By Peter Boyle
MELBOURNE — Victorians used to joke about "political refugees" from Queensland under the former Bjelke-Petersen government. But soon, it seems, there may be a flight to the north, to what a local wit said was now a relative "Serf-ers' Paradise". The local press carries reports of several working-class families which have packed up to leave the state.
Kennett and his federal Liberal counterparts are trying to take industrial relations back into the 19th century, when employers were "masters" and workers were considered "servants". Unions were illegal then, and unionists were jailed for "conspiracy" or sent to penal colonies.
Generations of working-class struggle won us rights that many Australian workers took for granted until Kennett's Employee Relations Bill was introduced into the Victorian parliament on October 29. The sense of a return to the past was enhanced by Kennett's decision to reintroduce wigs, gowns and other feudal regalia to parliament.
If the Liberals win the federal elections, similar federal legislation which will be brought in. The ACTU and the Victorian Trades Hall Council have declared that the campaign against Kennett's attack on unions is the first stage of resistance to a federal Liberal offensive.
The Liberals are hoping to break the back of the union movement by virtually banning strikes and by promoting individual employment contracts over collective agreements or awards. Weaker unions will mean lower wages and poorer working conditions.
Kennett's Employee Relations Bill begins a ferocious assault on wages and conditions by eliminating or making optional over-award conditions, penalty rates, overtime, accident make-up pay, bereavement leave and rostered days off. Other legislation slashes workers' compensation, abolishes holiday leave loading and gives government absolute power over anything deemed a "vital service".
Kennett plans to abolish 7000 public sector jobs by next June and another 12,000 to 18,000 jobs the following financial year. This at a time when official unemployment in Victoria is 11%.
"Jobsback", the federal Liberals' name for their industrial relations package, sounds perverse in the light of the job slashing that has accompanied Kennett's pilot scheme. But there is a cruel logic at work. Extended high unemployment will allow more cuts to wages and conditions, especially if workers are made to bargain as individuals. When there are thousands waiting for a job, individual workers are in a very poor
Kennett has increased gas, electricity, water and public transport charges by 10%, raised car rego by $70, put a 10% stamp duty increase on insurance policies, a new tax on lottery tickets and a $100 levy on all rateable properties.
His government threatens to close up to 200 state schools, get rid of 2000 teachers and impose a 2% across the board cut in government department spending, to be followed by a further billion dollars of cuts over the next four years.
Robert Hudson, director of the Victorian Council of Social Service, said that Kennett's mini-budget would penalise those already hardest hit by the recession and could "tip the balance for many families struggling to make ends meet".
"Those out of work and others on low incomes will be hurt most by the increased taxes and charges. They and other disadvantaged groups will also see a reduction in the services available to meet their basic needs or to assist them through difficult times", he said.
Snouts in the trough
Adding insult to injury, Kennett's crew voted themselves $1.5 million in pay rises with less than an hour's discussion in parliament on October 29. After an explosion of public outrage, employment and industrial relations minister Phil Gude turned down his pay increase, admitting "poor timing" and adding that he didn't really need the extra $8500 on his current package of $147,000 a year!
Other Coalition politicians shrugged off criticism from the Labor opposition (reportedly grunting "You had your go!") and kept their snouts in this trough.
Silver service has been reintroduced into the parliamentary dining room, and senior bureaucrats on new salary packages worth up to $250,000 a year are to be offered "bonuses" of up to a year's pay for shedding jobs in the public service. Several fat cats from the NSW government have rushed for these top jobs.
Many Victorians voted for Kennett at the last election because they thought the Labor government had made a mess of the state's finances. Especially after WA Inc, many people suspected that Labor snouts had truly been in the trough.
Now the Kennett government is counting on public anger at Labor's "mismanagement" to balance the fear and pain from his attack on workers' rights, incomes and working conditions. It has gleefully revealed the full details of the state government deficit, previously covered up by the Kirner government with the apparent connivance of the federal Labor government.
Federal treasurer John Dawkins has been forced to admit that he udget probably understated the Kirner government's borrowing by $1.2 billion.
But Victoria's debt problems have less to do with simple financial mismanagement than with the economic crisis, made worse by unbridled corporate greed in the 1980s and the willingness of the previous Labor government to lend money to private speculators and later to bail out some of these failed "entrepreneurs". Kennett's budget statement admits as much, and a Liberal government would probably have done the same.
The total cost to taxpayers of the failures of Pyramid, Tricontinental, the State Bank, the Victorian Economic Development Corporation and the Victorian Investment Corporation is estimated at $4 billion by Victorian auditor-general Ches Baragwanath.
A recession impacts more on state revenues than on federal revenue because of the nature of state taxes and charges. Victoria is suffering a deeper recession, and state revenue collapsed in proportion. Since 1989 the state government has taken in less than it has spent, and this gap has been widening every year.
To cover the shortfall and to begin to make up for a decade of neglect of investment on transport, schools, hospitals, etc — something all state and federal governments have been guilty of in the 1970s and 1980s — the Kirner government borrowed more and more. The state's accumulated debt is now more than $30 billion, excluding unfunded liabilities for superannuation and accident insurance.
The Kirner government decided to make the public pay for the system's greed-driven economic crisis. Cutbacks in public services began under Labor, and thousands were added to the dole queues. Public assets were flogged off, sometimes at a loss to the government.
Regressive taxes
Kennett is deepening and accelerating this robbery. Every single new tax and charge in his mini-budget hits poorer people proportionally harder (as would a GST).
The flat $100 "deficit" levy on all rateable properties is to be collected by local governments on behalf of the state, leaving them understandably ropeable. Property rates are generally based on property values, but Kennett's levy (which he calls the Cain/Kirner tax) is regressive.
VCOSS's Robert Hudson says it "will represent little more than small change for those who own million dollar homes", but "for a single-income family battling to meet mortgage payments, it could mean they are unable to afford school uniforms or books for their children". Independent Senator Janet Powell compares the levy to the unpopular "poll tax" introduced by Thatcher in Britain and has called for a campaign of civil disobedience.