Private health scandal
A small article in the August 13 Sydney Morning Herald indicates the sort of plans the government has for the income it intends to raise from its new consumption tax proposal. The government is planning to give private health funds $4.8 bn over the next five years in the form of a 30% subsidy for private health insurance.
This is more generous than what public hospitals will receive from the federal government â $3.8bn over the same period. The government has given up trying to convince Australians to waste their money on the inefficient profit-oriented private health sector and is now simply giving our money to it.
This is a scandal, and the price of them getting away with it will be more than $4.8 bn. The price will be our public health system and the Medicare system at its heart. It must be opposed.
Marrickville
Sydney
Cop harassment
Rather than the usual discreet surveillance by cop photographers, the most recent anti-racist demonstration on August 8 here was filmed in its entirety by a police film crew.
We were informed that it was for "training purposes". Long close-ups were taken of Green Left Weekly sellers.
While handing out how to votes for the Democratic Socialists at the Northcote by-election, I chalked "Stop Hanson's Racism, Vote Democratic Socialist" on the footpath. I was threatened and photographed by eight "visiting" One Nation supporters.
"Ooh, I think you'll get arrested for that, lovey", said one. "I suppose you spray paint walls as well", said another. "What do you know about racism?", exclaimed another.
Finally, the police came to their aid to inform me that I was indeed contravening the act as "Derogatory comments about candidates cannot be written on any election materials". I decided not to challenge the police on the two most glaring issues: Hanson was not a candidate and the sidewalk did not constitute election material.
I asked them if there was anything in the act about "intimidation", to which an officer replied: "Look, I get my photo taken whenever I go out in public". While I was checking the cop was to make sure he wasn't Mel Gibson, the One Nationites took to my chalkings with a bucket of water and some serious shoe shuffling.
Alas, it was to no avail. As the sun rose in the sky and the water dried from the footpath, my message reappeared. As the sun set at the close of counting, the electorate of Northcote had sent a message of its own: a clear and resounding loss for One Nation and a loud "No" to Hanson's racism.
Melbourne
[Abridged.]
Appeal
I have lived among the poor in India and Africa for nine years. As a refugee, I endured political and financial insecurity and the plight of the oppressed in the Third World is an issue close to my heart.
Almost everybody in Australia is privileged. We possess a great deal materially and enjoy rights and freedoms so much above the meagre standards of the Third World. Even in Australia we can gain some idea of the contrast through listening to and asking refugees, immigrants from the Third World and Aboriginal people.
The problem is a lack of good will toward global justice. The solution is not money-based, but relies on the greatest gift we as individuals have: solidarity and a desire to help.
Australians for a Global Concern campaign to get people motivated and personally involved. Our aim is to send a large number of independent-minded Australians to visit the Third World, where they can live amongst people in need from six weeks to three months. To get involved, phone (02) 9351 7320.
Sydney
[Abridged.]
Globalisation
There is an untimely refusal to deal with the question of Globalisation. Doug Lorimer (GLW 26/3/97), while making some good points, considers it would demoralise the workers to admit globalisation exists.
Globalisation means, not a radical change in Capital since Marx's painstaking analysis, but that monopoly capital has now written a globally synchronised strategy for itself and a world increasingly split rich/poor.
To dwell on what the Guardian Weekly called the "Culture of Control" (21/6/98) in the first world. The excellent article in GLW #328 shows the growth of "the Prison-Industrial Complex" and worldwide punitive legislation for the poor, at "the end of welfare as we know it" (UK/US/Australia et al). Civil rights issues are now generic. Youth curfews, "zero tolerance", "third strike", loss of Jury Trial rights (Goss, Blair), Criminal Justice Acts â are prescribed now that the large pockets of Third World have come to the First. "Dumbing down" of the media (ABC/"The Australian") is worldwide. "Better they cry from soap operas than tear-gas" as Mexico's TV monopolist put it.
And MAI? Globalisation exists, or Chomsky, Pilger and a thousand others are drunk in charge of a typewriter. Marx didn't subscribe to the coincidence view of history much either.
Brisbane
[Abridged.]
Which basket case?
The business section of the Herald 24/8/98 tells us that "the Japanese economy is a real basket case", quoting Mark Parry of the Hill Samuel Asset Management in London. The Japanese jobless rate was 4.3 per cent in June.
So where does that leave us with a jobless rate of 7 to 8 per cent?
Balmain NSW
West vs Islam
The world has taken a giant step forward toward disaster. The US has blundered into a state of war with the world of Islam, thus fulfilling the prediction made by Lord Reese-Mogg and his Parliamentary Committee in a report which it issued in 1996 or thereabouts.
The Reese-Mogg report stated that the struggle between Islam and the West would replace the Cold War as the next major source of international conflict, and it looks as though this prediction is correct.
It is almost impossible to imagine the depth of stupidity and ignorance now plumbed both by the Australian Prime Minister and the leader of the Labor Opposition in their statements of support for the US bombings in Afghanistan and the Sudan.
A policy established during the Cold War which declared that Communism would not be allowed to advance anywhere beyond its boundaries at that time â a policy which is still in force today â means that Indonesia will not be able to fall under Communist control.
That is why the West has supported the Suharto military dictatorship for 30 years and now supports the Habibie successors.
Toowong Qld
Can you imagine it? Nor can I. Despite US courts recently acknowledging that leading Miami-based Cubans "may" have been involved in trying to assassinate Castro, the thought of Cuba taking such an "offensive against terrorism" is unthinkable.
Meanwhile, the US government orders bombings of African nations with close to no evidence. The act of US terrorism is an example of racism that stretches way beyond (although it includes) Hanson. It is racism on a global scale that enforces, justifies and increases the divide between the first and third world.
Melbourne
[Abridged.]
Immigration and environment
Francesca Davis has no credibility in her criticism of the excellent August 19 Green Left Weekly article about environment and immigration by Gordon Hocking of Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population Inc (AESP).
Francesca says "limiting migration simply leaves those people fleeing poverty, war and famine with nowhere to go". But there are hundreds of millions of people living in circumstances of poverty, war and famine who want to flee elsewhere. To attempt to relieve their plight by a totally open door policy in Australia would be comparable to "saving" the passengers of the Titanic by attempting to cram them all into one lifeboat.
With no restriction on immigration, because Australia is mainly a dry, fragile, unpredictable land, we could be on the way to being a poverty-stricken dust bowl. AESP proposals allow a manageable 25% boost in refugee intake.
In the past, immigration has been important for security, economic and multicultural reasons. Now however, it is ecological criteria and sustainability that must dominate. It makes good sense and is certainly not racist to aim for an ecologically sustainable population.
Geoff Grace
Hunters Hill NSW
[Abridged.]
Nazis befriend AESP
I am prepared to accept Gordon Hocking and most members of Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population (GLW #329) are not intentionally racist. But they are naive and mistaken to campaign for Australia's ecological problems to be blamed on migrants.
AESP gives respectability to the views of rabid racists like Pauline Hanson, anti-Asian Australians Against Further Immigration and even the neo-Nazi bully boys of National Action.
But don't take my word for it. Visit National Action's web page and see for yourself. On its links page, entitled "Nationalism, Patriotism, White Racial Nationalism, Anti-Immigration", it is AESP that heads the list (sharing space with such environmentally sound groups as the anti-Semitic Australian League of Rights and pro-Nazi skinhead music group Blood and Honour).
"Information provided by AESP research reinforces what Nationalists have been saying for years: that mass immigration is doing untold damage to Australia's environment", declare our home-grown Nazis approvingly.
Westmead NSW