Unemployed
Many of Australia's 3 million unemployed and underemployed will take a cynical view of the Prime Minister's handling of the National Textiles situation. Forcing company administrators and creditors to accept a "deed of arrangement" in order to access their entitlements is the same kind of thinking that produced the "mutual obligation" mantra.
More and more obligations and penalties are being imposed on job seekers whilst little effort is made to apply real accountability to government agencies and other organisations paid to provide employment services, training and work-for-the-dole projects.
The $2 million that Howard has allocated to retrain sacked National Textile workers is welcomed. Will the PM now recognise the same needs amongst nearly 400,000 long-term unemployed people and put back the billions that the Coalition has slashed from labour market programs?
The $40 million of taxpayers' money given to National Textiles would have employed over 1300 people on $30K and saved around $20 million a year in unemployment benefits.
Perhaps there would have been sufficient funds to meet workers' entitlements if SOCOG had awarded contracts to supply fabrics for uniforms and clothing merchandise to National Textiles instead of overseas manufacturers.
Whatever the structure of any government scheme to protect workers, it now needs to provide for full payment of entitlements and funding for retraining.
Vice-president, Unemployed Persons Advocacy
Brisbane [Abridged.]
Mandatory sentencing 1
Dear Mr Howard, it is great to see you've finally accepted your moral limitations.
Some of my friends were a little confused when they heard you had ruled out a conscience vote on mandatory sentencing, despite all the national and international pressure which was being brought to bear in an attempt to stop the Northern Territory government killing indigenous juveniles who had committed minor property offences.
Fortunately I was able to explain to my friends that your reason for ruling out such a vote was that you have no conscience.
Deagon, Qld
Mandatory sentencing 2
The attitude in the Northern Territory of mandatory sentencing and "zero tolerance" shows little progress from the transportation of convicts in early Australian history. What have we learned?
Between 1787 and 1868 about 160,000 convicts were sent from Britain to Australia. Sentences handed down for transportation ranged from 7 years, to 21 years, to life. Records show that the offences of the convicts included almost every crime in British law.
But the overwhelming majority of convicts — about 85 per cent — were transported for crimes against property. These ranged from petty larceny (the theft of items of small value) and picking pockets, to forgery, highway robbery, and embezzlement (stealing money placed in one's care).
The rest of the convicts were transported for a variety of crimes, including assault, manslaughter, and offences against military or naval discipline. A large proportion of women — at least a third — had been prostitutes and thieves. Few convicts could read or write.
Some people maintained that the convicts were simply evil men and women who lived by crime. According to this view, the convicts were the worst criminals in Britain's cities.
Others argued that the convicts had committed crimes because they were poor people who suffered from unemployment, bad housing, and other harsh social conditions of the time. This argument continues today, in more ways than one.
Territory Greens
Darwin
Christianity
Luke Fomiatti (Write on, GLW #393) doesn't think it matters if God "hates homosexuals and women" because God won't make a revolution. But if those who will make a revolution — the workers and oppressed — follow such a homophobic, anti-woman God, then this will be a barrier to them succeeding.
Luke says: "A Christian may believe that homosexuality is morally wrong, but may at the same time support absolutely the right of all people to whatever lifestyle they choose, with the corresponding legal and social rights". This is to separate people's consciousness from their actions, avoiding the relationship between the two.
Can we defend racist beliefs if a person doesn't act on them? Luke's Voltaire quote ("I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it") says more for the arguments he opposes than for his own. Nick and Kate Carr (GLW #388) and Tom Flanagan (GLW #391) disapproved of reactionary content in the old testament, and its influence today, but never argued for the censorship or outlawing of religion.
Luke asserts, "To judge someone by their religion is as good as judging them by the colour of their skin". No, religion is a set of beliefs that can be analysed. Skin colour is a biological trait unconnected to consciousness or action.
Luke acknowledges that "sections of the bible, interpreted in a certain way, can be considered reactionary", but believes that people who believe in them can be progressive. Yes, people holding reactionary ideas can be propelled into progressive action (e.g., a One Nation supporter may go on strike and join a picket line), but it is certainly a barrier. Such people would have to rethink their ideas before they could support the rights of other oppressed people.
Reactionary views are indefensible. We can't live in hope that people won't act upon them.
The key to fighting that is solidarity. This whole discussion began because of an ill-considered article from socialists which stood in the way of solidarity between socialists and Christians. Luke's letter doesn't help build a bridge.
Springwood NSW [Abridged.]
Squawking
Like a flock of noisy parrots squawking at the bottom of the garden, government and business spokespeople never cease chorusing that the only way to overcome unemployment is through more economic growth, in complete contradiction to the fact that there's been continuous growth for many years past, resulting in over a million with no work at all!
But that great brain Albert Einstein was far more realistic when he wrote in "The World As I See It" in 1935:
"Only a fraction of the available human labour in the world is now needed for the production of the total amount of consumption goods needed for life ... therefore the number of hours per week ought so to be reduced by law that unemployment is systematically abolished".
Could it be put more clearly than that?
Gerringong NSW
Martinet
The Australian community awaits an explanation for immigration minister Philip Ruddock's cold-hearted and increasingly bizarre attitude toward asylum seekers.
In the absence of biographical evidence, there is one speculation, somewhat fanciful to be sure, based upon the minister's actions and statements, as to a possible explanation for his conduct.
It is well known that adult behaviour is commonly formed through childhood experiences. Thus, it is not impossible that Ruddock Senior was an authoritarian martinet whose uncompromising nature lay beneath an exterior of controlled rationality and legalities — a "stickler for the rules".
Then too, could not the minister's practice of sending refugees to long periods of incarceration in isolated concentration camps/detention centres have its origin in having been, himself, sent off to a lengthy period of isolation and misery at a harsh boarding school?
An element of cruelty marks his recent deportation of a Chinese mother to face abortion in the final days of her pregnancy and, most recently, in remaining unmoved by the sewing up of their mouths by protesting refugees at the Curtin detention centre. Such cruelty can result from anger over wrongs suffered in childhood.
In a frank moment, Mr Ruddock expressed "anger" and "disappointment" at the attempt by a group of boat people who had escaped custody, regarding their flight almost as a betrayal of a personal trust. In that moment, Mr Ruddock's image was similar to that of a bitter and disappointed man.
He has now advanced to regarding "sceptically" the claims of Vietnamese refugees, detained for 10 years in Hong Kong with no place to go, who say that they have relatives in Australia willing to sponsor them.
It is time to end present immigration policy and to replace it with an enlightened and humanitarian program of immigration for the benefit of the nation.
Toowong Qld [Abridged.]
Stormont never died
If ever James Dixon (GLW #392) needed proof of how right John Meehan was about the return of Stormont, then the recent dictatorial decision by the British government to suspend the Northern Ireland Assembly should convince him otherwise.
James Dixon's claim, that because a Protestant Unionist (David Trimble as First Minister) sits next to his Deputy Minister, a Catholic, this guarantees an end to Protestant supremacy, is naive in the extreme.
It was the Protestant Unionist, the First Minister, who was able to exercise pressure on the British government to remove Mo Mowlam as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland because she would not play the intransigent hardline ethos of the Orange Order, and it was him who had Tony Blair's disgraced hardliner, reinstated minister Peter Mandelson, given the job. The Catholic Deputy Minister had no say in it, and it was Mandelson that suspended the Assembly after threats from the First Minister, the Protestant Trimble.
It was Trimble who pressured the British government into manufacturing the issue of the IRA decommissioning its weapons, before Sinn Fein would be allowed to sit in the Assembly — an issue that was not in the Good Friday Agreement.
No mention was ever made about the issues of the British de-militarisation, nor the reconstruction of the sectarian RUC police force in order to form a force acceptable to all the people. Neither of these two issues have been addressed, despite them being part of the Good Friday Agreement.
To demand that the IRA, who are not a defeated force and who called a cease-fire in the first place in order to set up some kind of peace agreement, hand over its weapons is ridiculous in the extreme and the British know it.
The IRA guns have remained silent all through the peace process. If the process breaks down, which, after recent events is now very likely, then the Protestant First Minister and his lackeys in London will be to blame — not the IRA.
Yes, James Dixon, the old Stormont is alive and well — it never died.
Reynella SA [Abridged.]
Dying rivers
As each year passes, the water level in our rivers gets lower and lower. Many arguments tend to occur with the nature lovers and fishermen, on the one side, blaming the farmers, on the other side, for using too much irrigation water. Stuck in the middle is the government which tries to keep both sides happy with empty talk. Meanwhile the rivers keep decreasing.
There is a long-term solution to this problem, which is to set up a new "Buy Back Scheme Fund". The object of this scheme would be to buy back farms along rivers. The farms then become nature reserve owned by all in the fund. This in turn wipes out the irrigation licence for those properties, which in effect means that more water remains in the rivers.
Expressions of interest, write to: Jim Faggotter, PMB 11, Rockhampton MC, Qld 4702.
Rockhampton Qld