Banks
The major shareholders who control the banks are a law unto themselves. They are completely indifferent to the inconvenience that they have caused depositors by closing many branches, and also to the job insecurity of those who are still employed.
Online banking is their goal because it considerably increases profits with less staff. Profits before people is their creed. Their motivation is greed.
As a temporary measure, we should campaign to prevent the closure of banks and the reopening of those that have been closed, and the re-employment of staff who have lost their jobs and are still unemployed. Another temporary measure is to campaign for the establishment of a people's bank, fully staffed with branches in the city, suburbs and country towns.
The solution to the problem reverts back to ideology. This entails educating public opinion to see that banking is a public utility, and not a means of providing wealth for shareholders.
In the final analysis, it is the pressure of public opinion that will bring about the nationalisation of the banks, the abolition of Australian Workplace Agreements, and the repeal of other regressive legislation that benefits the rich and is to the detriment of the poor.
The Coalition and the capitalist controlled media employ the euphemism "reform" to conceal what is actually regressive and reactionary.
Although the ALP has much better financial resources than the Democratic Socialist Party, they do not have a newspaper, a radio station or a TV channel. The DSP with very limited resources has a splendid weekly paper, a telecast on Channel 31 and web sites.
Dialectics demonstrated that there is a bright future for what is growing and developing. Translated into political terms that means the DSP.
Bernie Rosen
Strathfield NSW
Cash for conservatives
The Sun Herald (3/9/00), under the heading of "Cash for conservatives", tells us that Senator Newman "last year ended a long-standing tradition of providing $50,000 a year to a range of women's major groups.
"Instead she gave money to just three groups, the National Council of Women, the Y.W.C.A. and the Australian Federation of Business and Professional Women, all of which espouse values sympathetic to the Coalition.
"The Women's Electoral Lobby, one of the most respected women's advocates lost all funding and has since lost its secretary." Their case was well presented by Edna Ryan, one of the founding members in her book Two Thirds of a Man.
I wonder if salaries for parliamentarians go according to sex? Say $100 a week for men and $67 for women.
Jean Hale
Balmain NSW
Mark Latham
How dare Mark Latham compare an unemployed person who refuses to work with Kerry Packer. The unemployed person will get cut off benefits. Mr Packer, meanwhile, reportedly collects about $35 million a week in unearned income.
Mr Packer says he provides 15,000 Australian jobs. Why does this entitle him to income, let alone $2300 per employee per week. It's the people he employs who do the work.
Furthermore, if capital were equitably distributed, 15,000 people wouldn't be knocking at Mr Packer's door looking for employment. They'd get jobs elsewhere, preferably in publicly owned businesses.
Does Mr Packer employ people out of the goodness of this heart? I don't think so. Far more likely he employs them to further his own ambitions and to enrich himself on the profits his workers generate.
Instead of making ridiculous comparisons, Mark Latham should be advocating that inheritances and property income be radically redistributed so that we all get a fair share.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere NSW
Opening ceremony
All Australia is abuzz with rumours as to how Australia will open the Olympic Games.
I can now reveal that secret research has been conducted by Access Economics which polled 9 million Australians over the age of 18.
Everyone's first choice was to have the last runner carrying the flame race into the stadium and approach a huge catapult in which John Howard has been placed with a stick of dynamite stuck in his fundamental orifice.
The runner will light the wick of the dynamite and Howard will be catapulted into the Olympic Cauldron, the idea being that irrespective of how many medals we win or how much it costs, all Australians will reckon it was worth it.
John Tomlinson
Brisbane
Refugees
Paul Benedek (Write On, GLW #419) hit the nail right over the head by calling for a humane immigration policy. It's just this that most frightens Ruddock and Co. — the prospect, not just of a poor and oppressed people demanding the same rights as anyone else in society, but to see other workers chorusing their demands for equality and organising on a mass scale to defend free movement of peoples.
Ruddock's originally crude propaganda about terrorism and crime is moving up a gear lately. Now, he asserts, groups like the Refugee Council of Australia are "politically biassed" and should not receive public funding. He also wants to revise the term "refugee" in the International Law to make it a quite useless term stripped of its original and commonsense meaning.
The One Nation party logic of "special rights" — a crude form of racial prejudice having nothing to do with a humane and democratic society — comes to mind.
We should concentrate on Ruddock, but it's worth bearing in mind that the ALP is not entirely free from criticism for speaking up on "special rights" and "privileges" when they were in office.
Opposition must also converge upon other racist immigration policies around the world, from Tony Blair's UK to Haider's Austria. These capitalists also scapegoat, they also want to erode the original meaning of "refugee" to the point of classic assimilationism; the denial of freedom of movement upon the grounds of race and access to property.
Matthew Davis
Socialist Party
Perth
[Abridged.]
Olympics
Last week's Four Corners program revealed that Hill and Knowlton, a US-based Mega PR firm, have been hired to promote a positive image of the Olympic Games.
This is the group who did the "babies ripped out of incubators by Iraqi soldiers" story with a tearful 15-year-old girl delivering personal testimony to Congress. This story was widely credited with assisting the decision for US entry into the Gulf War.
Subsequently, the story was denounced as a lie and the girl was discovered to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador in Washington. However, the war was well under way by this time.
Incidentally, Hill and Knowlton are offering their services to companies to counteract S11 and anti-globalisation activities. Perhaps this explains the vilification of S11 with the "rock throwing and urine filled balloons" scenario doing the media rounds.
Pamela Curr
Brunswick Vic