Newsagents
I have submitted some resolutions for the forthcoming conference of the Socialist Alliance. There is one that I have frequently discussed with other comrades and that is the urgent need to have Green Left Weekly sold at newsagents throughout Australia.
We are seriously handicapped by this restriction of the best left-wing newspaper in Australia not being easily accessible to the general public.
Tribune, which was the paper published by the Communist Party, was available at news stands, newsagents, and Dymocks at Wynyard and Central Railway Station in Sydney.
It was also available in the reading room of the Municipal Library, and in offices of left-wing unions.
I am strongly of the opinion that we should give serious consideration for appropriate measures to be taken to enable Green Left Weekly to be available at newsagents and news stands throughout Australia.
Bernie Rosen
Strathfield, NSW
GLW supporting IMF-style policy?
According to the Allen Myers' article in GLW #622, wealth really does trickle down in Vietnam thanks to the government's neoliberal "doi moi" policies. The headline declares, "Booming economy reduces poverty".
There are a couple of paragraphs towards the end of the article that concede that market reforms may increase inequality, however the rest of the article expresses a very un-Marxist enthusiasm for the market. I wondered whose side the writer was actually on — workers and peasants or a government determined to crank up the exploitation of Vietnamese labour?
We are told that fresh paint has meant that black mildew on buildings is not so prominent any more and that 3 million motorcycles "swarm" Ho Chi Minh City. Soon follows the IMF-style data sequence pointing to extraordinary levels of growth, a dramatic increase in GDP and a surge in foreign direct investment.
"Vietnam now has close to 100 export processing zones which have attracted 27.8% of total FDI in Vietnam." As GLW well knows, Special Economic Zones in Mexico and Indonesia are hellish places for workers characterised by slave wages, persecution of labour activists, sickening pollution levels and slum dwellings. Why would this be any different in Vietnam?
Scandalously, Myers admits to visiting an SEZ that employs 40,000 workers but doesn't speak to any of them or attempt to incorporate their experience into his article.
He describes a housing boom in which some villas sell for as much as US$1.5 million. Where are the details of housing projects for the city's homeless? What are the housing provisions for the thousands of peasants drawn to the city by Vietnamese and foreign capital?
You would expect to find these pro-market apologetics in the Australian parliament or the Murdoch media but not in the pages of a left-wing newspaper. Whether in the US, France, India, or Vietnam, the free market destroys lives.
Socialist newspapers should always take the side of the oppressed and oppose neoliberalism. Next time Allen Myers puts pen to paper he should think about the lives of those workers whose labour is fuelling the economic growth that dazzles him.
Adrian Skerritt
Brisbane, Qld
One step too stupid
This morning I looked at my right front tyre and just like it, I felt rather deflated. Not wanting to chance the trip to work I decided to nip down to our friendly under-the-tree tyre and air entrepreneurs. They've been around for years and in times of need they've always come through for me. Unfortunately this morning the patch of free land that they occupy near Rhodesville Shopping Centre was empty. These guys have been chased away, just like so many others, in one of Mugabe's latest acts. So I crossed the road to try my luck at the formal, supposedly respectable, garage only to be told that they had no air. So, go figure, the really useful informal entrepreneur who earns a few bucks pumping up car tyres by hand gets chased away by Mugabe's police while the formal garage fails to provide basic services.
If it weren't so tragic it would be laughable to linger longer on these fat cat politicians shitting themselves because they might not be harnessing every single cent of foreign currency in the country.
The Mugabe regime can't possibly get more stupid, can it?
Well, yes it can.
Anna, my domestic worker, tells me that the regime is thinking about evicting thousands of Zimbabweans living in high density areas (townships) unless they are actually living in a legal structure.
Zimbabweans who are lucky enough to be in formal employment are finding it harder and harder to get to work each day because either there is no fuel, or because the police have impounded commuter buses. Meanwhile the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has said that they will embark on a "Buy Zimbabwe" campaign. But hey — hasn't the government just imported a fleet of Chinese "zhing zhong" buses.
The biggest shortage of all is leadership. This shortage exists in civil society, in the plethora of NGOs in Zimbabwe and in the political opposition — the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Everyone just shrugs his or her shoulders or one tiny step better, issues eloquent press statements condemning the regime's brutality.
And a fat lot of good that's going to do.
Bev Clark
Harare, Zimbabwe
GLW whingeing about unions?
How many workers have joined unions as a direct result of the same tired and weak cries of the few "activists" from GLW that whinge and criticise unions every week? When will it be time do you think to actually engage in the real hard work and concentrate your efforts on the 80%+ of working people who are not in unions?
It's time to demonstrate some real leadership at GLW and work together and get out in the community talking to and politicising non-unionists... the only game in town that matters!!
According to your website, the latest and predictable response to Howard's IR assault is to organise a cross-unions 24-hour stoppage, with public rallies to follow. If Howard was scripting our tactics, this is exactly what he would have drawn up given the current state of the labour movement. Is anyone counting the actual numbers of participants of the 17% private sector union members across the country at any recent rally? Has anyone been to Mayday in recent times?
The challenge for us all is to educate, followed by real action supported by the majority that actually makes a difference when it really counts ... at election time, which is two-and-a-half years away. A campaign strategy that's well-thought out and driven by leadership that's supported fully by everyone across the labour movement. This importantly achieves the real goal...increasing our strength in numbers and power but more importantly — winning... something we have forgotten.
I am up for the harder Unions NSW 2 1/2 year campaign struggle and beyond, not the easily failed, simplistic and doomed 24-hour stoppage that will deliver more of what we are today...in decline and apparently in denial at Green "left".
Martin Cartwright
Sydney, NSW
(abridged)
Drought
With government leaders claiming there's "something for everyone" in the budget, they seem blind to the terrible drought tearing our farmers, their towns and the whole country to bits, for there wasn't a single word about this great national disaster in the budget presentation, nor of the overall water crisis, replaced, like drunken sailors, with their wild dishing-out of supposed goodies far and wide.
So, as we pocket their miserable little $6, easily-spent on ever-rising drought-inhibited food, please give a thought to the drought-stricken farmers themselves, and whatever you do, don't get sick needing a hospital bed, or want to catch a train running on time, or for your children to have an adequately maintained school, for they never stop saying they haven't the money for these either, don't they?
But please, oh please, conserve what little water we still have, for it's not limitless, is it?
Ken O'Hara, Networking for Real Democracy, Against War & Unemployment
Gerringong, NSW
Last teenager in Nauru
There is one teenage girl left in the detention camp on Nauru. Is this young girl the symbol of suffering that Mr Howard needs? Is she the candle on the rock to warn all others who flee persecution, war, rape and torture?
This young schoolgirl has no girlfriends to talk to. She is lonely and keeps to her room. This is her fourth year locked up.
We would not like our daughters in this situation, but there are things even worse that her family have fled from.
Is this girl to be left on the rock of Nauru as a symbol of our treatment of refugees? Is she the face of Mr Howard's border protection?
Elaine Smith
West Haven, NSW
Who is evil?
John Howard has characterised the sending of a packet containing a white powder and an abusive letter to the Indonesian embassy as a "reckless and evil" act. Reckless, maybe. Stupid, pointless and malicious. But evil?
If this is evil, then how does Howard describe forcibly delivering asylum seekers into the hands of the torturers they are trying to escape? Or traumatising children by locking them away in prison camps? Or being complicit in the deaths of 100 000 innocent civilians?
Evil seems to be an infinitely flexible and conveniently selective concept for politicians, able to be wielded at will to promote any agenda.
I don't believe in "evil". It's a soft option that encourages us to ignore the complexity of problem and possibility inherent in humanity and our societies. It allows us to avoid honestly and deeply examining ourselves or questioning the reality of events. However, I've always understood its appeal as a term to underscore the most extreme acts of brutality and oppression, to encapsulate our horror when faced with events that we may struggle to understand, such as genocide, slavery, or mass murder.
John Howard's rhetoric on this latest incident obscures the fact that such things arise out of our social reality. In this case, it is the inevitable result of decades of overt and tacit support and fostering of racist attitudes by governments and oppositions in this country, and their too-willing readiness to use racist sentiment for political gain. If we want to find those truly culpable, I suggest we begin the search at Parliament House.
Leslie Richmond
Frewville, SA
(abridged)
BHP concessions?
The time for concessions on royalties for BHP is long past it's use by date. Yes, we sandgropers are grateful that BHP built the roads, rail and ports to exploit our iron. Now it is time to return the royalties to the those to whom they belong, we the Western Australian people and particularly the first owners of our land. As long as we have appalling rates of infant mortality, babies born with foetal alcohol syndrome and brain damage caused by glue and petrol sniffing, aboriginal unemployment and gross inequality we cannot let a minority of shareholders benefit from what belongs to us all.
The Venezuelan people's revolution under Victor Chavez, which raised their country's oil royalties from an appalling 1% to a more respectable 30% has shown the world what can be done with good government. These royalties now pay for health and education for all rather than a privileged few. BHP cannot be trusted to introduce the ante-natal care, nutrition and training and employment required to lift the aboriginal people from their disadvantage.
The mines have been operating for over 50 years yet the disadvantage faced by Aboriginal communities has got worse not better. I call on the Western Australian government to publish the royalties paid by all those exploiting our mineral and oil wealth so the people can have a say in how they are spent. Legitimate profits are to be made from downstream processing of resources not by giving away our dirt.
Dr Colin Hughes
Glen Forrest, WA
Turning point
Are others noticing a turning point where we are starting to speak out for what is right, not only in the people of Australia but also from politicians?
I'm not talking about strikes, industrial action or bans that we all saw a few decades ago, I'm talking about the subtle changes in how we as Australians and even individual politicians are using their own individual rights to speak out and influence government policy. The disgraceful Cornelia Rau affair is one case in point, as are the six Liberal MPs who are prepared to vote on rolling back the policy on immigration detention, yet another is the soon-to-be Coalition Senator Joyce who is urging his colleagues to cross the floor on the Industrial Relations package. We are looking at people-power making a difference.
I've had the advantage of reading an advance copy of a book on Centrelink that's coming out next month called Australia's Artful Dodger: Centrelink Exposed that will blow the government out of the water. It's all backed up by audit reports and other documents, but it paints a very grim picture of how the government has been targeting millions of customers every year (2.4 million debts are issued annually by Centrelink) and trying to recover money caused by Centrelink themselves. It also shows that millions of dollars of welfare fraud is being hidden and that there's going to be a major blow-out in serious welfare fraud cases over the next 24 months or so.
There's an extremely interesting quote in the book from a prominent Liberal MP that blasts Centrelink's administration! How many other Liberals are going to join this MP? It remains to be seen — but I'd suggest this MP will have some company once this gets out as it's no secret that Centrelink complaints are the most frequent constituent complaint of all.
After 6.8 million Centrelink clients and their families read this book, I'd say people power will make sure there are major changes.
Cheryl Cutler
Bundamba, Qld
IR laws bad
A poll commissioned by the ACTU has found that, out of 600 employees surveyed, 60% said the government's proposed industrial relations changes are likely to be bad for the average worker, with only 15% saying they would probably be good.
Before any specific information about the reforms was provided to interviewees, the corresponding ratio was 38 percent to 16 percent.
The accusation that the union movement is acting as an unrepresentative interest group in opposing the reforms is not fair. Instead, enthusiastic employers — who will clearly gain from the proposed changes — are at odds with popular sentiment.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere, NSW
From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.
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