Logging On

Paddy Crumlin and Julia Gillard

By Paddy Crumlin, National Secretary

The latest crow-like squawking by Howard, Hockey and Costello is that 70 per cent of the ministry in a new Labor Government would be former union officials. Not true for starters - not surprising from this gang. And if it was, so what anyway? Trade unions have done more for social justice, social welfare, democracy and economic growth based on fairness and compassion than this lot of serial liars and manipulators of truth, morally compromised by their desperation and obsession for power that has corrupted much of what has been fine and fair about Australian life.

I'm proud to be a trade unionist, and even prouder when these cunning muppets try to belittle the movement.

Trade unionism has the capacity to develop and realise some of the finer qualities required for public and political life as well. The movement has always attracted genuine social and political reformers. They include some of the greatest our nation and the world democratic movement has ever seen - individuals who have proven themselves in the real world on the job, getting their hands dirty or toiling away at jobs Howard and his team of mainly professional seat warmers don't know about because they've never been overly confronted by it.

The commitment to trade unionism is secondary to the life experience as a worker. This commitment also recognises that "ordinary Australians" are not ordinary at all but special and aspire to better things in each of their important individual lives. The views of each one of them are important.

This canvassing of wider views is the essence of a healthy democracy - something Howard has forgotten, if he ever really knew it.

Howard, when he doesn't lie, resorts to merely dissembling. In fact, of the 50 per cent of ALP frontbenchers who worked in a union, only 30 per cent were elected, the others employed for their legal, technical and research skills. Most had worked in a variety of occupations and of course their vocation and political drive comes from being and working with other working men and women. Many are self-educated.

Involvement in unions stems from real life experience of identifying the need for balance in the workplace, through being denied a voice or choice in determining their conditions of work, by observing or being subject to unfairness or discrimination because of the inherent political and economic strength of the employer, sometimes in the case of large global companies with more resources than Australia's Gross Domestic Product. Or people find their voice having been face to face with much of the endemic poverty and social dysfunction of the poor and neglected end of our society who lack effective representation.

These are life experiences that require courage and commitment to combat. Not derision from an elected government, who are determined (as Joe Hockey said) to make sure unions have seen their day. They say that in Guatemala too.

What a disgraceful waste of public resources to use political power like this government has, to attempt to snuff that out and with it the rights and opportunities of millions of Australian workers that the union movement belongs to and grows from. In this respect alone it has been a dark and malicious 12 years of government, a political stain on a great and democratic country

Vultures

The Howard Government of course are much more able to identify the needs of working Australia.

And sharks don't bite.

More than 50 per cent of his front bench are lawyers. No doubt that's why so many fat arse law firms got fatter drawing up the WorkChoices legislation. Or bashing us in the Patrick dispute. Or getting on the ACCC gravy train. Or being employed to battle Australian workers facing unfair dismissal, reduction in working entitlements or loss of their home because Howard's interest rates go up faster than his eyebrows.

With due apology to the lawyers we employ to combat these vultures, does anyone feel safe in the steady hands of a tribe of lawyers? Maybe they all get together and laugh late into the night about Howard's hilarious experiences with his conveyancing jobs. Then turn to the next day to direct a few more of our working rights into the safe deposit box of international business. And make it all neat and legal. That's probably why he and his government feel comfortable flinging crap at all and sundry, workers, their unions, refugees, Aborigines, opposition politicians whether ALP, Democrat or Green.They've got a good lawyer. Well maybe not good in the true sense.

No vision

What an excuse for a decent politician Howard is. He hasn't got much of a public record for genuine social or community construction or reconciliation to stand on, so he adjusts by jumping on the heads of any alternate political vision that has.

His biggest boast is economic leadership. And quotes 25-year-old figures to oil the boast. The last 13 years of unprecedented world economic growth has been largely driven by the Chinese economic phenomenon and the fact that Australia is the largest and the closest market for their iron ore, coal and other minerals. That massive growth and subsequent taxation resource was going to feed into our economy if Homer Simpson was the Prime Minster and Bart the Treasurer. Duh! It's what you do with that growth that makes a leader.

In that time Howard and Costello taxed Australians increasingly through the GST, threw money into the air at election time and subsequently fed the dragon of inflation that could only be cornered by monetary policy and increasing interest rates, among the highest of the developed countries. So homes are out of the reach of most young Australians, reeling from the double jeopardy of falling wages under WorkChoices and rising interest rates. Increasingly existing mortgage holders are desperately hanging on for the same reason.

He said it in the debate with Rudd. His policies aren't inflationary because WorkChoices stops wage growth. Thanks for the vision thing John Howard. With Costello sitting in the front row grinning like an imbecile and making jokes with Hockey like a naughty school boy. Big future with that galoot. He couldn't stand up to Howard, so has been whinging and carping and putting the shiv into him for years behind the scenes. Heart as big as a sesame seed.

Howard leads this lot through his tremendous life skills as a conveyancing solicitor who barely practiced before he was parachuted into the hard knocks foundry of life in Canberra nearly 40 years ago. Now he gets his hands dirty and sweats from his brow in the everyday grind at Kirribilli because Canberra hasn't got a view. Bloody tossers

Elect Labor

We're campaigning to get rid of WorkChoices, and the only way that will be achieved is to elect a Labor Government. Julia Gillard and Martin Ferguson attended our National Council and confirmed their support for workers' rights and in particular maritime workers' rights. The right to work in a coastal shipping industry. The right to a national occupational health and safety code in stevedoring to stop the damage. The right to train, to gain skills to meet the needs of our jobs. All supported by a genuine Federal Government through legislation, regulation and funding.

Health and education for all Australians, not just those fortunate enough to meet those ever increasing costs. A return to a concrete commitment to Aboriginal reconciliation. An environment policy that does something about the crap that gets poured into the ecosystem, and doesn't cuddle up to the polluters with weak rhetoric and servile requests like those from the Howard Government.

What about that APEC green policy he worked so hard at - commitment to aspire to have a look at doing something, hopefully this century. And now he doesn't agree with Bush's views on climate change. That is a change. A change from having his hooter firmly imbedded in Bush's backside on just about everything.

There could be more in Labor's policies and we'll argue there should be more. That's a job for us to pursue through involvement and debate when they're in.

In the meantime let's all get to work on it and get a decent government. It's well and truly time.

International support

International unions have stood up to support our campaign to give the Howard Government the flick. From the Seafarers' International Union of the US Convention in Washington, to the International Longshoremen's Convention in Florida, to the International Transport Workers' Federation, and International Dockworkers' Convention in California. Dockworkers, maritime workers, seafarers all know what Howard represents in their country if his agenda succeeds in doing what Joe Hockey said was their goal - to make sure the role of unions was "over".

In the US, Japan, Europe, South America and Africa that means there goes job security, and with it penalty rates, annual leave, pensions and medical welfare where they've been won. That's the end of the Jones Act and US Cabotage. The hiring halls and other stable employment arrangements of dockers in LA and New Jersey, Rotterdam and Marseilles, gone to Gowings. That's more bullets in the brain of labour activists in El Salvador and Guatemala.

No one with any inkling of human and political development in industrial and post-industrial world society ignores the essential role of unions and our importance to social, economic, cultural and environmental justice and balance. Wherever political exploitation or thuggery is taking place, unions stand in the front line with those who have the moral and personal courage to say 'No'. And those who are realistically prepared to pay the price, which can go from a whack to imprisonment and often in developing countries, torture and death - a fact recognised by the UN, and virtually every country with a commitment to social and democratic justice.

But for Howard and Hockey, it's over.

Well, in the real world, trade unions, churches, welfare and non-government organisations and many others know it's no more over than poverty, child labour, mass starvation and war. And no number of government or employer ads telling them that black is white, and turds taste like tortillas will change that fact.

The message to us from all our many international brothers and sisters is they are one with us in our determination to continue fighting from the front. They want you to know that's what helps inspire them to meet the everyday challenges on their own turf.