Privatised information
I now realise why the Brown government has been denigrating public servants at every opportunity since the election. It was so that the rest of the state's working people would more readily accept the impending savage cuts to the public sector, with the consequent loss and reduction of services. The truth, of course, is that the government's policies will result in less services at higher cost, increased unemployment, and government encouragement of the erosion of workers rights and conditions. I believe only the rich and privileged actually stand to gain anything from these policies.
In particular, the state government's plans to outsource its entire computer network should be regarded with suspicion. The government has not made it clear how many jobs will be created for South Australia, nor has it stated the reason for its rush to get contracts signed by June 30. With such huge amounts of taxpayers money at stake, there are too many questions which have not yet been addressed.
How, for example, does the government intend to ensure that the current standards of security are maintained once its data is being processed by private companies? Brown has stated that the government "will still own the data", but what does this really mean? Is it like saying that I don't mind who reads my mail, because I know it still really belongs to me?
I can't help thinking that, even with supposed security safeguards, a private company might be persuaded to part with confidential information, especially if sufficient financial inducements were offered.
Lee Jones
Seaton SA
White paper
The Keating government has ratted on the ALP and the labour movement by reneging on Chifley's guarantee of full employment for all Australians which was embodied in the 1945 White Paper.
The new Keating white paper proposes nothing to create jobs and, at best interpretation, it settles for a level of permanent unemployment never less than 5%.
In actual fact, by the year 2000, unemployment in Australia is likely to be well over 12% because we will then be in the middle of the next and much worse Depression. (Each Depression since '74-'75 has been conspicuously worse than the last, and none have been followed by a full recovery.)
Nowhere in the paper is there any analysis of the causes of either cyclical or structural unemployment, nor any recognition of the realities of the capitalist economic system which is responsible for the crisis. The whole paper is cast in the false framework of cutting budget expenditures and deficits in order to keep overseas finance conglomerates and speculators happy.
The emphasis is on cutting wages, while endlessly retraining the unemployed without getting them jobs, but nevertheless cutting them off the dole and out of the statistics. Public expenditure programs are ignored except for some minor regional and environmental schemes.
Many of the industry proposals for increased productivity and "efficiency" are designed to increase profits and the exploitation of workers, but will actually reduce the demand for labour and lay the basis for greater levels of permanent structurally unemployed.
Bruce Toms
Secretary, Marxist Initiative
Sydney
Konrad Lorenz
Stephen J. Gould's slandering of Konrad Lorenz, reported uncritically in GLW's review (May 11) of Gould's latest book, cannot be left unanswered. Gould asserts that Lorenz used his results to support Nazi ideology. This is simply untrue. Lorenz is/was a kind and gentle man. Far from supporting nazism, he passionately opposed the destructive madness of war in general and nuclear war in particular. I have attached the concluding paragraph of his book On aggression to show the kind of politics his work really supported.
"We know that, in the evolution of the vertebrates, the bond of personal love and friendship was the epoch-making invention created by the great constructors (selection and mutation) when it became necessary for two or more individuals of an aggressive species to live peacefully together and to work for a common end. We know that human society is built upon the foundation of this bond, but we have to recognise the fact that the bond has become too limited to encompass all that it should: it prevents aggression only between those who know each other and are friends, while obviously it is all active hostility between men of all nations or ideologies that must be stopped. The obvious conclusion is that love and friendship should embrace all humanity, that we should love all our human brothers indiscriminately. This commandment is not new. Our reason is quite able to understand its necessity, as our feeling is able to appreciate its beauty, but nevertheless, made as we are, we are unable to obey it. We can feel the full warm emotion of friendship and love only for individuals, and the utmost exertion of willpower cannot alter this fact. But the great constructors can, and I believe they will. I believe in the power of human reason, as I believe in power of natural selection. I believe that reason can and will exert a selection pressure in the right direction. I believe that this, in the not too distant future, will endow our descendants with he faculty of fulfilling the greatest and most beautiful of commandments."
Some nazi!
Ian van Tets
Wollongong
Advice to the Liberals
In the light of the Liberals' plummeting polls, leadership and policy crises, I would like to offer them some advice as to how to improve their situation:
1. Admit that they have no significant policy differences with the ALP.
2. Insist that they advocated economic rationalism first.
3. Point to the ALP's cosy links with big business.
4. Promise that they will implement the same policies with greater impartiality.
5. Make Malcolm Fraser the new leader so that he can promise a more caring government than Labor's.
Peter Boyle
Chippendale NSW