Politics after elections
The ACTU leadership launched into its usual pre-election bluster last week. Addressing an ALP union rally at Melbourne Town Hall on February 21, ACTU secretary Bill Kelty threatened "industrial warfare" and wage claims of 20-30% if the Coalition wins government on March 2. The intention of Kelty's threat is not only to increase pressure on the ruling class to back the "right" capitalist horse in these elections — the ALP — but also to scare the large proportion of swinging voters, the 800,000 small business owners and the middle class away from voting Liberal. Such pro-worker posturing by the union bureaucracy is not new. Neither is it convincing. The trade union leaderships' bluster immediately after the election of Liberal governments in Victoria in 1992 and WA in 1993 only lasted a few months, and the accompanying action was token to say the least. Workers under both the Kennett and Court governments are worse off than ever, and almost the entire trade union leadership is now silent, preferring to invest their energy and resources into uncritical campaigning for re-election of the ALP than leading an effective fight-back against these state governments' attacks. Ever loyal to the electoral needs of the ALP, the ACTU leaders have shown that they will do whatever is necessary to keep workers' anger under strict control, temporarily loosening the leash only when their own credibility, apparatus and career pathways are threatened by a declining base of union members. But even if Kelty meant what he said this time, why has the ACTU waited until now to raise the spectre of a campaign to defend workers' wages? For all that a Coalition government's assault on workers and unions would be sharper and harder, it is not as if workers' interests have been advanced under federal ALP-ACTU rule. Average real wages have declined by 25%. Awards have been weakened and whittled away by enterprise bargaining. Union membership has declined from over 50% to around 35%. And the confidence and ability of the union movement to take industrial action to defend itself against these attacks has declined to a record low. Given the generalised acquiescence of the labour and other social movements between elections, whatever the outcome of the March 2 poll, workers, women, migrants, the environment, young people, the unemployed will continue to be under attack. Exercising our right to vote on Saturday, and making the best possible use of it by putting left and green candidates before the major parties, and Labor before the Coalition, is important. But neither our individual votes, nor the final outcome will, in themselves, make a significant difference to the state of Australian society and politics. It is a fact that the decisions about whether or not to woodchip old growth forests, sack workers, sell uranium, give military aid to the regimes in Indonesia and PNG, will continue to be made by a select few, behind closed doors and in the interests of private profit, not the majority of people, in Australia or overseas. What
will make a difference is if more people participate in an ongoing way to strengthen campaigns and movements that will keep up the sort of pressure that governments feel obliged to respond to only at election times. Extracting from governments all year round the sort of promises they only make during election campaigns, and forcing them to deliver on these promises, wouldn't right all wrongs, but it would be a good start. Whatever the composition of the new federal parliament after March 2, only the parliament of the streets can genuinely represent and achieve the interests of the majority of people in the short, medium and longer term.