China with his mate from Marathon. No big announcements on his return. Think of the consequences. An end to the SA mining boom! End to the expansion and the photo opps developing infrastructure from Port Augusta to Roxby to Beverly. Won’t have to worry about mining Arkaroola. That’s a salvation, Jane.

So who is in the box seat? BHP and the premier of WA. Just watch this space. And whose shares and electoral stocks are dropping?

Yantai: Workers fight to save their union activists

The case of Ole Wolff (Yantai) Electronics Ltd

(sourced from http://www.clntranslations.org)

This case of unusual rank and file union activism in China can be seen as both good and bad news. The good news is that, in the North-Eastern Chinese port city of Yantai there are workers' willing to struggle for two years for their right to form their own union that will stand up for their rights. The bad news is that this struggle has taken a heavy toll on union activists, at least seven of whom have been fired because of their union activity as part of a persistent and illegal union busting campaign by the company. The company in question is Ole Wolff (Yantai) Electronics Ltd, a Hong Kong and Danish co-owned company that produces cell phone speakers, receivers and other electronic productions. Ole Wolff Yantai is owned by Ole Wolff (Asia) in Hong Kong, and the latter in turn owned by Ole Wolff Electronics. Also unprecedented is that these activists have directly sought help from a foreign trade union, in this case a few Danish trade unions. Almost unbelievable is that *the story of this protracted struggle has been widely covered sympathetically by the local media, the ACFTU's Workers' Daily, China Central Television and Central People's Radio in Shandong Province and OWYTU's own excellent website.

CLNT has translated numerous accounts of the brave and persistent activism on the part of OWYTU leaders, to assist international trade unions – especially from Denmark – rally together in solidarity with trade union activists at Ole Wolff.

A rare case of rank and file union activism

China is notorious for its "yellow unions", bureaucratic entities affiliated with the official All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), more interested in maintaining harmonious relations with management than representing the interests of workers.

However the Ole Wolff (Yantai) Trade Union (OWYTU) is different. Ole Wolff workers themselves applied to establish the union after 67 women workers were fired in 2006 for complaining to the local Labor Department about sudden reduction in their wages, and the company's refusal to sign employment contracts. Ole Wolff Yantai refused to acknowledge the OWYTU, so in September 2006 workers went on strike for 13 days. The OWYTU was successfully established one month later, making it, in workers' own words, "the first Chinese trade union to be set up through strike." The OWYTU has taken a confrontational stance towards both the company and the local union branch. It describes itself boldly as a "red union" (chise gonghui) (i.e. Socialist) while dismissing the ACFTU as a "yellow union" (huangse gonghui). On the union's internet blog is a feisty article, entitled: "Where there's oppression, there will be resistance!" (Nali you yapo, nail jiu you fankang!) In China, such militant language is very rarely heard in trade union circles.

Even though the OWYTU was successfully established in October 2006, what followed was an unbelievable string of union-busting attacks from the company. Union activists have reported an incredible number of threats against them – too many to list here, and so we instead direct readers to the following chronology of events compiled by the OWYTU on its internet blog translated by Globalization Monitor in Hong Kong.

Download the translated article here:"Chronology of the Ole Wolff (Yantai)Trade Union's struggle"CLNT_OleWolff_chronology.pdf

View the original Chinese version here:《烟台澳利威工会维权大事简表》http://globalmon.org.hk/news.php?action=detail&news_id=137&class_id=3 http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4d515b740100afgg.html

In short, Ole Wolff's attacks on the union have included:
• Firing seven union activists – some more than once, such as Ms Liu Meizhen who was been fired from Ole Wolff on four separate occasions! Acting union chair Ms Jiang Qianqiu was fired for objecting to workers made to use cleaning fluid containing benzene (a known toxin).
• Refusing to sign employment contracts with workers until they revoked their union membership (the company has since capitulated).
• Posting a public notice threatening that each striking worker would have to compensate the company 15,000 RMB if they did not return to work.

Ole Wolff has ignored two court orders to re-instate six of the fired union activists, one from the Yantai City Labor Department in December 2006, and another from the Yantai City People's Intermediate Court in October 2007. Ole Wolff has also refused proper compensation. Furthermore, according to Ms Liu Meizhen, the company has never filed the paper work to terminate her employment, and has refused to return her personal documents. Without these documents she is unable to engage in formal employment anywhere else, and her social insurance and pension account are withheld by Ole Wolff. Ole Wolff has also ignored an order from the Yantai City Labor Department to reinstate the current union chair Ms Jiang Qianqiu, who was also fired by the company for her union activity. The company even made false claims that Jiang Qianqiu had signed a document renouncing her claim for compensation.

CLNT has translated a sympathetic investigative report of the union's struggle covered by the Shandong Evening Press. The report is long, however it conveys just how incredibly persistent Ole Wolff's attack on the union has been and how hard the workers fought back.

Download the translated article here:"Women Workers Repeatedly Fired for Applying to Set Up a Union: the pains of a grassroots foreign-enterprise trade union defending workers' rights"CLNT_OleWolff_newspaper.pdf

View the original Chinese article here:*《申请成立工会，女工屡被开除 —- 一个外企基层工会组织的维权之痛》http://218.57.134.148/wbpdf/data/2008-02-19/QA0519C.pdf (上)http://218.57.134.148/wbpdf/data/2008-02-19/qa0619k.pdf (下)

ACFTU and local government responses

The local trade union – the Fushan District Trade Union – has been unsympathetic to the OWYTU and apprehensive about its radical stance against management. In the early days the ACFTU in Beijing was supportive of the OWYTU, and so the local Fushan union followed suit, but very quickly it adopted a critical stance when union activists wrote a letter demanding improvement in working conditions in October 2006. Since 2007 the Fushan union has done nothing to support OWYTU.

The OWYTU has proved itself willing to challenge the district union. CLNT has translated a report from the OWYTU's internet blog, describing how the OWYTU angered the Fushan District Trade Union by video recording a tripartite meeting with the company and Fushan District Social and Labour Protection Bureau, in order "to prevent their [the Fushan District Trade Union's] denial of what happened once we were out of the room". Both the OWYTU's insistence of filming the meeting, and the confrontational tone of the written account, demonstrates how unusually courageous this union is.

Download the translated article here:"Ole Wolff Trade Union's Short Video Interlude"CLNT_OleWolff_TUmtg.pdf
View the original Chinese version here:澳利威工会关于录象的小插曲

The Fushan District Labor Department has been unsupportive of the OWYTU. When workers went on strike in support of their application to start the union in October 2006, the company claimed the strike was illegal. When contacted by the OWYTU, the national ACFTU confirmed that the strike was not illegal. But the Fushan District Labor Department sided with the company, insisting the strike was illegal. The response from Chief Shi of the Labor Department was: "What does the ACFTU know?" The OWYTU had to campaign hard to get the Department to rule in favor of unfairly dismissed union chair Jiang Qianqiu in October 2007, and when Ole Wolff ignored the ruling the Labor Department did nothing. In December 2007 the OWYTU even tried to sue the Labor Department for administrative neglect, but the suit was rejected by the court claiming that the supporting documents were "not well written".

International Support

In yet another rare move by the OWYTU, union advisor Zhang Jun contacted Denmark's biggest union federation, the United Federation of Danish Workers or 3F (Fagligt Fælles Forbund) in April 2008, requesting its support. In our knowledge, this is the first time that Chinese grassroots union activists have gone to a foreign union for help. In her letter, Ms Jiang expressed:

"We have almost exhausted all means, including judicial, administrative, media, the Internet etc, to stand up for our rights but still unable to make the company to comply with the laws."

By last month 3F, the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) have made contacts with the Danish parent company of Ole Wolff expressing their concern over the repression of the OWYTU, and other problems with working conditions including lack of employment contracts and underpayment of overtime. The ITUC sent a copy of its letter to the Fushan Labor Department. Mr Ole Wolff responded to ITUC expressing confidence in the "excellent" working conditions at Ole Wolff Yantai. Ole Wolff also met with 3F personally, and expressed that these problems were out of his control.

Ole Wolff's response to ITUC was translated into Chinese, and the OWYTU itself has rebutted Ole Wolff's claims about working conditions, saying that the problems outlined in 3F's letter were only remedied after workers went on strike in 2006.

Thanks to the committed concern of a Danish journalist, the case was reported on Danish national television.

In another demonstration of solidarity, in early September representatives of four Hong Kong NGOs and the ITUC/HKCTU/HKTUC Hong Kong Liaison Officer (IHLO) protested outside Ole Wolff's office in Hong Kong. They prepared a protest letter addressed to company management, but the company refused to receive it. News of the protest reached the OWYTU in Yantai.

Effective use of internet blogs

Another remarkable feature of this case has been the effective publicity work carried out by union members and – in particular – an "advisor" (guwen) to the union, Mr. Zhang Jun, the husband of fired union activist Liu Meizhen. Zhang Jun has used an internet blog to accumulate and distribute an impressive collection of documents in support of the OWYTU struggle. http://blog.sina.com.cn/youyudzhongguoren

As the Shangdong Evening Press article (available for download above) points out, Mr Zhang Jun himself has played a unique role in this struggle. We have never before heard of an "advisor" representing a Chinese trade union in negotiations with management and with upper levels of the ACFTU. In this very complicated case, the Fushan District Trade Union has behaved ambivalently in relation to Zhang. The district union recognizes Zhang as a negotiating partner, but at the same time tries hard to publicly discredit him. Zhang does enjoy some support from the national ACFTU, and this surely influences the local Fushan union's treatment of him. Given Zhang's novel role in this saga, it is worth wondering whether in future this might be a way of involving actors from outside the ACFTU and the government in trade union negotiations.

At the time when this posting is uploaded the struggle is still continuing.

Download PDF version of this introductionCLNT_OleWolff_intro
More English language resources from the 3F website:
Danish Factory accused of Union Busting in Chinahttp://forsiden.3f.dk/article/20080821/INTERNATIONALT/486430696
Chinese Workers Blog Versus Danish Factoryhttp://forsiden.3f.dk/article/20080821/INTERNATIONALT/839981340
Campaign updates are available from the China Reports section of the Globalization Monitor Website
http://www.globalmon.org.hk/en/china_reports/chinareports.html

Credit Cards and the Credit Crisis

The current financial crisis had its origins in the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007, and has seen both a major melt-down or devalorisation of huge amounts of fictitious capital born of speculation, and a loss of liquidity as financial institutions lose confidence in the extension of credit to customers who might be industrial capitalists, merchants, other banks and financial institutions, and the working class.

In respect of the latter, some pundits are predicting that the financial crisis will soon move onto forms of personal credit other than residential mortgages and in particular, onto the world of credit cards.

Credit is an arrangement whereby the purchase time of a commodity is separated from the payment time.

Credit a distinctive creature of capitalism

Although this reached a particularly vicious stage for working and middle class people in the 1920s with the refinement of the system of hire purchase, the separation of sale and payment arose within the system of commodity circulation at the beginning of the capitalist era.

Money, as a commodity whose function was to exist as the universal equivalent of all other commodities, was both a means of circulation of commodities and a means of payment for commodities.

“With the development of circulation,” noted Marx in Capital, “conditions arose under which the alienation of commodities becomes separated, by an interval of time, from the realisation of their prices…The vendor becomes a creditor, the purchaser becomes a debtor”.

After a time, the requirements of the capitalist mode of production for extensions to its scale of operations led to the centralisation of individual capitals in special institutions – banks, joint-stock companies etc – whose purpose is to grant credit to individual capitalists on a large scale, where before, credit was simply a means of deferring payment for commodities on a small scale.

The emergence of credit removed the need for individual capitalists to hoard savings, during which time capital is dead and incapable of reproducing its own value, and by assisting in the circulation of capital, albeit as interest-bearing capital, also promoted further accumulation. However, it came at the cost, or inherent weakness, of a separation of credit from its monetary basis and of its likely expansion, therefore, as fictitious capital.

This process becomes more acute with the development of imperialism and the merging of bank capital and industrial capital to produce finance-capital, and with it a massive extension of the system of credit within all spheres of the economic activity of society and amongst all classes of the people.

Credit nevertheless retains its two-fold function of (a) extending production and (b) facilitating exchange. In its first function, credit is an important factor in the cycle of overproduction, enabling the advance purchase of new or replacement machinery as well as raw materials relative to their capacity to pay for themselves through their combination with the labour power of the worker; in its second function, it can aggravate what it has already helped cause – over-production – by having its own price (interest and fees) increased to the point where it is no longer an option for the ordinary consumer. Reductions in the ability of credit to facilitate exchange lead to reductions in the ability of society to consume what has already been over-produced.

Disciplining the markets and the masses

The sensitivity of capitalism to fluctuations of monetary and fiscal policies has grown throughout the course of the current crisis. We see interest rates used to try and discipline the financial markets. We will see a further aggravation of primitive accumulation in the non-industrialised world as peasants are forcibly separated from their traditional means of production and turned into wage workers whose surplus value as profits are removed from their countries of origin and repatriated to the imperialist countries. In the industrial countries, wages policies will emerge to discipline the working class and assist in the production of surplus value, not to bring fictitious capital back into line with the real value of commodities in circulation (at a loss to finance capitalists) but to use realisable surplus value as a means to valorise the speculatively created “values” of fictitious capital (to preserve the “gains” of the finance capitalists).

However, wages policy is a double-edged sword for the capitalist class. On the one hand, individual capitalists seek to reduce the wages of their own employees to the absolute minimum required to guarantee the daily reappearance at the workplace of each employee. On the other hand, the capitalists as a whole benefit from an expanding domestic market and this must largely come through other capitalists’ waged and salaried employees.

The extreme enthusiasm of the individual capitalist to part with more than the absolute minimum of capital in the form of wages is matched only by the extreme enthusiasm of every other capitalist, of the capitalists as a whole, to get their hands on those wages through sales of commodities and services in the market place.

Not only do they want their hands on wages already paid; their avarice extends to wages yet to be paid, to future wages. Hence the all-round promotion of “buy now, pay later” schemes in almost every area of retailing or trade.

Twenty years ago, what was left of a worker’s wage after rent or housing mortgage payments and loans for major purchase items such as a car, and for hire purchase arrangements for items like white goods or electrical goods, was spent as cash on commodities for daily use such as food and petrol. The emergence of the personal credit card has brought even daily consumables into the world of credit purchases. The technology that allowed one single machine (ATM for cash withdrawal or EFTPOS for purchases and/or cash withdrawal) to process transactions regardless of which card is used spurred the use of credit cards for minor purchases. In 1987 “cashless shopping” met with some consumer resistance with 80% of shoppers favouring cash payments whereas today it is rare to see cash used at the supermarket; indeed, supermarkets are increasingly moving towards customers swiping their purchases’ bar codes and swiping their cards for payment, thus eliminating the “checkout chick” altogether.

A credit card implosion?

But it is not just that small scale personal consumer credit use mirrors the large scale financial credit used to lubricate the circulation of capital.

Both are linked. Credit card debt is difficult to analyse because many people use it for rewards programs and retain the capacity to pay it off each month. For example, there was roughly $US970 billion owed on credit cards in the US at the end of July 2008. $US26.6 billion was charged-off during 2007, and it is estimated that $US41.5 billion will be charged-off by the end of 2008 and as much as $US96 billion by the end of 2009. (A charge-off occurs when the creditor writes off the debt owing as a “bad debt”, usually 6 months after it should have been paid. They no longer list it as an asset, although you still owe it and they’ll still chase you for it.)

That’s a fair amount of credit card delinquency in the system, and it links to big finance because banks and financial institutions buy and sell securities backed by credit card debt in the same way that they buy and sell securities backed by residential mortgages. Packages of credit card debt may constitute a smaller card in the financial house of cards than those made up of sub-prime mortgages but they are none-the-less structural beams and pillars, and their collapse will add to the current crisis.

Credit cards link to the bigger picture in other ways too. Banks are in the grip of financial constipation. Banks and other lenders that might, up until a few days ago, have still been flooding your letter box with offers of new credit cards (as David Jones has just done with its store card now a use-anywhere American Express card), will now be cutting back on new card issues and cutting credit off from consumers unable to meet repayment obligations. Consumers for their part, will reduce the use of credit cards as they tighten belts.

We are already seeing this in Australia where collectively we owe a record $A44 billion on credit cards, or an average of more than $A3200 per card. Note that that is “per card”, not “per person”. There are an estimated 112.9 million credit cards in Australia which has a population of approximately 20.5 million. There are more than 100 million purchases on credit cards each month.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the popularity of credit cards, the household gross debt – the difference between income and debt – has exploded from 50% in the early 1990s to 160% in 2008. Credit card fees (annual fees, over-limit fees, late payment fees etc) have risen 170% in the past five years and data suggests that consumers are being hit with penalty fees more and more often. Consumers are also hit with retailer surcharges for credit card use after the Reserve Bank got rid of the “no surcharge” rule in 2003.

So, look for credit card debt to feature in a new wave of financial crisis as the measures taken to “stabilise the financial system” solve or defer one set of problems but move the pressure of fictitious capital on its monetary base to other weak points in the system.

It ain’t over yet folks.

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Brendan M Cooney's excellent series of videos on capitalist economics contains this gem on Credit. It comes in two parts:

Marathon: Schacht pulls a swifty taking Rann to China

Marathon Resources Director and former ALP Senator Chris Schacht is currently in China with Premier Mike Rann and business leaders talking up trade ties between South Australia and the People’s Republic.

Schacht, who chairs a little-known consultancy called the Australia China Development Company, was due to be co-leader of the group with Central Market identity and Australian Asian Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Irena Zhang before the pair scored a coup by enlisting the prestige and the presence of the office and person of the State Premier.

The business mission intends to visit Beijing, SA’s sister state/province Shandong, and Zhejiang Province.

Rubbing shoulders with Rann for the duration of the trip will provide Schacht with excellent opportunities to get into the Premier’s ear about the importance to the State and to SA-China trade relations of allowing Marathon to mine uranium inside the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. And he won’t even have to buy a $3000 per head ticket to one of the Premier’s notorious fund-raising dinners. Schacht has done well for Marathon.

The opportunities will be all the better for the fact that the Chinese state investment company CITIC is equal second largest shareholder (with Queensland’s Talbot Group Holdings) in Marathon, each commanding 10.45% of the company’s shares. HSBC Custody Nominees (Australia) Ltd recently amalgamated previously separate share portfolios in the company to emerge as the largest shareholder with 13.1% of shares.

It will be the ideal environment for the current State Premier and the former Federal Senator to iron out the obstacles to Marathon resuming its exploration and drilling program.

(Schacht has a diverse range of talents. He is a leading figure in Australian and international volleyball circles, his son Andrew being a member of the Olympic team. Volleyball is second only to table tennis in sports popularity in China. Schacht, who had been a member of the Federal Government’s Defence Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade for 12 to 15 years, recently registered as a Federal lobbyist for Swiss aircraft manufacturer Pilatus.)