Oz Update

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It has taken me quite a while to settle back into monitoring Australian
politics. The problem is that I have formed an absolute aversion to
watching the Prime Minister and his bunch of millionaire ministers on
TV.  But certain recent events seem to indicate that the Tory Govt is
becoming aware that it is riding the tiger's back.

There are several features of the present conjuncture that I think are
unique.  For a start a new Goods and Services Tax (GST) or value added tax
of 10% is coming in July. I think it is no exaggeration to say that
ordinary Australians are dreading the tax.  Interest rates and house
mortgages are also trekking upwards and the GST will provide the other wing
of the scissors. So doubt and fear and insecurity, which are the inevitable
by products of neo-liberalism, now have a clear focus - GST Day.

The resulting erosion in the Government's popularity has become
significant.  It compelled the Prime Minister, John Howard, to don his
tweed jacket and moleskin hat and announce he was touring the 'bush' -
rural Australia.  The bush is indeed a site of opposition to the
centralisation of economic policies.  The rural sector can only exist if
its water, electricity, petrol, banking, phones etc are all subsidised by
the city.  Neo liberals has privatized many of these services and private
companies will simply not subside unprofitable sectors.  So for example the
local bank closes in a small town and this sets the multiplier effect to
work and the result is an increase in the drift away from country towns
towards the cities.

Rural discontent was a factor in the rise of One Nation's Pauline Hanson
and, although she has been all but destroyed by the media here, the
discontent she tapped into has not gone away.  For instance in the recent
Victorian State election the State Premier Jeff Kennett was a leader in the
economic rationalist or neo-liberal camp.  He was thought to be invincible
especially as the Labor Opposition was so weak and divided.  In the
election there was a swing against the government in the city of Melbourne
of 3%.  However in the countryside this rose to 6%.  There were two
subsequent city by elections and interestingly the swing against the Tories
rose in the city to 6%. So the workers took heart from the rural revolt. As
a result Labor took office.

There was a lot of comment about Kennett's defeat.  He was not your average
Dumb Tory.  He was in fact their smartest politician.  Crude and brash and
vulgar in that very Australian middle-class way, but nevertheless very
smart and very modern.  Thus he actively promoted the gay carnival in
Melbourne.  He sat in Parliament reading a gay magazine while the
conservatives frothed.  For Kennett only profit mattered.

Paul Kelly a leading political commentator in the Murdoch Press mourned
Kennett's defeat.  He actually said Kennett was an 'eagle that soared too
high'. [puke]. His defeat though was primarily due to what the right wing
press call 'reform fatigue'.  This is the reaction created by the tide of
neo-liberal economics that began with the election of the Hawke Labor
government in 1983.  It is now the single clearest marker of the present
conjuncture.  It has foci like the GST but totally lacks a political
base.  It is 'agin' rather than 'for'.  In other words it is very
non-hegemonic.

There is another factor entering the equation.  I have mentioned this in a
previous post.  We are in fact seeing the revival of industrial
militancy.  I hesitate to say this but it is a fact that power workers,
railway workers, miners and academics have all taken strike action recently
in support of wages and conditions.

I suspect that soon alarm bells will sound in the camp of the Australian
Labor Party and they will try and put a damper on the strike action with
the line that the workers should go quiet in order to get a Federal Labor
Government. But for the moment we have an increasingly isolated and
agitated Prime Minister and a working class beginning to show signs of
stirring from its long slumber.

Here in Queensland the two by-elections in Labor seats resulted in Labor
victories.  In one seat there was actually a swing to the government.  In
both cases the Tory (Liberal) vote fell. I was handing out how to vote
cards for the Greens and they got a creditable 6.1%;  their highest vote in
years.

At the booth where I was working there were some former One Nation
supporters (Pauline Hanson's Party has now split). Once upon a time I would
have savaged them but they were two old women and in fact very polite and
confused about what they were doing.  So peace reigned among the booth
workers.  The only source of tension was the crudity and vulgarity of the
Liberal Party Workers.  These were the New Money section. Rich white trash.
Their leader  announced in a loud voice during a conversation: 'I buy when
my broker tells me to buy.  I sell when he tells me to sell'.

Yet the people who was expecting to vote for her candidate were the kind of
folk who can't afford their phone bill, their kids' school bills, their
rates bill, their mortgage etc. No wonder that support for the Tory Parties
is about to go into free fall.

Her co-workers included two young male students.  These were similarly
brash and similarly charmless.  One announced that his favorite past time
was to go into the City Mall and bait the people selling Green Left
Weekly.  'I ask them what their economic policy is', he said 'and they
don't have one'.  Much laughter among the Tories.

Perhaps the DSP could come up with the answer 'Cut the throats of the Rich'
as a transitional measure.

regards

Gary