The August 20 federal budget should not be allowed to pass the Senate. The jobs, education, health and welfare of literally millions of people are at stake.
Even without the support of Tasmanian independent Brian Harradine, the ALP, Democrat and Green senators do have the numbers to block this attack.
Predictably, ALP leader Kim Beazley says that Labor will allow the budget through, "by and large". He told Channel 10's Meet the Press on July 14: "In principle, we think a government should have its budget. The job of the opposition is not to frustrate them."
That's the "principle" of a party which has basically the same agenda and represents the same interests as Howard and Costello. And it's the principle of a party which expects to be able to do the same thing — to sacrifice honesty, democracy and the quality of life of the majority of people on the altar of corporate profits when it gets its turn back in government.
While the Democrats have traditionally attempted to amend budget legislation substantially, they too have a policy of not blocking supply. Like the ALP, the Democrats argue the "right" of governments to govern.
But the Howard government has no mandate for what it is doing. The Coalition campaigned on the promise that "no Australian will be worse off". If the Democrats are to remain true to their slogan of "Keep the bastards honest", they must refuse to pass a budget which is founded on a huge lie — that mass suffering is unavoidable because of the $8 billion "black hole".
Beazley invokes "democracy" to justify Labor's support for the Coalition, arguing that "the political process ought to deal honourably with the electorate". But how much of the "electorate" voted for tens of thousands of job cuts? How many voted for fewer public services, or the decimation of our native forests, or more university fees or slave wages for trainees and apprentices?
To date, the Green senators have not committed themselves to pass the budget, but neither have they vowed to stop it. They are still dithering — caught, like the Democrats, on the hook of "due process" in parliament and the supposed need for "stable" government.
"Stable" government under the Coalition simply means giving Howard and company the political confidence to attack harder, the stability to carry out big business's demand for more and more austerity.
The rhetoric of "stability", "accountability" and "mandates" props up the rules of the parliamentary game — rules that were made by conservatives to suit their own ends.
And it's not as if they play by those rules. As we witnessed in November 1975, these rules are broken when it suits their purpose. Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was hardly a left-wing radical. But his government's resistance, under pressure from the progressive mass movements, to carrying out big business's austerity drive as rapidly and comprehensively as they wanted, resulted in an intense establishment campaign to reject Labor's budget and remove it from "democratically elected" government.
The Costello/Howard budget, too, must be blocked, but this time by us.
Over the next few months, we have a chance to build a movement demanding that the ALP, Democrat and Green senators block supply. We must organise, mobilise and give voice to the mass of people's opposition to the impending attacks.
If that results in a double dissolution and another federal election, so be it. It's not good enough to say that people will have the chance to express their opinion about this budget in three years. By then, millions of people will be worse off, thousands of lives will have been destroyed, rights and protections that took decades to win will be gone and will be much harder to win back, and the progressive movements will have forfeited an opportunity to defend (let alone extend) the limited gains that they have made within and beyond parliament.