Photo: Brisbane Times

Words matter. When things happens in politics, the tone of how events are reported, the words that are used, and the way situations are framed are not organised by random. The mainstream media chooses the words they use very carefully. Today the media have presented their preferred frame for the resignation of Barry O’Farrell as: he mistakenly lied to an ICAC enquiry because he forgot that he received a $3,000 bottle of wine from the CEO of Australian Water Holdings. But of course O’Farrell didn’t resign because of his problems with ‘memory’. He resigned because he could no longer deny a personal expensive-wine-recipient, hand-written-note-receiver, phone-call-taker-relationship with someone who was earning over a million dollars a year as CEO of a company in a public-private partnership with the government Barry O’Farrell was in charge of up until today. This information is completely absent from the media’s framing of this story. But just imagine for a moment if one part of this story was different. Imagine for a moment that Barry O’Farrell was a Labor Premier. Imagine if Tony Abbott, standing by O’Farrell and brawling with a journalist asking questions about corruption, was a Labor Prime Minister. The ‘chaos, scandal, dysfunction, smear’ machine works in overdrive for Labor stories, but can’t even get out of second gear when Liberals are involved.

Does everyone remember when Julia Gillard apparently had ‘questions to answer’ over her very long time ago ex-boyfriend’s alleged involvement in a union ‘slush fund’? I’m sure you remember the media circus around this apparent scandal surrounding events 20 years in the past. According to a search of newspaper articles from the last three years that mention ‘slush’, ‘Gillard’ and ‘awu’, there were 923 articles written on the subject, of which 373 were contributed by The Australian. When I did another search and took out ‘slush’ and ‘awu’, but left in ‘Gillard’ and added ‘questions to answer’, the search revealed a whopping 4,017 articles, of which over 1,000 were from The Australian. Obsessed much? And even after Gillard bravely spent an hour answering every question the press could think of, even when they ran out of questions, there were still apparently ‘questions to answer’. This Labor ‘chaos, scandal, dysfunction’ story was salivated over by the mainstream media for three years, yet Gillard was never found to have done anything wrong. You would think journalists would learn not to take story advice from deluded creatures like Larry Pickering. There is no better example than this of the huge gulf between the way the media reports apparent scandals involving Labor politicians, compared to real scandals involving Liberal politicians.

Remember the way NSW Labor MP David Campbell was treated after he was stalked by Channel 7 and filmed going into a ‘gay’ sauna (is that illegal?). What about the way Craig Thompson’s story dominated the news after he allegedly paid for prostitutes on a work credit card years before he was in parliament (2,127 news articles mention ‘credit card’ and ‘Craig Thomson’). Or the reporting of ex-Liberal and independent-yet-linked-to-Labor-as-Speaker Peter Slipper’s scandal over private text messages, alleged sexual harassment of James Ashby (which was later exposed by Justice Rares as a spurious case) and the misuse of travel claims (which were fractional compared to Abbott’s own misuse of travel claims to sell his book Battlelines for private profit).

There is absolutely no doubt that the mainstream media revel in anything that even looks like belonging to Labor with even the hint of a scandal, no matter how inconsequential, and how much reality can actually be assigned to such apparent scandal. But when it comes to blatant scandals and corruption, right in the very heart of the Liberal Party, the oh so familiar ‘nothing to see here, move along’ attitude is rolled out by the media, mixed with ‘you can’t trust any politicians’ line to make sure Labor gets smeared at the same time as Liberals.

Even when two people from opposing sides of politics are both involved in the exact same scandal, the way the media treats their ‘Labor’ version of the scandal, as compared with the ‘Liberal’ version, is quite clearly not the same. An example of this is former NSW Labor member Eddie Obeid and current Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos. I checked how many times newspaper articles mentioning the words ‘Obeid’ and ‘scandal’ also included the word ‘Labor’ and I found all three words included in 89% of cases. I did the same thing for ‘Sinodinis’ and ‘scandal’ to see how many times the word ‘Liberal’ was included with these two words. The result was 74%. Words matter. And apparently the words ‘Labor’ and ‘Liberal’ matter the most.

There have been some great contributions covering the March in March on the AIMN and other independent news and blog sites during the week. And not surprisingly, many of them are critical of the lack of coverage this national grass roots protest movement received in the mainstream media. Before I am accused of being a ‘MSM hater’, which is apparently what I must be since I don’t read most mainstream newspapers, which is of course my choice as a consumer, I do note that some outlets have covered the march. And unsurprisingly some have been better than others. However, overall, the coverage has been small in proportion to how big this news story is and much of it has been misrepresentative of the marches even when they were mentioned. So why do I care about the coverage of the March in March you may ask? I have a few reasons:

• Because the people who marched had a message for the rest of our community, and we deserved to have this seen by those who would never be engaged enough in politics to march.
• Because the opinion of 100,000+ marchers should, in a free and democratic society, have their message reported in a factual and balanced way, not dismissed and censored because people in positions of power don’t wants us speaking out. (BO and Bongs? Charming stuff from the Murdoch press).
• Because the way the mainstream media reported the March in March is indicative of a larger ‘insider versus outsider’ attitude in the media. Journalists aren’t representing the interests of their community, they’re representing the vested interest of a small number of powerful people who are part of the problem and part of the reason we marched in the first place.

So I’ve been having a think about what key ingredients March in March was missing that made it so irrelevant and non-newsworthy to the media. I was also thinking about how irrelevant most of the other news that journalists write about is to our community interests. And so I decided to come up with a list of things the March in May organisers might want to consider including in the next march, to see if we can garner the attention of a press that has so badly let us down:

1) Craig Thomson

There definitely wasn’t enough ‘scandal’, ‘chaos’, ‘credit cards’ and ‘prostitutes’ involved in the March and March. So it’s no wonder the mainstream media weren’t interested. If we could get Craig along to the next march, and ask him to cry, the media pack that sits on his tail all day might happen across the march too and might get some footage inadvertently over Craig’s shoulder.

2) Politicians

Jacqueline Maley in the Sydney Morning Herald, to her credit, contributed this piece during the week to explain why the SMH chose not to report the march. But not to her credit, the reasoning was very weak. Apparently her newspaper would have been more interested in the march, like they had been more interested in the Convoy of No Confidence, she said, if politicians had attended. Except, umm, that was the whole point of this being a grassroots movement. That was what made it newsworthy. The fact that there was no Greens versus Labor story, and there was no politician spin on the event, and there was no ‘the Oppositions says’ catch-all line to report on afterwards, made this event all the more interesting.

But doesn’t this reveal a deeper problem with the way that politics is reported in our media? Doesn’t this highlight exactly why there is such a huge misalignment with the political news that we are served up, and the political news we want to read? Journalists like Maley, and like all the other people who ignored the significance of events like March in March, and – to give just one other example – ignored the significance of Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech, can’t see the wood for the trees. They can only see ‘politician versus politician’ – who spoke better, who gaffed, who tripped on the grass, who had a ‘better day’ in front of the cameras, who is backgrounding and leaking about whom. But we, in the community, don’t care about this sideshow, because in the most part, it’s irrelevant to us. We don’t see politics as a ‘two horse race’, with political actors not just part of the story, but the story themselves. We care about the impact that political policies have on our community. This is why we marched. Because we’re worried about the Abbott government’s impact on our community. The fact that the media doesn’t get this is the most telling thing about this whole situation. If the mainstream media are wondering why they don’t connect with their audience anymore, this is where they could begin with their process of self-reflection.

3) A three word slogan

Most of the criticism I’ve seen about the March in March centred on the fact that there weren’t clear aims for the march, that there were too many different agendas and that there wasn’t one ‘cause’ that brought it all together. So what the media is basically admitting with this criticism, is that they can’t comprehend a complex and diverse event, which brings together a wide range of community concerns. They can only comprehend politics in sound bites and three word slogans. Axe the tax. Yeah, they all got that loud and clear. And this ‘short messages’ obsession explains their fascination with ‘rude’ placards. As if these defined the march and were the most newsworthy element (even though few placards contained swear words). But the line ‘we’re here for our community’ – apparently doesn’t cut through in quite the same way.

Again, the very point of the March in March was that there wasn’t a single point to it. This is why so many thousands of people marched in major cities and regional areas throughout the country. As I said in my speech to the gathering on the steps of Parliament House in Adelaide – We might all have our individual outrages about the Abbott government. But what binds this passion together, what binds our values together is the understanding that Abbott is not just bad for all of us, as individuals, though he certainly is that. No, why we’re really here is because we know he’s bad for our community. And our community is us. We know we’re in this life together.

The concerns of a large cross section of our community, who are willing to get out of our houses, off the internet, and march together, is obviously far too complicated a concept for political journalists in this country to understand. And again, isn’t this telling. Isn’t this the problem with how they report politics to us on a daily basis? A three-word-slogan doesn’t adequately explain all the complexity in an environmental policy like the Carbon Price. The problem of asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat is, as we’ve seen, far too complex a situation for the media to even bother to investigate. So all we hear them say is ‘boats have been coming’ and ‘it’s all Labor’s fault’. Sorry, life isn’t as simple as that. And if the political journalists don’t understand that, they’re in the wrong job.

We will march again, and we will continue to criticise the mainstream media who, for a long time, have been representing their own interests, and not the interests of their community. This will of course, if it hasn’t already, lead to their ultimate downfall. Because when they ignore us, we ignore them. And when they’re ignored, they disappear. But ignoring us won’t make us disappear.

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/cMKUYops7h4]

Today I marched with my community at March in March Adelaide, and was honoured to have a chance to speak. Here is my speech:

Photo by author

Thank you to the organisers of March in March for inviting me to speak today.

If you’re wondering who I am, I’m one of you. I’m not a politician. I’m not a journalist. I’m not a lobbyist. I’m not a mining magnate. I don’t own a newspaper. I’m not an ‘insider’.

But perhaps that is a benefit. Because it’s often the people on the outside who can see best what is happening inside. And right now, all I can see in our country’s recent past is the wreckage strewn in the wake of the Tony Abbott wrecking ball. And all I can see ahead is a whole lot more trouble for the country that we all love.

So today I would like to share with you my ideas about the lessons our community need to learn to protect ourselves from this type of government in the future. This is partly a manifesto to inspire a One Term Tony scenario. But it’s also more long term than that. It’s about making sure that we don’t just react and defend against right wing ideologues and their vested interests. It’s about laying the foundations for a progressive ideas platform that will erase the very reasoning behind people’s terrible decision to vote for right wing ideologues like Tony Abbott.

So what’s this manifesto’s central theme?

Quoting a musician I greatly admire, Gurrumul: united we stand, divided we fall. Together we’ll stand, in solidarity.

That’s the crux of it. We’re all in this together.

And I think all of us here know that.

We might all have our individual outrages about the Abbott government. But what binds this passion together, what binds our values together is the understanding that Abbott is not just bad for all of us, as individuals, though he certainly is that.

No, why we’re really here is because we know he’s bad for our community. And our community is us. We know we’re in this life together.

We know the life of Reza Berati is no less important than our next door neighbour, or one of our own family. We know when any Australian loses their home, or their life from a natural disaster, we all mourn. We know that when someone at Holden loses his or her job, it damages all of us. We know that if someone we’ve never met doesn’t get the education opportunities they deserve, we all suffer. We know that when we go to work each day, or when we stay home caring for a family member, and wherever we are all over South Australia and Australia, we are building something together. That’s what makes us, us.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that even with all of us, Abbott still won the election in September. And you’re right, this is a problem. But that’s why we need to turn our attention to those who voted for Abbott. Those who have forgotten that when we say ‘us’, we mean ‘them’ as well.

If there’s one thing Abbott is good at, like a person who punches holes in walls, it is frightening people. And when people are scared they turn inward.

When they’re scared of the monsters Peta Credlin created, they turn inward. Non-existent monsters like the great. big. tax, mining companies shedding jobs, regulations, in other words, worker’s rights, which apparently ‘strangle’ enterprise and ‘corrupt’ unions. All complete nonsense. But voters believed it.

Australia turned inward when the majority of us voted for Tony Abbott. We rejected kind and compassionate when we chose to stop. the. boats. We rejected common sense when we decided the money spent saving our economy, our livelihoods from the Global Financial Crisis, was wasteful. And we rejected science when we put our fear of an increase in electricity prices ahead of our determination to slow climate change.

Abbott promised these scared, threatened and oh so gullible people that he would fix everything. That it was a good idea to be selfish and mean and greedy. To forget that they lived in a community. Dog eat dog is back in vogue. So we need to fix this.

We need to show people that when they turn their backs on their communities, they lose out, every time. We need to remind people that unemployment in industries they don’t work in is bad for them as well. Since they care so much about their electricity bills, let’s run with that and remind them how much climate change will cost our community, in money terms. This community is made up of individual thems. Let’s show people that wealth doesn’t trickle down. Let’s prove to Australians that a richer Gina Rinehart makes nobody else richer. Except perhaps Gina’s still in the will daughter who definitely won’t be giving any of her inheritance away. Abbott might believe that Holden workers are on their own now that their jobs are gone. But they’re not on their own, because they belong to our community.

No one should ever be told they’re on their own, in the bad times, or the good times.

That is why we need to remind people, in the words of US Senator Elizabeth Warren that no one in this country gets rich on their own. And then we need to remind them that the country’s wealth is something they can enjoy and something they can share, but only if they make the smart decision to support their communities, which in turn supports them.

The path to prosperity for the nation and the path to healthy communities is not individual success. It’s success for all of us. It’s really that simple. Once you understand this, once you use this idea to frame how you see the world, suddenly Abbott looks like a horrible option.

Suddenly progressive policies aren’t scary, because they represent the common good. We should be helping our fellow Australians up the ladder of social mobility. Not kicking it down and burning it as Abbott is doing now. A stronger you makes our team stronger. And our team is all of us. We’re all part of the same team.

Thank you all for standing here with me today and for standing up for your community. Let’s go forth and spread the word. Let’s remind people who have forgotten this basic idea. United we stand. Divided we fall. Together we’ll stand, in solidarity.

Photo by author

Image by Victoria Rollison

Last Monday night, the ABC held a live televised debate to kick off the South Australian election season. I attended, eager to see how SA Premier Jay Weatherill performed against the incredibly weak Premier-wannabe, Opposition Leader Steven Marshall. Never heard of him? Neither has South Australia.

With the election coming up on March 15, depressingly, the Liberal Opposition is ahead in the polls. This is even after Abbott and Hockey bullied Holden into leaving, which will have a massively detrimental impact on the South Australian community. And even though Marshall is mimicking the negative-no-details-except-for-vague-motherhood-statements-about-tax-cuts-fixing-all-the-State’s-problems campaign that Abbott successfully used to win the Federal election, South Australians still seem determined to make the same mistake twice. On the subject of jobs, Marshall has promised to cut 5,000+ public service jobs, which like Abbott’s pledge, don’t seem to count as ‘real’ jobs as he also promises that there will be ‘more jobs’ under a Liberal government. And of course SA will have our own Abbott style ‘Commission of Audit’ after the election, for Marshall to identify new ways to slash and burn towards smaller government at a time when austerity could very quickly cause a deep recession. It’s incredibly frustrating to say the least.

What we have seen of Marhsall’s campaign so far are ads that don’t even mention his name or show his face, with mean, dark music, and a scary deep voice suggesting there are leadership tensions in the South Australian Labor Party. But I kid you not, they don’t even suggest an alternative Labor figure who is supposedly anonymously threatening Weatherill’s leadership. But hey, I guess it worked for Abbott to hype up Gillard versus Rudd, so why would the SA Liberals let a little inconvenience like no leadership tensions in SA Labor get in the way of a negative advertising campaign? Faceless men, and all that. (Talking of leadership instability, check out how the SA Liberals stack up. Pot Kettle Black? The only reason Marshall got the Leadership in the first place is because the rest of the SA Liberal Party had already torn apart more experienced contenders in a leadership war lasting numerous years.)

So with this hypocritical advertising campaign in mind, when the ABC debate Producer emailed the audience asking for questions, I submitted this:

• Question for Steven Marshall: Tony Abbott won the 2013 Federal election with a very negative campaign. From what we have seen of your campaign so far, you are following his lead. My question is, do you worry that the South Australian public are looking for a positive alternative who has vision for the future, rather than someone who just wants to bag the opposing side?

It’s a tough question, but it’s fair. It goes to the very heart of Marshall’s bid to lead South Australia, and for that reason, I think the viewers deserved to hear an answer. But no. Even after a follow up email from the ABC Producer to again ask the audience for question submissions after I had already submitted mine, this one didn’t make the cut. So, in front of what felt like a heavily stacked Liberal audience*, the questions that were asked were, as usual, invitations to bash Labor, whether that bashing be with a big stick or a small twig. Anything would do.

We had questions about jobs and business tax cuts, two questions about mental health policy, niche questions about regional population growth, train services being disrupted on hot days (with no mention of climate change), a good question about the treatment of women in parliament, a Gonski question from Twitter and three vague vision questions, including one asking what the two candidates agree on. But what we didn’t have, and what we never see asked on Q&A or by an ABC journalists when interviewing politicians, is a question that could be considered a tough one for a Liberal to answer. When in the last few years, the hardest question Tony Abbott has been asked on the ABC’s 7:30 is ‘did you read the report’, it’s clear the Liberals, and in fact anyone from the ‘right’ will be protected as soon as they enter a conversation with our national broadcaster.

So since I’m bitter and twisted about my question for Marshall being culled before it had a chance to be answered, I have three other questions that I would like to ask Marshall, which I can guarantee the ABC would never let me ask:

• You spend a lot of your time talking down the South Australian economy. You even cite your reason for going into politics as being a very narrow mission to make sure your two children don’t leave South Australia when they become adults. My question is, don’t you think it’s bad for the South Australian economy to constantly talk it down, as the effect of consumer confidence can become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
• Your answer to ‘how will you create jobs for South Australians’ is ‘I will cut payroll tax’. We see from the current example in the US that tax cuts do not create jobs, because the business owners just take the extra profit for themselves. There is no reason for business owners to hire more people just because they’re making more money. Growth in jobs comes from an increase in consumer and business demand. So how are you going to increase consumer and business demand to actually increase jobs?
• Whenever you are asked a question about your plans as Premier of South Australia, you bring everything back to a discussion of the economy and how you will fix it with tax cuts. My question is, have you realised, or are you likely to realise sometime soon, that we live in a society, not an economy? And do you think it’s important for the economy to serve our society, and not the other way around?

It’s hard to know why the ABC goes to such great lengths to protect Liberals from answering these tough questions. I suppose it has something to do with the Liberals’ wish to cut jobs at the ABC, and to an ingrained bias towards Labor bashing (whether Labor be in power or not) under the guise of ‘balance’. Perhaps ABC producers have such trouble getting the Liberals onto their television and radio shows that the last thing they want to do is scare them away.

In South Australia particularly, we rely on ABC coverage of politics, as we’re basically a one Murdoch newspaper city. But what we get from the South Australian ABC is the same Labor bashing, Liberal free-ride that we see across the country. The South Australian election might be irrelevant to all other Australians, but I think you’ll agree that my questions for Steven Marshall would really be suitable for any Liberal politician in this country. Yet on a national scale, these questions remain unasked and for that reason, unanswered.

*The ABC producer for the SA leaders’ debate provided the following breakdown about the voting intentions of the audience. I stand by my personal observation from the number of people clapping in the audience, that the audience was heavily stacked to the right. I asked if I could bring two other Labor supporters with me but was told there were no more seats – so I’m not sure how come there were quite a few vacant seats around me.

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Tim Dunlop (image from abc.net.au)

While the Abbott government continues to swing their wrecking ball, it would appear many people are waking up to just how extreme-right this government is. ‘Australia must be destroyed’ by Tim Dunlop is a good summary of the unfolding horror. Although I am usually keen to contribute to the growing chorus decrying the daily onslaught of right-wing ideological mayhem being imposed by this secretive, chaotic and incompetent government, I’m trying to look past this current disaster, by thinking about how this situation happened and how we can stop it ever happening again. #OneTermTony.

Abbott’s electoral success was mounted on a foundation of invisible villains that triggered a selfish ‘dog eat dog’ reflex in sections of the Australian public. Abbott made up reasons why people should be scared of a Labor government and then promised to save them from these fictional threats. From government debt. Electricity bills. Asylum seekers arriving by boat. The instability of minority government. ‘Wasteful’ government spending. Unions. It takes a pretty incredible propaganda machine to convince workers that unions are bad and Gina Rinehart cares about them. But, with the help of the mainstream media, that is what Abbott managed to do.

The Liberal Coalition’s negative message invited people to make a choice between two opposing camps – Abbott’s promise to look after the individual or Labor’s promise to look after the community. Abbott painted Labor’s ‘benefit to the community’ message as being wasteful and bad for the economy, while promising that his new open-for-business-cutting-red/green-tape agenda would bring prosperity back to nervous post-GFC capitalism. I’m sure deep down most Australians would like to think they care about their community. But when push comes to shove and they’re scared about their own futures, it’s not surprising that many voters believed what Abbott wanted them to believe – that a Liberal government was a silver-bullet to solve all their individual problems. And importantly – that it was a smart idea to vote selfishly. Even when in fact cost-of-living pressures didn’t exist, and even when the Australian economy was in fact Triple-A healthy, Abbott purposely attacked an already fragile consumer confidence, and then seized on the resulting insecurity of individuals and encouraged them to push their concern for the community down the ballot paper. Sadly the majority dutifully complied.

Knowing this is unhelpful if you don’t learn something from it. But that’s what the Labour Movement needs to do. Bill Shorten are you listening? I have a suggestion as to how Labor can use Abbott’s strategy to Australia’s advantage.

Not before time, wealth inequality is becoming a significant political battle for progressives worldwide. This is because thinking-people are starting to recognise the growing gap between the very rich and the rest of us is too big to just be called a gap. It’s becoming a gulf. In this article, Ben Eltham suggests that Bill Shorten should make the fight against wealth inequality a key pillar of Labor’s political narrative. Other commentators have suggested the ‘public good’ should be the new umbrella message encompassing the left’s political agenda.

I agree with these suggestions. Labor has always been for the community benefit. Think NBN, Gonski, PPL, NDIS, Mining Tax and Carbon Price. So the party’s policy platform won’t need to change much to accommodate a further emphasis on social mobility and a reduction in the gap between rich and poor. Unions are important in this message, with worker’s wages and entitlements a key factor in defending against a greater gap between the share of profit between labour and capital. Quality education and healthcare are also strong Labor policies crucial to social mobility. On top of this, inequality of wealth is an easy platform from which to judge Abbott’s government. No matter what Abbott promised to do for Australian people of all incomes, asset status and net-worth, it’s very easy to draw a straight line from every single one of his government’s policies, to an acceleration of the gap between the super-rich haves and the growing number of have nots. Abbott is not for workers at SPC, Holden or Toyota. He is for Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and Rupert Murdoch. His treasurer just this week repeated the catch-cry of pro-income-inequality cheerleaders: a rising tide lifts all boats. Except no, it doesn’t. So yes, highlighting wealth inequality is a good strategy for Labor. But I don’t think it’s enough. Why? Because those who understand and care about wealth inequality are already Labor voters. Labor needs to remember what they learnt from Abbott’s success and appeal to people’s individual anxieties. And this is where the two strategies combined could just be a political master stroke.

Put simply, Labor needs to communicate to voters that a strong community, with a wealthy and large middle-class is good for everyone. That is, an individual is better off in a situation where he or she belongs to a community of similarly better off people. So no longer do we have to either vote for the benefit of the community or the benefit of the individual. By voting Labor, you can have both. The public good is good for everyone.

We already know that America’s shrinking middle class, growing population of working-poor and 1% of filthy rich individuals is not good for 99% of the country. As Nobel Prize winning US economist Joseph Stiglizt said:

“Our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth.”

It’s not hard to understand why a community is damaged when there is a small number of people taking the vast majority of growth for themselves without sharing it with everyone else. Wages are stagnant, unemployment is rampant and poverty is widespread. The uber-rich can afford affluent lifestyles, but how will they maintain this wealth if they don’t have a consumer market rich enough to afford to buy their products and services? Yes, the super-rich are using money to make more money, but speculative markets are unproductive and don’t benefit the wealth of everyone else. If someone who works at Walmart can’t afford to shop at Walmart, Walmart’s market disappears.

Labor needs to tell people this story. They need to explain it in a way that voters understand. They need to start by reinstating the lost value that it is wrong to be greedy. And that people who don’t feel good about themselves unless they are richer than their neighbour are part of the problem, not the solution. They can then go on to show that wealth re-distribution and social mobility isn’t just good for the country. It is good for the individual too. Labor needs to work out how to say this in a way that connects with individual anxieties, and then they need to say it again, and again, and again. Every time Abbott’s policies contradict these principals, Labor has an opportunity to say it even louder.

If Labor can get this right, it might not just be a winning strategy for 2016. It might be a policy platform that the likes of Abbott will never find a way of destroying ever again. Surely that makes it worth a try? And who knows, we might just save the world.

It’s all so very predictable. In his usual sloppy and insipid way, Tony Abbott is trying to bring on an industrial relations war with unions by blaming SPC Ardmona’s request for government assistance on over-generous wage and employee entitlements in the company’s Shepparton factory. Even when SPC Ardmona corrected the record by releasing their workers’ enterprise agreement, and even when local member and self-appointed SPC guardian, Liberal MP Sharman Stone called Abbott out for lying about the issue, Abbott still trudges forward seemingly unwounded. On behalf of his mates at the top end of town, Abbott is working towards their end goal, where business owners can treat their workers however they want, and can pay them however little they want. It’s all the workers’ fault if they complain, because apparently they should feel gratitude for having a job at all. And this despite that fact that that workers’ share of national income has been falling since 2000.

Despite the growth in their share of the national income, business owners and shareholders still want more. Always more. One way to get this is to reduce wages by any means possible. This is why business owners obviously want one objective of any wage negotiation between unions and business to be the removal of penalty rates for working unsociable hours. As chief friend of business and foe of workers, Tony Abbott has embraced this mission; his government has asked for a major review of workplace awards to assess whether minimum terms and conditions, including penalty rates, are still relevant.

I’ve recently come across a local example where a business owner’s displeasure at having to pay penalty rates generated bad publicity at what happens to be my local pub – the Bombay Bicycle Club. I’ve spent quite a bit of time there at a mid-week pub quiz or for a weekend beer and curry. Recently, the pub has undergone a major renovation, with the addition of a large car park and upgrades to the drive-through bottle shop, main bar and restaurant area, a new beer garden complete with fake palm trees, and a meticulous refresh of the incredibly flamboyant British Raj Indian theme. I don’t know how much the building works and interior decorating must have cost, but suffice to say they would have spent more money in the female bathrooms than I am currently spending renovating my whole house.

This article on news.com tells how the pub owner erected an expensive mounted wooden menu in the public bar. This showed how much the meals would cost if he multiplied them by the 2.75 award rate of loading his staff receive for working on a Sunday. It doesn’t take an economist to work out the flaw in this argument, because of course labour costs are just one of many cost inputs that make up the supply of a pub meal. After a backlash on social media, the sign was taken down. The owner was quoted as saying:

“Again, WOW. The sign has been removed. Have read all your comments. I will keep my opinions to myself in the future.”

Apparently the business owner was surprised that his clientele weren’t impressed with his attitude. It’s not clear how his staff, the ones earning penalty rates for working on a Sunday, felt about having to work on what used to be a day of rest, under a sign saying they weren’t worth the extra cost.

However, there is another sign that still hangs in the pub which didn’t make it into the media reports. As a further example of the attitude of the owner of the Bombay Bicycle Club, the clientele are thanked on their way out of the pub with this enormous mounted and framed sign:

Take a moment to read all the things this owner resents having to pay. He’s got all the taxes he can think of up there (even the ones he’s not directly paying, like the Carbon Tax (sic)). He’s also got what would appear to me to be business expenses of his own choosing, including interest on an overdraft and website expenses.

But there’s something missing from the sign. There’s one major thing that the clientele of his business are paying for, which the owner has conveniently neglected to include in the list. No, I’m not talking about the cost to our community of the pokie machine addicts who no doubt helped fund the exorbitant renovations (the pokie lounge is open from 9:00am until midnight from Sunday to Wednesday and from 9:00am until 3:00am from Thursday to Saturday). I’m talking about the profit. The profit the owner of the Bombay Bicycle Club pockets at the end of a long day’s work by his staff who make a tiny fraction of what he does. Of course I’m not saying that the owner doesn’t deserve this profit. It is his business and he has taken the entrepreneurial job-creating risk of developing it. But what gap between the workers’ wage and the owner’s profit is our community comfortable with? Isn’t this the question at the heart of any negotiation between labour and capital?

I have a message for the owner of the Bombay Bicycle Club, which comes via Elizabeth Warren in this clip I have linked to many times on this blog. You’ve built a business, and it’s a good business, so well done. But you did not build it on your own. Your staff run your business and they do an excellent job. They make great food, they serve it efficiently and they keep your business running at a profit. If your staff weren’t educated, they couldn’t run your business for you. Their education and training was paid for by tax-dollars. The roads that your customers drive on to get to your pub were paid for by tax payers. The police who come and arrest drunk and disorderly clientele are paid for by tax payers. The firemen who would come if a fire started in your kitchen are paid for by tax payers. The hospital that you would go to if you had a heart attack is paid for by tax payers. The economy that you rely on to provide enough wealth for the community that they can afford to go to your pub is run and managed and regulated by tax payer funds.

I wonder if it’s ever occurred to the owner of the Bombay Bicycle Club that most of his clientele are workers.

When I spoke to one of the staff at this pub, they said the owner treats them well and it’s a good place to work. This is good to hear, and somewhat surprising considering the attitude displayed on the board. However, what’s most important about this example is that the business owner is making it very clear that without an award that legally entitles his workers to a minimum wage, and penalty rates for working outside of normal hours, his workers wouldn’t be receiving their current level of compensation for the work they do. These workers would have no hope of negotiating individual pay deals with this boss without the help of their union of workers.

What would happen to these workers if Tony Abbott gets his way and smashes collective bargaining? What happens if minimum pay rates are put at risk? Some bosses who value the contribution to their business that each of their workers make would still pay their staff fairly. But I expect many others, perhaps the owner of the Bombay Bicycle Club, wouldn’t. I expect that those who resent having to pay their staff to work abnormal hours are very likely to resent paying them at all.

[twitter-follow screen_name=’Vic_Rollison’ show_count=’yes’]

When I first saw mention on Twitter of the March in March, I’ll admit I was sceptical. Thoughts of a very small number of trucks driving into Canberra, and Alan Jones getting all hot and bothered filled my mind. The last thing Australian progressives need is our own ‘Convoy of no consequence’. However, as the March in March organisers have got more organised, and as events across the country grow in number, I realised that of course I have to March in March, and in fact it would be totally hypocritical of me not to.

Anyone who follows me on Twitter, or reads my blog will know that I spend a lot of time complaining about the Abbott government. Prior to the election, I spent hours crafting new ways to plead with the electorate not to elect the wrecking ball. And since the election, I’ve spent hours commenting on the damage strewn in the path of this wrecking ball, basically saying ‘I told you so’. In many ways, the Abbott government’s first four months have been much worse than even I predicted. I thought he would go about his disastrous promises to repeal the carbon price, to destroy the NBN, to undo the mining tax and that this would be bad enough. However, it would appear that Abbott is in much more of a hurry than we realised to reward his fanatical right wing ideologues, to give jobs to the boys, and to bring about John Howard’s vision for Australia much quicker than even Howard had the balls to do. The country is now speeding at a terrifying rate towards a Tea Party utopia. And this is before the Commission of Audit has even released their report. In a nutshell, Abbott has handed over control of the country to rich business owners. We have rich business owners controlling all kinds of policies, from environmental protection laws, to welfare policies such as work for the dole, to industrial relations and taxation. And Abbott doesn’t seem to mind if he causes a war with Indonesia, as long as he stops…the…boats.

Part of the problem with this all getting so quickly out of hand is that progressives have had little time to react. It is clear that Bill Shorten is doing his best to rise above the messy chaos of the Abbott government, and to avoid the harsh negativity that is Abbott’s brand of political campaigning. I can see why Labor is taking this softly softly approach. The by-election in Griffith is also clearly Federal Labor’s priority and a win there would be great for the party’s morale. As Napoleon Bonaparte is often quoted as saying – ‘never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake’. However, I believe that when the Abbott government is making so many drastic changes, and each and every one of them is detrimental to the community, but beneficial to Abbott’s rich mates, it’s not a good time for those who disagree with Abbott’s approach to sit on our hands and let him wreck the place. Hence why Marching in March is a good idea.

Before I sound like one of the smug anti-outrage twitterati, who seem to be popping up all over the place being anti-anyone talking about anything on Twitter that wasn’t originally started by themselves, especially if it has something to do with Feminism or Racism, I want to make clear that there is a place for outrage on Twitter, but there also has to be a place for taking our outrage offline as well. There’s only so much activism that can be produced via social media and blogging. We also need to remind ourselves that we are mostly preaching to the converted on forums such as this and on Twitter, and perhaps to a lesser extent on Facebook. Mostly, my time spent on social media is time spent sharing my passion and outrage with other progressives who are just as passionately outraged by the Abbott government as I am. Taking our message to the streets will help us to reach a much larger audience, hopefully those so disengaged with politics that they don’t even know what Abbott has been up to and won’t know until they see some people on the news getting upset about it.

Abbott’s political end goal is to destroy collective bargaining, to destroy government owned infrastructure and services, to promote greed, to disregard the cost of the greed on the environment and to ultimately leave our country with a small, ineffectual and utterly corrupt government which hands the nation’s wealth to a rich few. If you are as concerned about this end goal as I am, I encourage you to keep Tweeting, to keep sharing information that helps us to better coordinate our activism, but also to get out on the streets and March in March. The one advantage workers have over their capitalist bosses is numbers and unity. Let’s use our numbers and our unity to show Abbott and those who support him that we’re not giving up that easily.

Photo: news.com.au

As we watch Abbott’s wrecking ball take aim at welfare recipients, this guest post by Derek James provides us with an insight into what these policy changes really mean for our community.

On the penultimate Sunday of 2013, in Sydney one of the Murdoch rags carried the eye catching headline “Bludgers Busted”, a triumphant headline which when viewed from a distance inspired all manner of considerations. Were the federal or state governments finally getting tough on the high flyers, by obliging them to pay their share of tax? Were they forcing corporations to improve their game by imposing restrictions on how much a CEO can bleed out of a company each year, in the wake of the recent Qantas debacle? Or had they decided to end the gravy train that was sustaining all of the ex-politicians in their non-political life, reducing them to the level of ‘ordinary citizens’? Not too much to expect, given Hockey’s now famous declaration that the ‘age of entitlement is over’, but it only required a perfunctory read of that cover page for it to became clear that none of these things were at the heart of the headline.

It was immediately clear that the editor of that Liberal fanzine had wet their pants with delight at the fact that their government was once again putting the boot into the most disadvantaged in the community, the infirm and the mentally ill, through savage changes to the Disability Support Pension. As usual, those over inflated egos that constitute the editorial core of that Murdoch owned conservative herald are quick to apply ‘wholesale smears over segments of the community. In this instance, to underscore and reinforce media engineered pre-conceptions about people who receive fortnightly DSP assistance’, it was a bitter exposition in which their tone and purpose was loud and clear. Their primary objective was to try and gather support for their government, by crafting the illusion that it was acting in the national interest.

Undoubtedly other right wing extremists and even moderate conservatives would have been every bit as delighted by this news; as was their chief propaganda publication, after all they all subscribe to the belief that the working masses and the low paid and poor majority should carry the burden of any fiscal privations imposed by their government, the harsher the better. They all love the minimalist approach to politics, provided that the ‘minimalism’ does not erode their privileges… or stature. Having spent the last six years living on an even field, in which the interests of all Australian’s were at the heart of government, the media has finally succeeded in resurrecting a narrow minded Plutocracy, in which the interests of the wealthy few hold rule over all, they do not want to ruin that by criticising their government and forcing it to engage in fair mindedness or democratic process.

Show me a ‘bully or a thug’ and I will show you a conservative, for they are one and the same, be they the tory politician or their supporter… largely motivated by greed, unthinking, uncaring and myopic. As chief among the government’s supporters, that paper proves this belief time and again, through its corporate and industry profiles and through its political fiction.

It is not a stretch to imagine that if the Abbott government was to introduce a policy of forced euthanasia for anyone over 60 to ease claim’s on the old age pension and further reduce government expenditure, that paper would, in all probability, announce the policy as a ‘Master Stroke’ and sing its praises for the next six months. What is worse is that the majority of people who subscribe to that paper would happily accept the announcement at face value, without challenging the plan or giving consideration to its long term consequences. Many would not even begin to consider the implications, until they were being led by the wrist by one of the business suit wearing Nazi’s into the gas chamber. So long as it is happening elsewhere and to someone else, they would pay it no mind.

On the matter at hand, the shakeup of the DSP, you can only wonder whether the editors and chief journalists in that media stable would be so vocal in advocating for a tougher stance against disability pensioners, if they themselves suddenly became a victim of grievous misfortune and were abandoned by their billionaire boss and other forms of support and had no choice other than to turn to the government for help? Would they be as eager to label it as the preserve of Bludgers, when they are dealing with the fallout of their carefully crafted social smear? Would they be as willing to besmirch the nature of people receiving this assistance while they are jumping through hoops to meet every challenge set by the government to prove their qualification for that pension? Probably not, though a lot would depend on whether they do have a shred of humanity in them and are not just robots.

It is fair to say that as with all areas of government support, there are always people of low ethics, devoid of principles, who will try and in some cases succeed in exploiting the system (just as when the Rudd government introduced its Pink batts stimulus program and all of those failed Liberal businessmen suddenly became [unqualified] ‘insulation installers’, who infiltrated the scheme to its detriment) and such types should be weeded out. However given the processes involved in qualifying for the disability pension, it is difficult to see how people could rort the process – they would need to have secured the support of a compliant GP, an independent specialist and then that of the government appointed commonwealth medical officer. Three independent professionals, all career minded and often hard of nose, who gain no personal benefit from blindly endorsing applications. After all they are obliged to complete a mountain of paperwork to fully explain their decision; this is a burden that they would hardly welcome on top of their regular duties.

That said the Murdoch media are old hands at making assessments of the world at a distance through their spyglass. On this occasion they have labelled these unfortunate Australian’s as Bludgers and apparently based on little more than ‘urban myth’ and with the sole aim of poisoning attitudes toward all recipients of this assistance. It’s easy to make judgements against people from a distance, it’s far more difficult to try and see the world through another person’s eyes and their experience; which means getting up close and personal. That requires ‘empathy’ which is not an attribute found in most conservatives, the Murdoch crowd are no exception.

Beyond their fanfare and full hearted endorsement of their Prime Ministers pernicious pursuit of the weakest members of the community, if their government was serious about cutting waste and improving the bottom line, it would target the ‘real bludgers’. To anyone, even those with only a cursory interest in politics and domestic affairs, it is patently clear that the biggest drains on this countries treasury are the former politicians and the stuffed suits who preside as CEO over the majority of our largest corporations. Instead of engaging in this cynical manoeuvre, designed entirely for public consumption and which is nothing more than Howard era ‘smoke and mirror’ politics, it is the big end sponges that this ‘government’ should be cracking down on.

Anyone who is not a rusted on fan of conservatism can see that the planned ‘shake-up’ of the DSP will create more problems than it fixes. In the execution of their collective rush of blood, this government have decided to move a large body of under 40 years old and generally unemployable, extremely needy Australians out of one area of welfare and onto Newstart (No start). As soon as they are forced onto this other form of government assistance, they will be absorbed into dead end, short term ‘work for the dole arrangements’.

This probably will save the country money over the short term, due entirely to the fact that the No Start allowance is a pittance, not nearly equal to the minimum weekly wage and a far cry from the sum of what a politician would spend on their lunch in a single sitting. That meagre few hundred dollars is expected to last the recipient a fortnight, to cover food, rent and miscellaneous outlays and under the constant threat of annulment, should they fail to meet any of the pre-conditions attached to that assistance.

When these people are pushed into ‘No start’ and forced onto work for the dole ergs, made vassal to the community as cheap ‘short term labour’ it only profit’s the myriad of unprincipled businesses, who masquerade as their benefactor. These so called ‘saviours’ will receive their own government payoffs and industry plaudits, without too much of an outlay. In all probability most of these companies would argue that they are participating in the scheme out of a sense of community, but it helps that they do not have to employ any of these Australian’s on full wages and benefits.

Parallel to the instigation of this modern slavery and given that these unfortunate people are no longer being paid the pension; the volume of ‘welfare dependency’ will drop. As an immediate flow on, the unemployment rate will also drop as these people are now classed as working for welfare and no longer recorded as ‘unemployed’. It all looks good on the balance sheets and gives the illusion that the government is not entirely inept. But beneath the veneer, the reality is that it is nothing other than a parlour trick… a political ruse, executed without a care for the lives that have been impacted by the stroke of the pen.

The long term ramifications will be far more costly to the nation, as many of the affected will fall through the cracks once more and with their social support systems removed, they will turn to all manner of crime against other Australians. Further to this and because these changes have been enacted by that party that caters to the elite with its ill-conceived antics, it will be the wealthier communities that are the target of all future crime waves. Of course the perpetrators will be rounded up and prosecuted to the full extent of the law and likely given a disproportionate sentence, for biting the hand of the ruling class and once again these ‘unfortunate Australian’s’ will be an even greater burden on the taxpayer through their incarceration.

If this Abbott government is serious about putting an end to waste, it would look at curtailing the outlays to former politicians. Australia has long been the most over governed country on the planet, with more leaders than you can poke a stick at, at both the state and federal level.

Even after they ‘retire’ they still want their say on a surplus of issues, dispensing their $500 an hour advice to all who are willing to pay to hear them. This on top of their over inflated superannuation’s, a lump sum that is constantly replenished through their exorbitant pension (which rises every time their former and still ruling political peers get a pay rise, which can be three or four times per year). They get their own office, complete with secretary, a prestigious vehicle complete with chauffeur, as well as a gold travel pass for domestic and international travel (for the rest of their life), and all of it through the sweat of the taxpayer.

On top of this, many among them receive corporate invitations to take up seats on any number of corporate boards (in a figurehead role, complete with benefits, financial or other).

From the little that the Australian people are told, it seems that most of the former and serving Australian politicians are on a better wicket than the President of the United States, this in a country where the national population is barely the equal of the population of New York City.

When it is to their benefit, our politicians like to remind the electorate that they work for us. We the Australian public are their boss and yet they never defer to the electorate through referendums or other electoral processes to receive clearance to set up their extortionate political lives. In times like now they just tell the working man to pay more tax and everyone else on the lower branches of the fiscal tree to tighten their belts.

People reading this should stop and calculate just how many former politicians are still feeding off the taxpayers, state and federally. We still have seven Prime ministers milking the system, as well as all of the former premiers and other MP’s with their snouts buried deep in the public purse. In many of these cases, the individual has done great things for our country, but this does not earn them the right to put themselves above other Australian’s. As soon as they leave public life for retirement, they should be on the same conditions as everyone else. If they are self-sufficient, through their super and other income, they shouldn’t get the pension, but where they do qualify, what they receive should be the same as everyone else.

It has to be said that this flagrant exploitation of our system is not limited to the politician’s; it is also common among their corporate mates. How often has a major company fallen on hard times through mismanagement or other weaknesses and then gone cap in hand to the government, apportioning blame on external elements and looking to take advantage of the taxpayers, ostensibly in the national interest. How often after the company fails does the taxpayer discover that much of their money has been eaten up in administrative fees and charges, which means it has lined the pocket of an immoral CEO or the board who have exploited his or her ineptitude. More often than not the CEO turns up at another company doing the same poor job again.

In consideration of all these things, this crackdown on recipients of the DSP, this assault on Australia’s most vulnerable by this puppet for the rich, is a sick joke. A joke made worse in the wake of its decision to replace the Commonwealth 737’s (procured by the Howard government on a lease deal that expires next year, at a cost of $600 Million to the taxpayer [minus fuel and running costs presumably?]) with a single much larger plane, fitted out with every kind of advanced communication system imaginable, ostensibly to maintain contact with cabinet while travelling abroad… it could also double as an airborne command centre for when the government’s policies spark trouble. There is also the suggestion that it will be something of a flying five star hotel, equipped with opulent fixtures such as ‘gold taps’ and ‘marble sink tops’. Part of the sales pitch to the public is that this jumbo will carry officials and the press gallery, with the Prime Minister and his entourage on overseas trips.

The decision to upgrade the commonwealth jet at huge cost to the country comes only weeks after the same government announced its intention to replace the fleet of commonwealth cars, Holden commodores, with the far more expensive and bomb proofed BMW’s. Why on earth would he require a bomb proof motor pool? This one announcement alone should have alarm bells ringing for all Australian’s from all walks of life throughout the land… what does this individual and his cronies have planned for our country and its future that they need a bomb proof Commonwealth fleet?

It could be argued that the Australian government’s decision to go after the mentally ill was inspired by their Prime Ministers own achievements, perhaps every time he look’s in the mirror since last September, he is astounded by just how far society will allow a raving psychotic to climb and if he can reach such heights, anyone is capable… but now I think the decision to screw the ill, infirm and poor, is a preconceived plan and just the tip of a nasty big ice berg. The non-affluent majority should consider this and then take steps to stifle this regimes ambition, before it take’s this country places that it doesn’t want to go.

Cheers,
DJ