Great struggle by construction workers for rights on site

Construction workers are conducting a magnificent fight for their rights at work against the Grocon company.


Grocon boss Daniel Grollo has reneged on a verbal agreement with the CFMEU and has denied workers the right to wear union apparel and to elect their own shop stewards and safety officers. His rules are enforced by thugs previously employed as bouncers.

Workers have maintained an organised blockade of the Grocon site in Melbourne for the past  week.

(Above: the spirit of organised labour - If provoked, we will strike!)

When Daniel Grollo called in the cops to break this up, the workers maintained a tight collective discipline, held their ground against capsicum spray and horses, and forced the cops to retreat.

(See http://youtu.be/cMiaVB0OO1Y ) 
As far as the copper in charge was concerned, the behaviour of the workers was “not unreasonable”.

Yet the capitalist press and right-wing commentators have dragged out all the old clichés about industrial thuggery and union lawlessness. They call for a revival of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the building bosses’ own Schutzstaffel or SS police.

That is to be expected.

What really infuriates - although no less to be expected – is the unhelpful role of the social-democrats. Having originally come into office on the backs of a powerful community movement in support of the ACTU campaign “Your Rights at Work”, these neoliberal “Labor” politicians had every mandate they needed to tell Grollo to pull his head in and to allow workers to enjoy rights at work.

Instead, they play the role of the “responsible” labor lieutenants of capital, bemoaning “unlawful” union behaviour and hinting darkly at punishment of the major construction union, the CFMEU.

There will be no easy victory for construction workers.

They will need to persist through difficult times and to withstand police and political intimidation.

But they are not alone.

(See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Iu1TASSCQ&feature=colike for a rally by Sydney CFMEU members outside a Grocon site in that city)

They have friends everywhere in the ranks of the working people.

Class society? The gaps just get bigger

This graph was quoted today by bourgeois economics commentator Robert Gottliebson.

It shows why we have an Occupy movement, and why we need a communist movement.

In respect of the sharing of the wealth created by the labour power of the working class at the point of production, and subsequently realised through sales in the process of distribution, the position of the overwhelming majority of US citizens has remained unchanged between 1917 and 2008. It’s basically the same in all other advanced capitalist countries.

The very thin blue line at the bottom (appropriately) represents the average annual income of the bottom 90% of the popluation.

There are three other colour categories for the top 5-10%, the top 1-5% and the top 1% respectively.

What is significant following the adoption of neoliberalism (privatisation, deregulation, attacks on workers sand their unions, financial speculation) is that the gap between the bottom 90% and the top 10% has exploded, and within the top 10% almost all of the growth in income and wealth has accrued to the top 1%.

That’s why Occupy’s claim to be the voice of the 99% against the 1% resonated so loudly and so widely.

To be successful, Occupy in whatever form it takes shape in the future, must move from the successful use of percentages for the purposes of sloganeering, to the adoption of revolutionary tactics and strategies based on class analysis.

That is the only analysis that makes the transformation from capitalism to the next stage of society possible.

Archie and Occupy

As a barometer of the effectiveness of a genuine mass movement, Archie comics is somewhat surprising.


A friend found a recent issue which featured the Occupy movement.

Needless to say, by the end of the story, the local rich guy (Veronica’s dad) apologises for calling in the cops to suppress an occupation of a local park, whilst spoiled rich-bitch Veronica gets to go out with the “cute guy” who has organised the protest.

With everyone reconciled, the message can be put that Riverdale (Archie’s community) is not divided into the 99% and the 1%, but rather is 100% united and American!

Well, I didn’t say it would be realistic, did I?

Productivity - for whom and for what?

In their insatiable quest for maximum profits the ruling class has a single-minded focus on raising productivity. Bourgeois economics defines productivity as a ratio of outputs of production to the inputs required for its creation. While national productivity is thus a measure of the effective utilisation of many inputs including investment in plant and machinery, costs of resources, costs of labour power, management expenses, and taxation and so on, the immediate target of the ruling class in its push to raise productivity is always the cost of labour power.

Marx identified two components of capital in the process of production: variable capital (wages - the price of labour power) and constant capital (capital invested in plant, equipment and materials). He described the ratio of the one to the other as the organic composition of capital as it was, in effect, a ratio between living capital (wages - the cost of a commodity that can create new value) and dead capital (the cost of those commodities which cannot by themselves create new value).

In his lengthy investigation into the economic laws of motion of modern capitalism Marx indicated that, as a general trend, the share of constant capital in the total outlay of capital increases, and that labour input per product unit declines. Furthermore, he revealed how the competition between capitalists required the lowering of the prices of commodities and that this was substantially brought about by investment in newer and more productive equipment and the application of newer and more effective technologies. This meant a rise, over time, in the organic composition of capital which would lead to a declining rate of profit; for every new increase in profits from sales, an even larger corresponding increase in constant capital investment becomes necessary. The obvious corrective to a decline in the rate of profit is a reduction of variable capital.

For example, if at the start of a production process a business has a variable capital cost of 8 units, and its investment in plant and its ongoing cost of materials amounts to 4 units, then it is producing at a rate of 200% on its outlay. However, if a rival firm is established after technological advances make cheaper and more efficient plant available to it, and/or the rival becomes supplier of materials to its own production process, then it will undercut the older competitor assuming the cost of labour power remains the same. The original firm is forced to invest in new plant and new technology to make its products more cheaply and efficiently, but the new constant capital costs are in addition to the old constant capital costs and so the denominator increases to 6 units. If wages remain the same, the rate of profit drops to 133% - still enough to cover costs but not enabling the previous rate of profit to be maintained. There can only be a return to the previous rate of profit (200%) if the cost of labour power can be reduced to 5.2 units.

Please don’t accept that very superficial analysis as in any way doing justice to the majesty and sweep of Marx’s Capital and other writings.

Just keep it in mind as we return to the question of productivity as a concept in capitalist economics.

By way of newspaper headlines and ”serious” TV, the ruling ideas of society about productivity never give any real airing to management responsibility for declining productivity.

Instead, the discussion is always about “labour productivity” or the amount of goods and services that a worker produces in a given amount of time.

Hence the Murdoch rag The Australian on July 3: “Productivity first, not wages: Simon Crean and Martin Ferguson turn on union family”.

Hence a national enquiry prompted by the most reactionary circles of the ruling class and their assertion that the industrial legislation embedded in the Fair Work Act is denying employers the right to a more “flexible” workforce.

All of this is despite the fact that productivity according to bourgeois economists has a whole range of inputs and that it can actually rise as wages go up. It can also actually rise as constant capital costs increase and profits drop. It is possible as Gerry Harvey bemoaned on the weekend, to have increasing manufacture of wide-screen televisions at the same time as there is a decrease in demand. The problem is therefore not low productivity but overproduction. (Harvey seems to have accepted that the problem is not on-line sales from overseas suppliers – his position last March – but overproduction.)

But for all their gnashing of teeth, the bosses have very little to complain about in terms of productivity. According to the IMF in 2011, Australia ranked fifth highest out of 34 OECD economies in terms of productivity – behind Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland and Denmark. There is never celebration of our high levels of national productivity. Indeed the Financial Review had the following little in-joke for its mainly business and financial circles readership:

For its particular readership, this cartoon is designed to provoke agreeable chuckling (“Yeah, that’s right, let’s get on with it…”). In a working class paper, it would provoke outrage.

Productivity can vary between sectors of the economy, as the following graph shows.

The mining sector has seen the greatest increase in productivity and, beginning during the Howard years, a no less dramatic decline. A little later in the Howard years, a decline set in in the accommodation and food services sector. But four other sectors, construction, manufacturing, retail trade and financial and insurance services have all seen relatively steady growth for close to a quarter of a century. So there is clearly no basis for using gloom-and-doom stories about productivity for launching attacks on workers’ wages and conditions via a return to the draconian Howard-era industrial laws. Today’s are bad enough!

(The negligible impact of Labor’s Fair Work Act on productivity, revealed in the graph above, led one letter writer published in the Fin Review to observe: “In the absence of discernible effects(of the FWA) on national productivity, the spotlight will then fall squarely upon what it should: the extent to which management sloth, incompetence and commercial turpitude have contributed to the nation’s problem.” - Mike Martin Fin Review 10/8/12. We won’t hold our breaths waiting…)

Data from the University of Sydney’s Workplace Research Centre on the relationship between labour productivity and real wages (ie wages expressed in terms of what they can actually buy over a defined period of time) confirms that it is not wages that lie behind the so-called “problems” with productivity:

ABS data also shows that starting from a common index point of 100, wages have actually declined in terms of their share of national income, whilst profit’s share has substantially increased:

And Alan Kohler has shown recently, using data from the US bank Morgan Stanley that Australian corporate profits are doing very nicely compared to countries in the Group of 10.

It is in their very real interests that Australians not be hoodwinked by productivity sob-stories into thinking that there is a problem, and that they are to blame. There is a problem – the compulsion to increase productivity not to meet real social need but to put the competitors out of business.

We need a system that connects productivity to social need not to private profit.

Behind the Colorado massacre

The following analysis of the Aurora California massacre comes from the Workers World paper.  This is a socialist publication from the United States.  The author, Larry Hales,  lived in Aurora and Denver, Colo. He was in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.

Behind Colorado massacre

By Larry Hales on July 24, 2012

(Above: US newspaper headlines)

The most important question raised by the latest massacre in Colorado remains unasked by the corporate media: What is it about social conditions in the United States that promotes these terrible tragedies?

Late on the evening of July 19, theatergoers in Aurora, Colo., sat down to watch an “event” film — the kind whose opening at midnight showings is preceded by saturation ads placed by Hollywood studios.

“The Dark Knight Rises” is the final in a film series based on Batman comic books. The protagonist is a billionaire vigilante whose primary objective is to “clean” the streets of a metropolitan area of criminals, who for the most part commit crimes of opportunity. On occasion, he tangles with oddly named and outfitted master criminals with murky rationales.

Twenty minutes into the film, survivors said a young man outfitted in full-body tactical gear — including a helmet with gasmask, vest, leggings, throat and groin protectors — threw gas canisters and began shooting into the crowd. Aurora police say he fled out a back door, but was quickly captured in the parking lot. They have identified the alleged shooter as James Holmes, 24.

In the initial confusion Holmes was thought to be a prop associated with the screening. But the screams of those shot soon alerted others to what was happening. In all, 70 people were reportedly shot; 12 were killed, the youngest a six-year-old girl. A dozen of the wounded remain in critical condition.

Holmes made his first appearance in court on July 23; formal charges will be filed on July 30.

Survivors told of great acts of heroism. Family members, friends and complete strangers shielded and ushered one another out of the theater, while Holmes shot at random, first with an AR-15 assault rifle, which is a shortened version of an M-16, and then with a 12-gauge shotgun and two Glock 40-caliber semi-automatic pistols. He is reported to have purchased them over a period of several months in preparation for the massacre.

Why isn’t Holmes called a terrorist?

Holmes grew up in an upper-middle-class area of San Diego, Calif., raised by a computer scientist/mathematician father and a mother who is a nurse. According to police, he had booby trapped his apartment in Aurora and left his door unlocked. If tripped, the intricate traps could have killed many in the building and the nearby Anschutz Medical Campus of the University of Colorado.

The media have been cautious not to use the word “terrorist” because “there is not enough information as to motive.” Would they be so reserved if the suspect were a Muslim from almost anywhere?

What if Holmes were a person of color? Mightn’t labels like thug, gang member or terrorist have been hastily applied, regardless of how much information police had? In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, people scrambling to survive were labeled criminals and looters. The media constantly reported false stories of rape and mass murder, eager to believe the worst when describing Black people.

If Holmes had an Islamic name, or one uniquely African or Southeast Asian, would he have been able to purchase and stockpile massive amounts of ammo, four weapons including an assault rifle, tactical gear, accelerants and large commercial fireworks? If he had a known affiliation with a progressive or leftist group that was infiltrated or spied on by authorities, might not his apartment have been flagged and raided?

Whatever personal motive the shooter might have had is speculation at this time. However, the massacre of people in a movie theater is an act of terror, and the few words he allegedly uttered claiming to be the Joker character in “Batman” showed he was very aware of this.

Holmes may suffer from delusions that come from a mental illness. But his planning, purchasing of weapons, tactical body armor, thousands of rounds of ammunition and chemicals, and other components to make bombs and the other devices found in his apartment show a great deal of calculation. However, mental illness and the ability to think through a plan are not mutually exclusive.

Nevertheless, the label of mentally ill, or sometimes genius, superb student, etc., are the usual platitudes whenever a “normal” or “everyday” person who is not from an oppressed community commits a crime such as this massacre.

Violence & capitalist alienation

This event must be analyzed in the context of the overarching culture of war and violence that runs through the entire history of the United States and has been perpetrated against the most oppressed and vulnerable. Violence is an integral part of this capitalist system, based on exploitation of workers and super-exploitation of the nationally oppressed.

The established norm, what is generally accepted as everyday or mundane, flows from how the wealth of this society was first gained and then maintained. The dominant class in U.S. society has historically been white. Thus, Holmes is “normal” at first glance and without a coherent political motive, so the word terrorist is not applied to him.

Instead, he is categorized as a loner, a misfit or socially awkward, which denote that in no way is this type of violent crime condoned or reinforced by the society as a whole. At the same time those terms disregard the glorification of violence in the U.S. and the effects of the military-industrial complex on the culture.

Karl Marx wrote that under capitalism workers must sell their labor power for a wage as part of a productive process owned by a boss, leaving the worker alienated from the product. There is no satisfaction in the end product because the primary reason to work is to earn a wage to sustain oneself and one’s dependents.

Over time workers are not only alienated from what they produce, but are in competition with one another for jobs — which are now becoming increasingly scarce. This often influences how people relate to one another and contributes to the development of some mental illnesses and anxieties. The more developed the country, especially one that has passed into the imperialist phase, the more decadent the society grows and with it the prevalence of social illness.

It was just a few miles from Aurora that a similar incident happened in 1999 at Columbine High School. There two teenagers specifically paid reverence to Hitler’s birthday and espoused ultra-right, racist beliefs as they gunned down fellow students.

A culture of war & militarism

Most of Colorado was stolen from Mexico in an extremely violent war. It is a militarized state where Rocky Flats, the infamous U.S. government facility, produced chemical and nuclear weapons for 40 years. It also once housed napalm-maker Dow Chemical.

Colorado is home to defense contractors Lockheed Martin and several Northrop Grumman facilities, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Air Force Academy, and one of the largest and most technologically advanced infantry divisions, the 4th Infantry based at Fort Carson.

Before becoming a state, it was the site of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, where hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapahoe were massacred by the Colorado Territory militia, which terrorized Indigenous people into leaving their land.

It is also where the National Guard and company goons employed by the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. massacred two dozen striking miners and their family members in Ludlow in 1914.

San Diego, Calif., where Holmes grew up, is a military area with a huge Naval base close to the border with Mexico.

To leave out the effect on people’s minds of the military-industrial complex and the U.S. history of conquest would miss the point. The U.S. was founded on violence and genocide. The major colonial countries carved up land that did not belong to them. They waged a battle that is still ongoing against the original inhabitants, as well as against Black people and Latinos/as in general and other oppressed peoples who don’t belong to the dominant nationality.

Maintaining the status quo has been a violent affair. The U.S. has been constantly at war since its inception. The mainstream media justify this with jingoism and glorification of the U.S. military machine.

The U.S. military budget dwarfs that of the rest of the world’s combined. The constant glorification of violence in movies, commercials and video games, plus the fact that the U.S. has been openly engaged in warfare for the last decade, seep into the psyche.

U.S. soldiers massacred at least 16 villagers in Afghanistan just months ago, many of them women and children. Such massacres are commonplace during an occupation. Every day whole families are incinerated by bombs.

This is the context in which the mass killing occurred in Colorado, where, as in most of the U.S., it is so easy to purchase weapons, tactical gear, loads of ammunition and other materials online.

No family should have to experience such horror. People should be outraged, and the victims and their family members are entitled to justice. But justice is not served by making this an isolated incident and leaving out its historical, cultural and social framework.

James Holmes may be mentally ill. This should not reflect on those who suffer from mental illness, but who would never harm another person. Nor should it be assumed that mental illness is an excuse to get out of going to prison.

Mental illness & a sick society

Julie Fry, a Legal Aid attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., told WW: “Mental illness is not generally well understood or appreciated at all within the criminal justice system. In fact, prisons have become essentially warehouses for people with mental illness, while social services and medical networks designed for the treatment of these illnesses have been gutted systematically through budget cuts over recent decades. Far from using it as an excuse to escape prison, people with mental illness usually receive much worse treatment in jail and are likely to receive longer sentences than other people.”

Only a sick society refuses to give people the help and services they need.

The argument that incidents like this happen because of the prevalence of weapons is problematic. It is obvious that all too often the right-wing do champion gun rights and the wealthy and politically backward have access to large stockpiles.

But revolutionaries and progressives such as the Deacons for Defense and the Black Panther Party were able to offer defense from the Klan and racist police by being able to purchase guns. While people of color are made the targets of the police and denied the right to self-defense, we cannot cede the monopoly of force to the police and the military, which maintain the status quo of a society built on exploitation.

The victims and family members do deserve justice, but ultimately justice will be secured when the root causes of crimes like this one are addressed and the social foundation for the glorification and justification of violence is uprooted.

http://www.workers.org/2012/07/24/behind-colorado-massacre/

Handouts for private school parents - arrests for public school parents

Australian public education is free, compulsory and secular.

Or at least that was the intention of the early colonial bourgeoisie whose Public Instruction Acts of the 1880s decreed such to be the case.

Yet it was revealed a couple of days ago in the South Australian daily paper The Advertiser that thousands of parents have been prosecuted for failing to pay public school fees this year.

In fact 271 parents had been issued arrest warrants for failing to appear in court over the matter.

Arrest warrants? For failure to pay fees in a supposedly free system??!!

But don’t get angry yet.

Some 34% of school age children go to Catholic and private schools. You see, public education is not only not free, it is not really compulsory.

The ruling class has made a religion of the choice agenda, starving public schools of funds and forcing parents who want to do the right thing by their children to seek out the much better funded private alternative.

Most OECD countries have private school enrolments of around 4-5%, so Australia’s more than one-third is truly testimony to the appeal of the neoliberal gospel.

But don’t get angry yet.

The private schools are better funded not just because they enrol students from wealthy families, but because – unlike other OECD countries – government funds are used to offset the costs of private schooling!

We like to be different in Australia!

A common myth is that public schools are funded by the State and territory governments and that private schools are funded by the Commonwealth.

It’s a bit more complex than that, a bit like the yin-yang symbol which is predominantly black and white, but with a bit of white in the black and vice versa.

So let’s get back to school fees.

A component of the school fee (both public and private) can be paid for poorer families by the State government. Families must endure the humiliation of applying to be on the School Card, a list of low income families who get part, but not all, of their fees paid.

For the three years 2009, 2010 and 2011 there were some 50,000 School Card approvals. Nearly all applications and approvals are made in Term 1 when school fees are charged to parents. The figure for 2012 is 30,000. That is a massive 40% drop in School Card numbers.

There must be a reason for the drop, and it sure as hell saves the State government a whole lot of money!

We need to know whether the decline is in public schools only, or whether it extends across the Catholic and private sectors as well.

School Card payments are quite a lucrative source of income for the privates.

Here is a table of some non-government schools, their student numbers and the School Card payments they received in 2011:

This is just a handful of schools in the private sector that not only get a substantial part of their recurrent and capital costs paid by the federal government, but also get hundreds of thousands each from the state government as a result of parents prepared to pay thousands of dollars in fees to get out of the public system, but who then turn back to the public purse to get part of those fees paid in the form of a School Card!

But don’t get angry just yet.

The apparently random list above has one factor in common. All of these schools also get from the state government a fee remission payment in excess of $60,000.

So what the hell is a fee remission payment?

Fee remission is an interesting concept. It applies to those non-School Card holders in the non-government sector who are unable to pay fees or school debts due to economic hardship!

Elite Prince Alfred College claimed $48,942.17 in fee remissions from the state government in 2011, significantly less than the schools above (which are middle and low-fee as far as private fees go). But why a private college catering for the rich should get 17 cents from the public purse, let alone the other $48,000-plus is beyond me.

And now we can start to get angry, because we can put those fee remission payments next to the School Card payments:

Only one of the schools above is a boarding school - Rostrevor - in the leafy green eastern suburbs and it gets an additional $166,423.21 to help defray the cost of providing pastoral care to its boarders! Prince Alfred College, mentioned above, received $244,492.17.

So can you see why there is basis for anger?

Parents who are resisting the lure of “private is better” are chased by the system to the point of arrest over non-payment of fees in a supposedly free public system, while those who thumb their noses at public schooling can get all sort of additional government subsidies to shelter them from the pain of paying fees in the private system.

This is a matter of the grossest social injustice!

Rinehart decision a disgrace!

When Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister in the midst of the campaign by mining monopolies to prevent the Resources Super Profits Tax, she announced that she had opened the door to the mining industry.

She not only opened the door, she then rolled herself out as the carpet over which they could tread underfoot the aspirations of the Australian people to benefit from the extraction of their sovereign wealth.

The RSPT was abandoned and a watered-down Mineral Resource Rent Tax was substituted.

The RSPT was to be levied at 40% and applied to all extractive industry including gold, nickel and uranium mining as well as sand and quarrying activities.  The MRRT will be levied on 30% of the super profits from the mining of iron ore and coal only, and the mining company will only have to pay the tax when its annual profits reach $75 million.  The MRRT is proposed to be introduced from 1 July 2012.

Enterprise migration agreements a product of unplanned capitalism

Having capitulated to the big miners on the RSPT, the Gillard government has now capitulated to their demand to import foreign workers, with Immigration Minister Chris Bowen granting the world’s richest woman, Gina Reinhart an “enterprise migration agreement” that will see some 1700 workers, or 21% of the workforce, brought in  to her $9.5 billion Roy Hill project in Western Australia.

This is a disgrace.  It is an indictment of capitalism.

Capitalism can operate individual workplaces that are strictly regulated by the boss and run to exacting plans designed to maximise the individual capitalist’s realisation of surplus value, or proft.

But the economy as a whole defies planning and regulation.  Capital flows globally in search of the quickest means of making a profit, leaving governments scrabbling to devise ever-newer “incentives” to attract capital into less profitable but socially useful areas. 

If we could really regulate and plan under capitalism we would long ago have had an even stronger RSPT in place and it would have funded the establishment of a Mining Industry Skills Institute where trainees on a living wage learned the skills required in mining and thereby obviated the need to bring in foreign workers to meet a “skills shortage”.

The MISI would have enabled those who had lost jobs in manufacturing, as well as youths fresh out of school, to transition into new areas on employment in the extractive industries.

But no, just as we send raw materials out of the country for others to value-add, so we send unemployed manufacturing workers and too many of our young people onto the scrapheap of unemployment.

The mining industry runs its self-congratulatory propaganda about being a creator of jobs.  In fact, it will increasingly turn to technology to destroy jobs in its sector, such as the introduction of driverless trucks and driverless trains.

And if it is not destroying jobs, it will replace them by importing workers trained at another society’s expense and ready to be returned to it when they are no longer needed.

Gillard has no excuses

Gillard has offered the weak excuse that she knew nothing of the enterprise migration agreement approved for Rinehart.

If that is true, then she is too busy sucking up to US imperialism and NATO to know what is happening in her own backyard.

This is not some minor announcement: it is the first-ever enterprise migration agreement and one that was always going to embroil the government in controversy.

ACTU secretary Dave Oliver said that home workers had been "overlooked" and called on Ms Gillard to intervene in the situation immediately.

"We think it’s a reprehensible situation," Mr Oliver said.

Outspoken MP Bob Katter also faulted the Government's move, branding it a ludicrous decision which erodes confidence in the national economy.

"These people are so lacking in patriotism and so committed to looking after the interests of corporations that invariably are foreign owned or foreign financed, that they have agreed to fly in people from overseas," Mr Katter said.

"They will undermine our awards and they will take your jobs, and I don't just mean in mining - it'll spread beyond that.

"The Australian people will not stand for this."

CFMEU Construction National Secretary, Dave Noonan said that this decision was a disgrace, as the company had not been required to try and employ local workers before being granted the EMA.

“Today’s decision is disgraceful and unnecessary. At a time of high youth unemployment in many parts of Perth and Western Australia, job losses in the non-mining states, and declining construction employment, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has written a blank cheque to Australia’s richest woman.

“Instead of standing up for Australian workers and requiring her to advertise these positions or train workers for them, Chris Bowen has fallen over himself to help Gina Rinehart bring in cheap bonded overseas labour,” Mr. Noonan said.

Mr. Noonan said that the new agreement will mean that at least 21% of the total construction workforce for this project will be temporary foreign labour.

“Apart from the impact on local workers, the CFMEU is also very concerned that these workers owe their temporary visas to their employer, and are under constant threat of deportation if they stand up for their rights or complain about dangerous conditions,” Mr. Noonan said.

Demand the Resources Super Profit Tax be brought back!

Make the rich pay every inch of the way!

Take away the power of the ruling class and run the country ourselves!

For national independence and socialism!

Toro - Keep your poison out of Adelaide!

Adelaide-based Toro Energy (office address: 3 Boskanna Ave, Norwood) earlier this week received approval from the WA Environmental Protection Authority to mine 1200 tonnes of uranium ore from its Wiluna operations, 520km north of Kalgoorlie, and to truck it in 200-litre drums across the Nullarbor to Adelaide.

From Adelaide, the ore will be exported by ship through Port Adelaide, or transferred to trains and sent by rail to Darwin and its port.

This is an intolerable imposition on communities and road users between Wiluna and Kalgoorlie, and Kalgoorlie and Adelaide, and, if the rail link is used, on communities between Adelaide and Darwin.

It must be opposed!

Fremantle says No!

The immediate cause of the decision to send WA uranium ore to SA and possibly the NT is the policy of the Fremantle local government to declare "no uranium, nuclear waste or other material connected with the nuclear power industry may be stored or transported in or through the municipality".

Fremantle has s Greens mayor and voted in a Greens member to the WA parliament in 2009. Adele Carles received the highest primary vote result for the Greens in any state or federal election in Australia, but was forced to resign after she admitted having an affair with a Liberal politician. She now sits as an independent.

Carles and Mayor Brad Pettit were the recipients of community backlash after 2009 concerns about potential lead pollution after the state government gave approval to Magellan Metals to export lead carbonate through Fremantle from its mine at Wiluna, almost 1000km east of Perth. Magellan Metals' lead carbonate dust blew all over the southern West Australian town of Esperance in 2007, killing hundreds of birds and causing high levels of lead in the blood of children and other residents.

Although WA’s Liberal Party defeated the incumbent Labor government over the issue of approval for uranium mining in the state, it is not willing to take on the community over the export of yellowcake from the state’s ports.

After initially pledging that uranium ore would not be shipped from ports near residential areas, Liberal Premier Barnett has extended that to all ports, saying that they do not have container facilities.

Wiluna’s traditional custodians not happy

Toro is negotiating a mining agreement with two native title groups from the Wiluna region. Managing director Greg Hall said he believed residents and traditional owners who had taken part in talks were onside with the project.

The Toro website refers to visits to the area by traditional owners to map sites of cultural significance.

However, Wiluna locals have sent letters to both WA Environment Minister Bill Marmion and Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke inviting them both to Wiluna to discuss the proposed uranium mine by Toro Energy. Wiluna local and senior law man Glen Cooke has been very critical of the consultation process, saying in the letter that “many people in Wiluna feel that they have been excluded from the public process”.

Mr Cooke said “Toro Energy they only talk to a few people, always the same people. It’s not right, the people from Bondini’s (the community closest to the proposed mine) sometimes they don’t know about meetings, or they’re not invited to meetings or they can’t get to meetings. This is not right.”

“Marmion and Burke they will be making a big decision that will affect our community our dreaming and our health. Before they make a decision on what happens in our community, before signing away our country from many thousands of kilometers away they should come and look us in the eyes.”

Kado Muir, Chairperson of the West Australia Nuclear Free Alliance and a Ngalia man  said “The decision by EPA to approve the mining and transport of uranium has sent a shiver of fear through Aboriginal communities in the Goldfields. Our families in Wiluna face the prospect of having their country and environment poisoned by the Toro mine, while those of us living in Leonora and Kalgoorlie can only live in fear and hope that the road trains driving through our town does not have an unfortunate accident.

“The trucking of uranium down the Goldfields highway, sneaking around the back of Kalgoorlie and scurrying out of the State to South Australia along the Eyre highway is a striking commentary on the ‘not in my backyard syndrome’. Lead exports through Esperance and Fremantle demonstrated that industry and Government owned ports can’t cope with Lead, how will they ever transport uranium safely, it’s like playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun.

“This is an irresponsible politically motivated decision by the EPA to pander to Barnetts ‘development at all costs’ agenda for Western Australia. “The EPA needs to redeem its legitimacy and hold a full public enquiry as provided for under their Act into the wider environmental and public health consequences of uranium mining in WA” Mr Muir concluded.

How much is too much?

Yellowcake is already exported through Port Adelaide and Darwin from mines in SA and the NT.

That is bad enough.

For them to have to also be the ports responsible for exporting yellowcake from WA is simply too much!

The Wiluna uranium mine is only the first to receive WA government approval.

There are at least 46 companies searching for uranium and seven others are awaiting exploration licenses. Four other proposals for uranium mines are under consideration.

One of the biggest is being pursued by Cameco Australia, the Australian subsidiary of the large Canadian integrated nuclear energy company, Cameco Corporation, which is developing the Kintyre deposit in a joint venture with Mitsubishi Development on the western edge of the Great Sandy Desert.

Energy and Minerals Australia, an ASX-listed company, is developing the significant Mulga Rocks deposit northeast of Kalgoorlie.

Mega Uranium, a Canadian-owned company has partnered with Japanese companies to develop the Lake Maitland project in the east Goldfields.

BHP Billiton's Yeelirrie deposit is the second-largest known uranium deposit in Australia with a mine life of at least 30 years. But the project, 500km north of Kalgoorlie, is thought to be on hold.

Should the other four mines proceed to export yellowcake – and with the possibility of other mines going ahead in WA given the frenzy of exploration – then Toro’s planned delivery by truck of four to five containers of uranium oxide concentrate to Adelaide each month will pale into insignificance.

Adelaide residents must unite against the dangers of increased transport of yellowcake through their suburbs and out of their port.

No uranium exports through Port Adelaide!

Growing rivalry between China and the United States is having unwelcome repercussions in Australia

(Above: Chiese cartoonist Wang Xiaoyang portrayed Australia as being unable to maintain a foot in each - Chinese and US - camp over the Huawei and NBN controversy discussed below)

Both the US and China are approaching this rivalry from different perspectives. They are like the yin and yang of the famous Chinese symbol, pushing into and encircling one another, each looking for ways to outdo and outsmart the other. The US is in decline economically but maintains the largest armed forces in the world. Its rivalry with China is manifest in the white yang of a military squeeze, of military pressure and military pose-striking. China’s rivalry with the US is manifest in the black yin of economic and financial strength, of economic alliance with emerging powers, of attempts to knock the US further off balance with suggested new international financial architectures. The US has a little bit of black yin as well, particularly the US dollar as an international currency and continued controlling influence in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. China has a little bit of white yang as well, for although its capacity to project its military power internationally is currently quite limited, it is growing.


The struggle for the redivision of the world into areas for the most profitable investment of export capital has direct implications for the Australian people. We are cemented into a subservient political and military relationship with US imperialism on the basis of an economic situation that is fluid and changing. Part of that change involves the only significant potential challenger to US “full spectrum domination”, and that is China. “Australia is China’s top foreign direct investment destination...China is Australia’s largest trading partner and will remain so for the foreseeable future” (see http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=1616 ). However, China is no longer free of the contradictions and crises of capitalism, its Gini coefficient (a measure of the gap between rich and poor) is one of the highest in the world, and there is an underlying social discontent amongst its working and peasant classes. These circumstances mean that the current struggle for economic redivision of sources of raw materials and markets between the US, Western Europe and China (with smaller but significant input from India, Russia, Brazil) is directly involving Australia and that the political and military loyalties of the Australian bourgeoisie will confront expanding economic ties with China; moreover, this contradiction will sharpen at a potentially huge expense to our people and our class.


Growing the yang


In addition to the many military bases and port facilities maintained by the US imperialists in our region, the US wants additional capacity to put the squeeze on China. It is poised to use a new naval base South Korea is trying to impose on the heroic people of Jeju Island which lies close to the entrance to the Bohai Sea and close to the shipping lanes into Tianjin, the major port city servicing the region around Beijing. (To complicate matters, the Bohai Sea is oil-rich; the US ConocoPhillips, in partnership with the China National Offshore Oil Company has two platforms in the Bohai Sea. Last June they began to leak. The US company initially tried to cover up the leak but by October there was a major oil spill which polluted the seas and coasts around Penglai in Shandong Province.)


The US is also after a renewed military pact with Japan and additional bases there. It has considerable military force on Japan’s Okinawa Island as well as on the Chinese separatist province of Taiwan. In the Philippines it is seeking to boost its military presence and it has conducted joint naval exercises with Vietnam.


The US is currently negotiating the stationing of four littoral combat ships (LCS) in Singapore. These developments are being closely watched by Lockheed Martin Corp, Australia's Austal, General Dynamics Corp and other arms makers that are building two models of the new warships for the U.S. Navy, and hope to sell them to other countries in coming years.


The Singaporean proposal (and similar proposals involving the Philippines and the HMAS Stirling naval base outside Perth) conveys something of the dilemma the US faces as a declining economic power trying to expand its military reach.


"Because we will probably not be able to sustain the financial and diplomatic cost of new main operating bases abroad, the fleet of 2025 will rely more on host-nation ports and other facilities where our ships, aircraft, and crews can refuel, rest, resupply, and repair while deployed," Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert wrote in the naval magazine Proceedings last November.


That is the US dilemma in a nutshell – its inability to sustain the financial cost of its military activity.


Hence the 2500 marines to be stationed outside of Darwin will be in a base that is ostensibly under Australian control and contributed to financially by Australian tax-payers.


There is also the plan to use the coral atolls of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands as a launch pad for US Global Hawk surveillance drones and the P-8 surveillance aircraft. These fragile atolls are in the Indian Ocean and provide access to the South China Sea.


The significance of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea was captured in a piece by pro-imperialist US journalist Robert Kaplan, now working for intelligence analysts Stratfor. In America’s Pacific Logic (April 2012) Kaplan wrote:

The Indian Ocean is the world's energy interstate, across which passes crude oil and natural gas from the Arabian Peninsula and Iranian Plateau to the burgeoning, middle-class urban sprawls of East Asia. Though we live in a jet and information age, 90 percent of all commercial goods that travel from one continent to another do so by container ship, and half of those goods in terms of global tonnage -- and one-third in terms of monetary value -- traverse the South China Sea, which connects the Indian Ocean with the Western Pacific. Moreover, the supposedly energy-rich South China Sea is the economic hub of world commerce, where international sea routes coalesce. And it is the U.S. Navy and Air Force, more than any other institutions that have kept those sea lines of communication secure, thus allowing for post-Cold War globalization in the first place. This is the real public good that the United States provides the world.

In abandoning the Marxist path of anti-imperialist independence and self-reliance, the architects of China’s “reform and opening” have sacrificed both the state power and the labour power of the Chinese workers and peasants. The latter have “enjoyed’ the fruits of a process of primitive accumulation – unbearably long working hours, starvation wages, prohibition of union activity, unsafe conditions, lack of civil rights as migrants in their own country. The beneficiaries include multinational investors, a new Chinese bourgeoisie, and a state apparatus in China that purports to address new inequalities for the sake of social harmony but whose every move widens the gap between rich and poor.


The construction of China as the sweatshop of the world created a trading environment in which China’s central banks amassed huge amounts of US dollars. But a hoard is dead capital. China has released its dollar reserves back into circulation through the purchase by those dollars of US Treasury securities making it the largest single holder of US government debt, with 26 percent of all foreign-held US Treasury securities (8% of total US public debt).


To put China's ownership of U.S. debt in perspective, its holding of $1.2 trillion is even larger than the amount owned by American households. U.S. citizens hold only about $959 billion in U.S. debt, according to the Federal Reserve. (Other large foreign holders of U.S. debt include Japan, which owns $912 billion; the United Kingdom, which owns $347 billion; Brazil, which holds $211 billion; Taiwan, which holds $153 billion; and Hong Kong, which owns $122 billion.)


China continues to buy huge amounts of US Treasury securities, although it is seeking to diversify and become less dependent on the future convertability of US bonds. In fact, it became a net seller of U.S. Treasuries in the second half of 2011. China’s holdings of U.S. Treasuries accounted for 54% of its foreign-exchange reserves as of June 30, 2011 according to a U.S. Treasury survey released in March 2012. That is down from 65% in 2010 and a record 74% in 2006 and no doubt partly prompted by a growing awareness of what its leaders have derided as the US “addiction to debt” and the possibility of a downgrade in the rating of US debt. The latter came to fruition last August courtesy of Standard and Poors and was a nightmare come true for China which has 1.2 billion reasons for not wanting to see a drop in the value of the US dollar.


Whilst China is in a strong position economically, both in terms of its own ability to sustain GDP at a relatively high rate and by virtue of its ownership of substantial US debt, it needs a new international financial system in order to bring the yuan into play as a competitor to the dollar.


China has signaled on a number of occasions its desire to have the yuan achieve reserve currency status. It has taken some initial steps with proposals for the inclusion of the yuan in the IMF’s special drawing rights (a basket comprising dollars, euros, pounds and yen). On a bilateral basis it has set up currency swaps with countries including Argentina, Belarus and Indonesia, and has allowed letting institutions in Hong Kong issue bonds denominated in renminbi (yuan). China is supporting itself and other countries to diversify their reserve holdings away from the dollar, knowing that this will weaken the US.


Nouriel Roubini sees the Chinese goal in these terms: “Now, imagine a world in which China could borrow and lend internationally in its own currency. The renminbi, rather than the dollar, could eventually become a means of payment in trade and a unit of account in pricing imports and exports, as well as a store of value for wealth by international investors. Americans would pay the price…”


In 2009, China supplanted the US as Brazil’s largest trading partner. Brazilian President Lula visited China that year, observing “Between Brazil and China, we need to establish a trade that is paid for in our own currencies. We don’t need dollars. Why do two important countries like Brazil and China have to use the dollar as a reference, instead of our own currencies?....It’s crazy that the dollar is the reference, and that you give a single country the power to print that currency.”


In our own region, China has supported the 2009 Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) Agreement, which took effect on March 24, 2010, marking the official establishment of regional currency swaps as a crisis prevention measure in the wake of the 1997 regional financial crisis. Although Japan was the lead player in the early stages of establishing CMIM, its place has now been taken by China. When the CMIM established the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic and Research Office (AMRO) in 2011 to provide it with a regulatory arm, Wei Benhua – who had until then managed China’s foreign reserve funds - became its first director. AMRO represents the Ministries of Finance, Central Banks and Monetary Authorities of ASEAN countries, China (including Hong Kong, China), Japan and Korea. The latter three countries contribute 80% of the $120 bn. held by CMIM regional currency swaps, with 20% contributed by the other 10 (ASEAN) members.


Economic commentators note that AMRO’s creation is a reflection of the “unrepresentative and unaccountable character of the global economic governance architecture…. it may also eliminate the need for a global lender of last resort—a role currently fulfilled by the IMF” and that if Western powers continue to exercise “unfair” control of bodies like the IMF, then they “risk further delegitimizing their current guardianship of the global economy” (K. Nachiappan and M. Joksic for the Carnegie Council).


Covering all bases


Of course it would be foolish to think that US imperialism relies on military muscle alone and that China is restricting itself to a game of financial chess. The US will probably have to make some changes to governance arrangements at the IMF and the World Bank to prevent the rise of more regional financial rivals based on the AMRO model in areas like the Middle East and Latin America. It is also waging an aggressive campaign to force the Chinese into increasing the value of the yuan, arguing that it has been kept artificially undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage by making China’s exports to the US cheaper and imports from the US more expensive. This turns into populist domestic rhetoric about Chinese responsibility for US job losses.

US imperialism can also be expected to place further pressure on China to deregulate its financial sector – a key neoliberal objective throughout the world. In March 2012 the World Bank President Robert Zoellick delivered a report, China 2030, which set out a comprehensive plan for restructuring the nation's State-owned sector to allow more private participation, and emphasising the need for the Bank of China to lose its monopoly position and accept competition from local and foreign financial institutions. The release of the report was disrupted by a lone protester, Du Jianguo, (above) who distributed anti-World Bank leaflets titled “Go home with your poison!” The incident prompted furious on-line criticism of any further opening of China to imperialist finance capital. Nevertheless, Premier Wen Jiabao called on April 3 for the nation’s biggest state-run banks to be broken up “because they earn far too much money”.

In Australia, US economic retaliation against China takes the form of pressuring our puppet government to deny China opportunities for investment here. This year’s rejection of the Huawei bid for participation in the National Broadband Network echoed the 2009 Government rejection of Chinalco’s US$ 19.2 billion bid for a stake in Rio Tinto. Like the earlier decisions to block Chinese investment in mines in the Woomera Prohibited Area and the Hawks Nest mining area in WA, the Huawei rejection was justified on national security grounds. The 2011 FIRB decision to order Chinese mining giant Shenhua to sell the 43 farms it had bought for $213m near Gunnedah in northen NSW if they were not used for mining was justified in terms of Australian agricultural interests . China justifiably complains of unfair treatment, although none of these contending groups of investors proceed from the interests of the Australian people. Forces loyal to US imperialist domination of Australia are certainly not beyond whipping up xenophobic and racist sentiments to obstruct and delay Chinese investment here.

For its part, China has been accused for over a decade of secretly building military bases in Burma as part of a planned extension of its influence into the Indian Ocean. These allegations are without foundation (see Andrew Selth, Chinese Military Bases in Burma: The Explosion of a Myth, Griffith Asia Institute, 2007). However, it has sent destroyers, frigates and supply ships to combat piracy in the waters off the coast of Somalia (for their part Somali pirates defend their actions as necessary to combat illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic wastes, including nuclear waste, in Somali waters). The presence of even a small escort flotilla so far from China has some in China calling for the creation of overseas military bases with Pakistan, the Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Madagascar as possible sites (see Prof. Shen Dingli, Don't shun the idea of setting up overseas military bases, http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2010-01/28/content_19324522_3.htm  ). Indeed, Pakistan has asked China to build a naval base at its south-western port of Gwadar and expects the Chinese navy to maintain a regular presence there, according to Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar, Pakistan’s defence minister.

The main venue for a Chinese naval presence, quite legitimately, is the South China Seas and the US, through its Filipino proxy, has recently created a serious incident, the Huangyan Island incident, to test Chinese resolve. Where China is in the right, particularly in relation to US imperialism, we must unswervingly support it. Where China extends its naval presence into international waters, we should assess the situation according to its circumstances, and if China ever uses its military or naval power to practice interference, subversion, bullying or control, we should denounce it as China itself called on us to do in 1974 (Deng Xiaoping, Speech at the Special Session of the UN General Asembly, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1974/04/10.htm  ).


Conclusion


The growing rivalry between the US and China is having unwelcome repercussions in Australia. The primary responsibility for increasing tensions in our region is US imperialism which is strategically threatened by China’s economic strength and consequently seeking to expand its military encirclement of that country. As a willing participant in the imperialist globalised economy, and with substantial and growing economic interests abroad, there is capacity and motive for China to complement its economic might with the ability to project its military strength into the international arena.


The task of Australian communists is to develop the movement against US imperialism, to force the Australian bourgeoisie into ending its dependence on and alignment with US imperialism, and to propagate the ideal of Australia as an independent force in world affairs capable of making judgements and decisions that reflect the will and the interests of the Australian people.


The rivalry between the US and China will develop unevenly and we must make tactical adjustments as required, but our strategic goal must be anti-imperialist Australian independence and socialism.

Growing the yin