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How have Australians Truly Fared in the Last 11 Years?The Howard government - which faced the Australian electorate as voters went to the polls Nov. 24 - had been running a massive taxpayer-funded advertising blitz happily endorsed by some media. BY ANIBETH DESIERTO / PHILIPPINE-AUSTRALIA CAUCUS FOR PEACE** The Howard government - which faced the Australian electorate as voters went to the polls Nov. 24 - had been running a massive taxpayer-funded advertising blitz happily endorsed by some media. The campaign - and the conservative Lib-National Party coalition’s rule of Australia - seem to have been built on frightening fundamental mythical beliefs which seem to have been readily accepted by the majority of the electorate if the Party’s re-elections in 1996, 2000 and 2004 are anything to go by. These mythical beliefs now critically cover up current threats to the most basic civil, human and democratic rights of Australians: will Australians have realized this at all? 1. The “economic boom” is for all Australians to share The first belief seems to be that the government’s much-touted “economic growth” and “boom” are for all Australians and this wealth is for all to share. The truth from their actions since elected in 1996: this government is for big business, and big money and has continuously ignored the welfare of workers and working families. This government is against organised labour. It is arguably a government against the average Australian. While politicians, big business and the rich continue to benefit massively from the “economic boom,” average Australian workers and families are being squeezed. The gap between rich and poor is widening rapidly. Over 4 million working Australians have already lost protection from being unfairly dismissed from the government’s Workchoices legislation (1) Wages of 1.2 million workers have declined from $6.02 since the introduction of Workchoices (1) The government’s enforcement of AWAs (Australian Workplace Agreements) of individual employee-employer contracts has cut take-home pay and conditions like penalty rates, overtime, public holiday pay, annual leave entitlements (1) Contrary to government claims, the serious fall in average wages from Workchoices laws has not led to any discernible rise in productivity, as investigated and published in a research report by Prof. David Peetz of Griffith University (who has then been subsequently vilified and publicly attacked by the government until he was driven out of the public domain, a similar experience to many others of dissenting and independent opinion who have been bullied, intimated, harassed and denigrated by the government - as explained below) (2) In July 2007, Federal politicians gave themselves a pay rise of 6.7 percent. In stark contrast, the government refused the 4-percent pay increase sought by the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) for Australia’s lowest-paid workers, agreeing to a mere 2-percent pay rise for these workers, most of whom are women in part-time, casual or lower-skilled occupations (3) The 6.7-percent pay rise for the government and Federal politicians translated to a basic salary of at least just under $124,000 per year (3) This is a far cry from the $24,000 per year of the average Australian employee whose basic wage is threatened by the government’s stripping back and planned removal of the award system and pressure to move workers to AWAs or individual contracts with employers. The good times, however, continue with the wealth flowing on to big business - chief executives of the 300 largest sharemarket-listed companies in Australia gave themselves a 28-percent pay rise - equating to an annual pay package of Aust$2.56 million, up from $1.99 million last year. (4) In addition, the tax incentives given to the rich or high income earners is bigger in proportion to the lower income earners as tax rate is capped at 40% and 44-percernt when incomes reach $150,000 and $75,000. (5) Meanwhile, one in ten Australians or 2 million - live in poverty and in 2007, UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) reported that Australia has the 14th highest rate of child poverty among OECD nations . (6) While the Liberal Coalition government has consistently and continually reported via a highly-Liberal friendly media on double-digit earnings growth, a strong domestic economy and a resources boom, the reality on the ground for the average Australian has been quite different. Infrastructure and basic services’ costs are increasingly becoming more difficult to meet with the fall in real wages and rising prices of goods and services -also from the GST apart from inflation and rising interest rates which by the way has gone up six times, contrary to Howard’s last electoral promise that there would be no interest rate rises (obviously yet another lie!) Basic, affordable infrastructure for taxpayers has been neglected - evident from the current crisis in health and dental care, the glaring lack of public housing and child care facilities, the soaring costs of education and even the increasingly noticeable serious water shortage brought to public attention with the Murray-Darling drought which has slashed billions of dollars from economic growth. Housing which is secure and priced within range of average pockets has become a big problem, with more than 100,000 Australians estimated as using homeless crisis centers this year and the high costs of tertiary education (once free under the Whitlam Labour government) - now means that 25 percent of full-time undergraduates regularly miss classes and study commitments because they have to work. (7) The shortage of hospital beds, medical staff and emergency facilities has led to patient deaths and accidents. One of these numerous cases, Allan Osterberg, 30, died in a Canberra Hospital in October while waiting around for four hours for treatment after a heart attack and in November, Jana Horska miscarried in the Royal North Shore Hospital Emergency department toilet in NSW while waiting for treatment. (8) Many patients awaiting urgent if not emergency surgery are being sent home for lack of beds, staff and facilities. (8) The costs of private dental treatment are so high that many go on the public dental system - about 650,000 are on the waiting lists. (9) For Aborigines, the situation is worse - lack of health care has meant that the life expectancy of indigenous children born between 1996 and 2001 is around 18 years less than that of the general population (10) and the average life expectancy of adult Aborigines is less than 40 years. The government insists on its userpays system -that education, health and other basic services cannot be free while it unrelentingly pushes down workers’ wages and conditions with its Workchoices. It has refused to spend on hospitals and dental clinics, public housing and public education. Meanwhile, $3 billion of taxpayers’ money has already been directed by the government to the war in Iraq, as estimated in research by the Sydney Morning Herald’s M. Davis and P. Coorey in their article of March 21, 2007. Of course the rhetoric and buying of votes continue. In November, the government announced tax cuts of $34 billion. (11) But as K. Davidson of The Age (11/16/07) notes: “Indexed to inflation, the tax cuts deliver nothing to taxpayers. It (the $34 billion tax cuts) is a chimera designed to give back to wage earners the growth in the tax burden as wages rise with inflation, pushing workers in higher tax brackets and it looks huge because it aggregates four years’ of cuts. “If wages don’t keep pace with inflation or if inflation moves above the upper band of 3 percent set by the Reserve Bank to manage monetary policy, wage earners’ real disposable incomes could fall despite the nominal tax cuts.” In fact the Reserve Bank has just forecast that inflation will go up to 3.25 percent in the next six months (West Australian 13/11/07, front page). Income tax revenue is now $120 billion, the GST (Goods and Services Tax) now collects more than $35 billion per year and with the billions of dollars of tax cuts - where are the basic services and infrastructure for the average Australian? It seems we might get some of them if we sell our votes to the current government as Howard has now pledged $9.3 billion for education rebate, housing and child care (not for public housing mind you or HECS free-education) topping his last electoral spending spree of $6 billion of pledges in 2004. (12) The Reserve Bank has warned that this government spending this time around could push up interest rates and inflation to dangerous levels for the economy. (13) The question is: why is the Howard government now throwing money on these basic services when this infrastructure and services should have been made available years ago - and not just because it is election time?! 2. Labour and any other opposition are supposedly unable to manage the economy The second belief seems to be that Labour and any other opposition are unable to manage the economy - only the Liberals can do it, e.g., Howard’s government. Contary to the claim of the Liberal’s induced economic prosperity for Australia, it was arguably the Labour Party’s Hawke-Keating major structural reforms to the economy in 1983-1996 which laid the foundations and led to the current economic prosperity. (14) Only Labour has been able to bring together competing sections of society - industry leaders, union leaders and governments to secure agreements for economic growth, as it has done under the Prices and Incomes Accords. Under the Hawke-Keating years, the dollar was floated, tariffs and protection on basic industries were removed and wage controls were established via the Prices and Incomes Accord with the unions. (14) These Labour-initiated reforms led to business expansion with the resultant lower labour unit costs and rise in productivity. (14) The introduction of superannuation in 1985-1987 by Paul Keating as then ALP (Australian Labour Party) Treasurer created a massive pool of capital for investment of $1 trillion of mandated savings which “fired the Australian capital markets”, as Keating himself points out. (15) Keating also removed the double taxation of dividends in Australia in ’85. The removal of centralized wage fixing under the then ALP government’s agreement with Australian unions on broad incomes policy under the Accord in 1985 led to productivity which more than doubled to 3 percent annually and there was 2 percent real increase in incomes each years of the 1990s, a 20-percent increase in all. (16) This fundamental economic transformation of Australia -bringing together competing sections of society to a common national economic goal - by the ALP with Keating as Federal Treasurer in 1983-1991 under the Hawke government and then as PM in 1991-1996 has resulted in the 15 -year expansion of the economy to date and a low inflationary one at that. (17) In addition, the Coalition government has failed to get even one calendar quarter when the balance of trade was not in deficit. Despite massive export income from our resources boom, this government has been unable to control the spending on foreign goods which exceeds sales. It is a negative situation to be so dependent, as we are, on foreign goods and services. 3. Australian unions are supposedly ‘thugs’ who will destroy the economy and country The third belief is espoused in the government’s latest pronouncements about organised labour. Running a hard-core vilification and demonisation campaign against the unions, the Howard government has for its electoral catchcry the message that: Australian unions are thugs, they will destroy the economy and the country. This attack on organised labour - is in fact arguably an important plank of the government’s Workchoices legislation and ultimately of its deregularisation of labour and opening of it to big business, big capital locally and overseas (workers to be “traded” on the global capitalist market) There are three facts tearing down this negative belief about unions. Indeed corruption might exist among some unions and strikes might have temporarily reduced productivity but: Australian unions have been the sole force for the foundation of a solid 100-year old pro-worker industrial relations system - with assured working conditions, privileges and benefits for workers and a centralized wage-fixing system with the Arbitration Relations Commission which allowed yearly reviews of wages to be tied to inflation and an inexpensive method for workers to ensure they had a platform to fight for their grievances. The 8-hour day, four weeks paid holiday, penalty rates and shift loading, sick leave and maternity leave and other benefits, a stringent OH & S regime were part of this whole world-renowned system. In addition, as much as strikes initiated by unions might have lowered productivity (and this is really talking about the side of business owners more than of the welfare of workers) - the last 15 years of economic expansion in Australia could not have been possible without the unions agreeing in the first place to keep wages down and setting the 3-percent ceiling on inflation via the Prices and Incomes Accord with the previous Labour government ! In fact, what the government seems to conveniently forget is that union strikes are for workers to get a fairer share of the wealth from this “economic boom”! (18) Secondly, Australian unions have been in the past and are still at the forefront in the fight for maintaining and protecting workers’ conditions and pay, now more so with the crushing effect of the current government’s Workchoices legislation. Facing million-dollar fines, court cases, interrogation, threats, harassment and intimidation from government and government personnel, unions have fought against the AWAs Australia-wide and for the re-establishment of collective bargaining agreements and called for more workplace health inspectors, campaigning against increasingly common workplace accidents which could have been avoided with better adherence to OH & S (occupational health and safety) standards by business. (19) Unions are now fighting against the highly abusive effects of the government’s S457 visa (temporary worker visa) scheme under which overseas workers are employed- a scheme which the U.S. Department of State in its 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report has led to sex trafficking, debt bondage and slavery of migrants in Australia. (20) The AMWU (WA Branch) for example has just established a 200+ strong Filipino Metalworkers (overseas Filipino workers or OFWs) group within the union, who will have input into the union’s major decision-making bodies - the State Council and State Conference - and will be able to run for positions in these bodies, a new radical practice as all other delegates will be of permanent residency or citizenship status. (21) The AMWU (WA) has successfully stopped illegal deportations by business or employers of these skilled OFWs and is now working for obtaining their permanent residency similar to the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union/Electrical Trades Union (CEPU/ETU) which has successfully got Western Power (WA) to agree to back and finance the permanent residency applications of its OFW linesmen, numbering 60 as of this stage. (22) Thirdly, contrary to the Howard government’s claim that the progenitors of low inflation and the 2-3-percent inflation target has been the Liberals with their superior economic management skills, in fact as ex-Prime Minister Paul Keating has pointed out, being able to keep the inflation target to 3 percent and establishing that 3% target was made possible by Australian unions. (23) Another ex-Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser admits: “Union and the government got on board and we were the only country in the world (in the 1990s), where the unions supported a central bank inflation target.” (24) Under the Prices and Incomes Accord initiated by the Labour Bob Hawke government in 1993-1996, the Australian unions in arguing for an upper limit on inflation of 3 percent and in agreeing to keep wages down - underwrote the resultant 15-year productivity of the Australian economy. A productivity which the Howard-Costello Liberal government crows about as its own achievement! Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello inherited an economy becoming stronger after radical fundamental structural reforms instituted by Labour between 1983-1996 - in which Australian unions played the pivotal role of keeping wages down and agreeing to limit strikes ! Yet Costello now claims that a union-dominated Labour government will push up inflation and create a recession (while the Reserve Bank on Nov. 13, 2007 has warned that Costello and the Howard’s planned spending for its election pledges could most likely push up inflation, now over the historic 3-perent ceiling - and that there would be another interest rate rise in the next 6 months)! (25) Ironically, Howard’s promise in his re-election in 2004 was that there would be hardly any interest rate rises. In fact there has been six interest rate rises since, suffocating working families crushed by the new Workchoices legislation’s reduced pay and benefits on one side and the rising costs of interest payments on their mortgage, the increased costs of goods and services with the introduction of the GST. The truth is that there is nothing special in the Howard government’s “management” of the economy. In fact in 1982, when Howard was then Liberal Treasurer for the ruling government, there was the biggest wages explosion in postwar history when wage demands hit 18 percent. While under the Labour government’s Accord with the unions, wages were kept down with the help of the unions! (26) 4. We are supposedly free in Australia and abide by democratic principles vs. silencing of opposition and dissent The fourth belief is that in Australia, we are free as we always have been, free to speak and express what we wish to say, free to do as we wish within the democratic principles enshrined in the Constitution and the judicial system. In fact, the government through new laws has now removed many of our basic rights to express what we wish to say, particularly if this relates to social and work grievances. It has removed our basic rights to defend ourselves before being accused of a crime. It has removed our basic rights to due process of law. Some of these have been pointed out by ex-PM Malcolm Fraser himself in his lectures at Melbourne. (26a) These removal of basic democratic, civil and human rights has not just been experienced by refugees or migrants - in fact, the average Australian worker, student, journalist, academic, scientist have experienced the repression and violence of the government. Even state government officials have had little say over its own mandated affairs under the Constitution where the ruling Federal Liberal-National coalition has wished to take over. (27) It might be unbeknownst to most but the Liberals’ stranglehold of the Senate has meant that virtually any law and policy - on matters affecting all of us - as decided by the ruling government can be pushed through with hardly any opposition. (28) Workers can now be fined and even jailed if they refuse to answer questions or provide information to Federal Government officials. Unions can be fined $33,000 by the government for asking an employer to include protection for workers against unfair dismissal in an agreement. (29) In the building industry, workers and their union officials’ telephones can now be tapped and the workers and officials placed under secret surveillance by inspectors of the 2-year old Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). (30) The attack on civil liberties of these workers and officials in new government laws giving powers to the ABCC which override Constitutional principles are documented in the film Australia’s Secret Industrial Inquisition - Constructing Fear by Joe Loh. Case studies of those who’ve dared to speak out or have published research which is contrary to what the government wants regarding an issue have begun appearing. Take the case of CSIRO scientist Prof. Graeme Pearman who with the Australian Climate Group report Climate Change Solutions for Australia publicly discussed the already critical effects of climate change on Australia and explained its effects on the environment, the economy, society and community health. (31) Pearman was eventually forced out of his position by government pressure after being censored 6 times in a year from speaking about the negative effects of climate change. (31) ABC’s Four Corners has shown that under pressure from the government, the leaders of CSIRO have tried to silence its scientists from talking to the public about their research on climate change. (31) Frightened young students who demonstrated at the 2006 G20 conference have been subjected first to brutal manhandling, intimidation, threats and picked up by Federal anti-terrorism squads before the students were even told of what the charges against them were (as detailed in Quarterly Essay, Issue 26 2007 pp 33-38). In another case, Alan Kessing, an ex-Customs officer was convicted in March under the Crimes Act for allegedly providing information to journalists about Sydney airport staff corruption and criminal links from a report he had done with his then Customs boss. (32) The suppression by the government of information critical to the public interest, the punishment of those who dare to pass on such information to the public and the brutal suppression of those who openly protest against government policies are now standard fare in Australia. (33) Pearman, the CSIRO, the G20 student demonstrators and Kessing are by no means isolated cases. As Geoffrey Barker points out in Silencing Dissent, “The Coalition government won control of the Senate in 2005 and ordered public servants not to give evidence before Senates estimates hearings, one of the key national accountability mechanisms.” (34) “Political advisers put pressure on public servants to shape, skew and manipulate advice to suit ministerial political agenda.” As Barker points out this practice “makes it easier for governments to seek public support for policies on the basis of false and selective information” (from public servants who’ve been asked to skew the information) “that suits their political purposes.” This is evident in the children overboard affair when as what is now widely accepted as an electoral stunt to win votes, the Howard government during the 2002 election campaign and Defence Minister Reith repeatedly declared that children had been thrown overboard from an illegal vessel of refugees off the northwest coast of WA. The incident was supposed to show that the government’s hardline position against refugees seeking political asylum in Australia was correct. (35) In fact no such incident had occurred, the government was re-elected in 2002 and a Senate committee found that Minister Reith who had “refused three formal requests to give evidence” had “deceived the Australian people.” (36) The Senate Committee was also critical of senior public servants and military officers involved in the flow of information at the time. (36) In the military and intelligence services, those who have spoken up about controversial issues have been vilified by Howard and his government, if not forced out of their position. Former UN weapons inspector Rod Barton for instance went to the press and also wrote a book on how information on Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq (and its absence) had been tampered with and how Iraqi prisoners were mistreated. (37) Barton was marginalized and ridiculed by Howard himself. (37) The pursuit of those who speak up against government policies and actions is coupled with the pursuit of those who could possibly be used to justify the government’s billions of dollars spent on expanding ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) and Federal police powers at the expense of civil rights after the Liberal Coalition’s Senate majority allowed it to push through anti-terrorism laws without sufficient debate or community consultation. (38) On Nov. 13, the government, ASIO and Federal Police’s case of terrorism charges against a young Sydney medical student Izhar Ul-Haque was defeated in the NSW Supreme Court (West Australian 13/11/07,p7). Frighteningly, the ruling judge Justice Michael Adams called the behaviour of ASIO officers as criminal and “grossly improper.” The judge said two of the ASIO officers had committed the criminal offences of false imprisonment and kidnapping and that an unlawful trespass had been committed against the medical student’s parents by the intelligence officers. (39) In an earlier case, terrorism charges by the government against Gold Coast doctor Mohamed Haneef were also defeated in court. (39) In face of this continuing government assault on civil liberties and human rights of migrants, Australians, refugees, the cases of Australian Vivian Solon wrongfully shipped out of Australia and Cornelia Rau suffering a mental condition and wrongfully detained - both by Federal Immigration - seem almost iconic and distant already! (40) 5. Deterioriating press freedom : the public fails to be accurately informed In addition, as all sectors of society are silenced, the press is one of the most important ones to control as it is able to reach everyone if it wishes to report on information critical to the public - even if David Peetz, Greame Pearman and the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), the G20 demonstrators, Allan Kessing and Barton might have already been silenced. Reporters can now be jailed for 5 years for reporting about cases of those who are picked up because they are witnesses and suspects and then imprisoned without trial. (41) In fact the government’s attack on press freedom has pushed Australia down to 35th place, behind many former Soviet Bloc countries, in the Press Freedom Index put together by Reporters sans Frontieres. (41) There are now no laws which can protect reporters and journalists if they write and publish truthful stories which are critical of government and others. (41) Any individual as well as journalists can now be arrested without charges being laid. (41) As David Marr points out (Quarterly Essay Issue 26, ’07): “Once habeas corpus went in 2005 - arrest without charge and detention without trial - it was difficult to see what bedrock rights remained” (pp.10-13). The Australian branch of the Commonwealth Press Union and the journalists’ union, the Canberra Press Gallery, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), Reporters San Frontieres agree that the government is “squeezing public debate” (Quarterly Essay Issue 26, ’07. pp.10-13): *Punishment for breaking bans on reporting (contained in federal anti-terrorism laws) include 5-year prison sentences for reporting detention without trial of suspects and witnesses *Federal ministers can now withhold as they wish documents from the public even with the Freedom of Information laws - as confirmed by the High Court last year *The government has made it very difficult for journalists to report on refugees and asylum seekers getting to Australia by boat *Gerard McManus and Michael Harvey are journalists relentlessly pursued by the government for refusing to reveal the source of their story and are now waiting sentencing for contempt of court. In fact, Minister Philip Ruddock’s proposed shield laws offer “no absolute protection for journalists who refuse to name sources, and no protection at all for whistleblowers who go to the press” (David Marr, Quarterly Essay, 26, ’07, p58). 6. Under the Constitution, the public has the right to know, the right to be consulted and to determine national actions & policies through referendums The following federal actions are arguably against Constitutional principles and contravene the right of the public to be informed of these matters and their right to vote in a referendum on these matters before decisions and actions are implemented - (as no public consultation has ever been mentioned nor considered about these matters!) Some of these actions contravene international treaties to which Australia is a signatory (particularly the Northern Territory intervention): - federal plan to take control of ailing Murray-Darling system currently jointly managed by NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland state governments (42) -take-over of Tasmanian public hospital in the marginal seat of Braddon (reported on ABC news 1/8/07) (43) -Using federal troops, federal government take-over of 73 Northern Territory Aboriginal communities and the town camps in Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and Katherine - and of land in these areas owned by Aboriginal tribes (44) -Australia’s signing on to the World Trade Organisation provisions under which multinational corporations can be allowed to take control over national resources including water, waterways, flora and fauna; education, health and other services (45) Contributed to Bulatlat **The author would also like to acknowledge the Uniting Church in Australia and UnionsWA for their important inputs in this article. 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