Viewpoint: How to defend the public sector

Greg Adamson
CANBERRA — Around 8pm on September 27, a group of Australian Federal Police launched an attack on picketers at the Belconnen Remand Centre. The striking workers were engaged in non-violent resistance. They had linked arms to stop scabs being brought in to do their work. Police responded aggressively, with one picketer grabbed around the neck, and others pulled away.
The scene reflected the tension and bitterness which has arisen in the ACT in recent weeks. The minority Liberal government of Kate Carnell has announced widespread cuts which are affecting key services including health and education. These include the loss of hundreds of jobs at Woden Valley Hospital, and the possible closing of two schools.
While the picketers were being set upon by police, Carnell was guest of honour at a cultural activity organised by the ACT Trades and Labor Council. This was a performance developed by staff at Woden Valley Hospital as part of the Art in Working Life program. The performance was a moving one. The attendance of axe-wielding Carnell, who opened the performance, was an obscenity.
In fact there were two pickets against Liberal cuts that night: one at Belconnen Remand Centre and another at the TLC performance.
Those events brought to the public a debate which has been simmering among ACT unions on how to fight the cuts. One view is that these cuts are going to cause irrevocable damage to workers' standard of living, and cost several thousand jobs. These cuts continue a process carried out by previous Labor and non-Labor governments, and are encouraged by federal Labor cuts to ACT funding.
The other view, usually only stated in private, is that it doesn't matter if services are privatised, because the jobs transferred to private industry will still be covered by particular unions (or even worse, the Community and Public Sector Union will lose coverage and other unions will benefit). These cuts need to happen anyway, and Carnell is doing the hard work for the ALP. The most important issue is getting the current TLC president first on the ALP ticket, elected to the Senate, and in the longer term getting the ALP back into office.
If that view is successful, unions will be pitched against each other at the very time when maximum unity against the government's attacks is essential. It was this division which allowed Carnell to corporatise ACT Electricity and Water. This view makes a Liberal government stronger and more confident.
When the Belconnen Remand Centre workers walked off the job in an indefinite stoppage, when health workers marched around their hospital, when union members refuse to process redundancies, that's a loud message to unions to organise to stop the destruction of the public sector and public services, not to make friends with the destroyers.
[Greg Adamson is assistant secretary of the ACT branch of the Community and Public Sector Union, and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]