Eva Cheng's review of Jane Kelsey's Economic Fundamentalism (GLW #223) thankfully draws attention to the lie that many here claim to be the New Zealand miracle. However, the accompanying photo might give the impression to those who have no evidence to the contrary that the trade union movement (in its centrally organised form) has taken a strong stand against the ravages of economic rationalism. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.
During the six years of Labour rule, the national trade union centres actively worked to suppress opposition and dissent (the we-can't-turn-on-our-mates line) while under National for the last six years they have simply turned over and played dead.
The NZ Council of Trade Unions decided not to oppose the legislation removing trade union organising rights (the Employment Contract Act), seeking rather to negotiate concessions. Now even they admit that was a mistake.
Mind you, they would have had a tough time mobilising workers — six years of complicity in Labour's attacks on working and living conditions meant that the NZCTU had lost many members and had lost the active support of many of its remaining members. The result is that the destruction of workers' organising rights must be seen to be the responsibility of the NZCTU. Its inaction resulted in, amongst other things, the collapse of the Clerical Workers' Union and other groups working to protect women workers.
Thankfully, there was a sufficient rump of unions and workers so dissatisfied with the NZCTU's inaction they left to form their own trade union centre — the Trade Union Federation, based on unions in the manufacturing and transport industries. The campaign in favour of the organising and industrial rights of the Seafarers from which your photo is drawn is one of the high points of the TUF's early work.
New Zealand's workers have been sold short by a collaborationist trade union movement with little apparent interest in workers' lives and no notion of class struggle as a daily fact of gaining even a minor improvement in those conditions. In the light of this experience after only six years of Labour rule and the NZCTU's inability to regain lost ground under the weight of conservative attacks, the bluster by the leadership of the ACTU about upcoming industrial strife and mass action rings hollow. If we want to get
ahead, I fear that we will have to do so despite the ACTU (and probably despite the unions many of us belong to).
Malcolm MacLean
Rockhampton Qld
How NZ has changed
Eva Cheng's review of Jane Kelsey's book The New Zealand Experiment (GLW #223) made interesting reading, though for me, there seemed to be something missing.
After living in Adelaide for 9 years, I returned here in mid 1994. It has been quite a shock to the system seeing just how much this country has changed. Most striking is the change in people themselves.
The old adage "Divide and Rule" comes readily to mind. Racism, selfishness, intolerance and an uncaring attitude towards others less fortunate seems to be the prevailing attitudes amongst many people here.
New Zealanders worst affected by the structural adjustment policies — low income earners, beneficiaries and the elderly — seem to have been bludgeoned into submission. Apathy could be described as being at epidemic proportions, while at the same time the "Good News" big business propaganda machine continues its onslaught almost unabated.
There are dissenting voices here, though they seem few and far between. Despite the viciousness, and the extreme arrogance of the ruling National Party, despite their recent cynical, contemptuous manoeuvring (with the so called "United Party") it is beyond belief they continue to poll around 40%.
Perhaps MMP will make some difference, though I won't be holding my breath. I can't help but think: You can vote out the politicians, but you can't vote out the Business Roundtable, and their multi-national mates.
Gerry Hibbs
Riverton, New Zealand
Political perils
Jorge Jorquera warns the Greens about the possible dangers of engaging in political activity (GLW, March 13), but the model he criticises seems to be the traditional socialist one — the evolution of the majority of the parliamentary deputies of the European Social Democratic parties in the last two decades of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century — rather than anything the Greens in Australia have or haven't done.
Jorge and other GLW critics of the Greens are even scratching to come up with serious criticisms of the Tasmanian Greens' complicated tactic of forming an accord with the minority Labor government a few years ago — and I'm sure if there was anything remotely unprincipled about the Greens' activities at that (or any other) time Jorge and his comrades would have told us all about it.
Since we're discussing the perils of politics, I feel I must point out another one: the dangers of sectarian degeneration in small socialist organisations that experience isolation (enforced or voluntary) over long periods of time. I fear the Democratic Socialist Party may be in serious danger of contracting this debilitating illness (which has been known to deprive political currents of their sanity — eg the Spartacists, Socialist Labour League, etc), having never attracted more than a few hundred members in at least 25 years of existence.
At its most successful the DSP was one of the more adept exponents of the Trotskyist Fourth International's post-1968 European strategy of operating on the left flank of larger Communist parties and the left wing of Social Democracy. Even after the DSP's break with Trotskyism in the mid-1980s, this basic strategy didn't change, though some of the theory did. Since the disappearance of both the Communist Party and the left wing of the ALP from the political scene, the DSP gives every appearance of having no strategy at all.
Could the DSP be hoping that the Greens will simply replace the CPA and the ALP left in its traditional strategy?
Mightn't these times (close to five years after the collapse of the USSR and more than a decade after the retreat of the Labor left) call for some new analysis and strategic directions rather than an attempt to breathe new life into an approach developed for different circumstances, and which only ever worked moderately well in any case?
Steve Painter Carlton, NSW 16/3/96
Unremitting attacks
George Jorquera's article on the WA Greens (GLW #223) continues the DSP and GLW's unremitting attacks on the Green Movement. The epithets and abuse bountiful: "pragmatist" "parliamentary cretinism" "worn out analytical tools of Eurocommunism" "post-modern cliches" (GLW #223); "pitching for the middle-class vote" "futile fantasy of a green future" "avoidance of anything resembling a real challenge to capitalism" "must acknowledge the primacy of class relations" (221) "purely parliamentarist" (219) and so on and on.
As a shareholder and listed supporter of GLW, I would now like to ask if the DSP has effectively given up on the Green Left project? Does the latest "Leninist" turn now mean that the party has refocussed its attention solely on its traditional constituency of the labour movement? Or is it simply the thought of having to dissolve the DSP entirely into a national green organisation which is proving too much for the party leadership? Perhaps a refounded Communist party may be more to its taste and character?
If this is the case, is there any reason to continue supporting a paper called Green Left Weekly? Given the "turn", some may say that the paper has an opportunistic title? Perhaps the dual identity of the paper may even prove a liability in the future? Green Left Weekly is entirely dependant on the hard sales work of DSP and Resistance members. The time has come for those organisations to make some fundamental decisions about its outlook and strategy. Jeff Richards
Prospect SA
Elitism
Several recent letters to GLW have defended the Greens' record on grassroots participation. Michael Unger (GLW #223) accuses the Democratic Socialist Party of elitism in its political criticisms of the Greens. In fact, elitism in the Greens was a significant factor in their loss of my active support as I joined the DSP.
In the Greens' most successful election campaign, in Tasmania in 1989, I was involved in setting up their Hobart Northern Suburbs campaign office. This was initiated and run by volunteers, using donations collected. There were large numbers of people willing to give time to the campaign. Many of these wished to continue to support the Greens after the elections — for example, initiating the Greens' magazine, the Daily Planet.
But rather than being encouraged and included in the organisation of the Greens, most of these people were excluded from the circle of (often long-time) supporters of the parliamentarians.
While individual Greens may be involved in community issues (as Stephen Luntz emphasises, GLW #220), I have not seen the Greens collectively change their 1989 practice since — through the processes of becoming a party, electoral campaigns, or movements like the Tarkine campaign.
Ben Courtice
Hobart
Howard's cuts
Mr Howard and his Coalition Government are set to cut Government spending to the bone. The areas he proposes to inflict the cuts are in health, education, care for the aged and human services, social security including pensions, and other. Howard said the attitude of the Paxton kids in knocking back jobs "must stick in the craw of hard working people". Not as much as Howard's attitude sticks in my craw it doesn't.
He seeks to perpetuate the myth that it is the sick, poor and elderly who are costing the Government the most and dragging the economy down. This cost is a drop in the bucket when measured up against the cost of the real welfare users.
Mr Howard could easily raise the funds he so needs to fulfil his rash campaign promises by conducting an independent investigation of tax rorts by major Australian and foreign companies trading in Australia but using tax havens to hide their true yearly profits. The billions that this would bring in, would solve all funding problems now and in the future, but would make any Government very unpopular with the Business Council of Australia, and other representatives of large companies. These companies wield a big stick over government.
The real welfare cheats are the corporations. Mr Howard and Mr Keating know this. People of Australia should demand that this money is retrieved by the Federal Government, and used to help young Australians become educated, find jobs with Australian companies, using Australian produce, enable them to aim at owning a house, raise children and grow old with the dignity they deserve. There would be billions over to help repair the environment, and invest in sustainable energy in order to reduce pollution.
Therese Mackay
Port Macquarie NSW
[Edited for length.]
Why?
The massacre of the Dunblane children is of course horrific, and the work of a madman. But it isn't so different from what is happening (and has been for years) more slowly to Cuban and Iraqi children deprived of food and much-needed medicines through the American blockade of both countries. We are never shown the terrible results of these blockades.
So it seems odd to read that Bill Clinton is sending messages of sympathy to parents of the murdered children of Dunblane.
Rosemary Evans
St Kilda Vic
Jakarta Nine
The treatment of the Jakarta Nine, the nine East Timorese who occupied the Australian embassy in Jakarta, has been beyond belief. All have now left the embassy. All had been denied the asylum in Australia that they asked for. All are now outside the embassy, and in continuing danger from the Indonesian police and military.
Shortly before the election, a number of us occupied Keating's electoral office in Bankstown. That was on Tuesday 27th February. We were hoping to bring the issue of the Jakarta Nine, and the larger issue of Australian complicity in the brutal occupation of East Timor, into the election. Four of us were arrested after refusing to leave the balcony and foyer of the office. We were charged under the "Inclosed Lands Protection Act 33/1901 Section 4 (1)", not with trespass, as such.
I believe the time has come to take these sorts of non-violent direct actions, to get some media space. Our action was covered on television, but the media had previously surpassed themselves by ignoring the Jakarta Nine. The only decent coverage of the Jakarta Nine I have seen in a publication (as opposed to on the internet) is in Green Left Weekly.
I do not believe there will be any change in policy on the relationship with the Indonesian regime, with the Howard government. Howard may be more discreet about it than Keating. But he must not be allowed to get away with talking about "human rights" for the East Timorese, at the same time deporting East Timorese from here, and denying self-determination. Enough, we have to make it clear, of the disgraceful betrayal of the East Timorese.
Stephen Langford
Australian-East Timor Association
Sydney