Bosses want more blood

The Liberal-National Coalition's plan to cut $6 billion over four years, mainly from welfare and public sector jobs, has been greeted with draculaesque howls for more blood from the capitalist press. The Australian Financial Review's February 16 editorial, headlined "Costello's knife far too blunt", complained that the Coalition had not promised serious cuts to health, pensions, schools, university places and labour-market programs. In a commentary in the same issue, Tom Burton said that what was needed was "cuts of about $6 billion between March 2 and August" this year, not just the $1.7 billion promised by the Coalition for the rest of this financial year. The Australian editorialised that while it was good that the Coalition was promising deeper cuts than Labor, this would not be enough to put the budget into surplus. They cite private sector economists' predictions that the Keating government has run up an $8 billion dollar deficit since the last budget. These responses to the Coalition's announced cuts reveal what the corporate barons would like to see the next federal government do. But there is also a cynical acknowledgment that neither Labor nor the Liberal-Nationals can reveal what they really intend to do after the elections. In his February 15 column in the business pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, Max Walsh coldly observed: "Winning an election in 1990s is a near impossible job for any democratic leader ... "Security and continuity are what the electorate seeks from its political leadership. Security and continuity are what no government can deliver in the 1990s ... though opposition leaders such as John Howard can promise." In other words, neither major party can go to the elections admitting what they really are going to do after they are voted in. Hence, according to the Herald's economic editor Ross Gittins, a capitalist economist's best hope was "that the parties' stated policies on micro-economic reform [privatisation, austerity and deregulation] will be high on the list of broken promises". It doesn't take much reading between the lines to figure out what we face after the elections. The Coalition's promise to cut $6 billion over four years may not be a reliable indicator of the scale of cuts we can expect, but it certainly shows who they are going to hit first: the unemployed, recent migrants and public sector workers. The Coalition's targets will surprise very few. What else can we expect when John Howard boldly declared in the alleged "Great Debate" that his solution to unemployment was to make it easier for bosses to sack workers! We can only expect the same from Labor, only a little slower. It's a rotten choice but one that we will continue to face until we are strong enough to change this system. We can start now by preparing to fight back no matter who wins the March 2 elections.