Government approves Santos Barossa pipeline and sea dumping

The Australia Institute Media Release Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Department has approved a…

If The Jackboots Actually Fit …

By Jane Salmon If The Jackboots Actually Fit … Why Does Labor Keep…

Distinctions Without Difference: The Security Council on Gaza…

The UN Security Council presents one of the great contradictions of power…

How the supermarkets lost their way in Oz

By Callen Sorensen Karklis Many Australians are heard saying that they’re feeling the…

Purgatorial Torments: Assange and the UK High Court

What is it about British justice that has a certain rankness to…

Why A Punch In The Face May Be…

Now I'm not one who believes in violence as a solution to…

Does God condone genocide?

By Bert Hetebry Stan Grant points out in his book The Queen is…

As Yemen enters tenth year of war, militarisation…

Oxfam Australia Media Release As Yemen enters its tenth year of war, its…

«
»
Facebook

Tag Archives: Neoliberalism

Human potential is crushed by disaster capitalism

We must speak to people who require assistance and listen to their needs instead of speaking over them. In the case of Australia’s refugee policy, we wasted billions on toxic cruelty when we could have done much better by cooperating internationally and supporting people humanely.

One of the “greatest pre-resettlement programs in the world” for refugees began with “$200 and 50kg of books.”

That mantra neglects the key to the plan to educate refugee children stuck in limbo, of course, by focussing on the minimal outside support that enabled the endeavour. The driving force to educate refugee children came from the countless hours and endless energy dedicated by people trapped in refugee status themselves.

By labelling people refugees – or asylum seekers – in public discourse, we strip them of the hopes and dreams, the histories and experience, that make up the individual. Instead we impose upon them a permanent collective identity.

The politics made of the labels “refugee” and “asylum seekers” since the John Howard years in Australia have made for poisonous strategies to shape public discourse and venomous public policy that has wasted years and broken lives.

It has also cost us billions of dollars, this bigoted fearmongering generated by ambitious politicians and their strategist friends. The Refugee Council of Australia has calculated that from 2013 to 2022 alone, Coalition governments have spent $9.65 billion dollars on such policies. Australian governments have granted these billions to companies registered to a beach shack on Kangaroo Island; to donors with a company worth $8 dollars; to contractors suspected of drug smuggling and weapons trafficking; to corrupt foreign businessmen; to corrupt governments in Papua New Guinea and Nauru; even to people smugglers.

The result has been devastating harm: children dying of Resignation Syndrome as Peter Dutton’s Home Affairs fought their evacuation from Nauru, suicides, murder and abuse, not to mention families destroyed by long separation.

By contrast, the 5 learning centres currently educating 1200 refugee children in Indonesia continue to operate without government support. Thousands of children have been through these centres, and almost all have gone on to age-appropriate schooling levels on arrival in the new homes. Those children, displaced by war and genocidal armies, are now studying at university and committed to contributing to their beloved safe-haven homes.

In 2014, then immigration minister Scott Morrison said, in Holocaust-evoking dehumanisation, that Australia would stop taking refugees from Indonesia to take “the sugar off the table,” as if these people were insects. The decree that families would be trapped with glacial processing to places like Canada or Germany in – perhaps – a decade compounded the deep despair that pervaded the scared and isolated people trapped in Cisarua near Jakarta, desperate for a future that would save them from Taliban genocide.

The chance meeting of one of the most energised figures there, photographer Muzafar Ali, with an Australian documentary-maker, Jolyon Hoff, enabled the leasing of a two-room house that became the first learning centre that aimed not just to occupy children trapped in lodgings with increasingly despairing parents, but to prepare them for schooling in English-speaking countries.

Volunteer management and teachers took on the task of educating the community’s children, whether Hazara like the organising group or from other ethnicities finding a staging post in the town. These places became community hubs, teaching language and skills to parents as well as children, fostering hope.

The energy and excitement in the schools have always been palpable. The education now stretches from pre-school to GED qualifications which earn tertiary access. There are a karate club and futsal teams to promote physical health, sport enjoyment and confidence. The girls alone boast 10 futsal teams and ever more impressive skills.

The teachers too have gone on to grand achievements. University degrees including in teaching number amongst the opportunities embraced by these impressive figures in their resettled homes. Anyone who has worked to learn a foreign language, with a non-alphabet script, will grasp the scope of the effort required to gain university qualifications in it.

Muzafar and Jolyon made an exceptional documentary called The Staging Post around the initial project. Last year they released a second documentary recounting Muzafar’s efforts to find the legacy of the Afghan camel-men, who were central to Australian settlement. Now they are working to begin a sequel to The Staging Post where they plan to highlight the achievements of the people who have emerged from the Learning Centre project.

Meanwhile Clare O’Neil’s Home Affairs is only beginning to reckon with the harm done to the Australian record and budget by Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Michael Pezzullo, their chief public servant, recently removed in disgrace.

Australians ought to be angry, not only about the vast quantity of taxpayer money that should have been much better spent. We ought to be angry that enterprising people who could, with a little support, have achieved great accomplishments enabling a better future for them and the countries that would host them.

Above all, we ought to angry and ashamed at the harm done to people who fled persecution, genocide and oppression. Australia has been asked to host very few of the world’s displaced. Our response has been driven by populist politics of bigotry and grievance. We have a few young men remaining in PNG in 2024 from our Manus Island concentration camp, many of whom are barely functioning after years of Australian cruelty and Kafkaesque bureaucratic torment. What would these young men have become with just a little support instead of (expensive) torture?

Australians are beginning to learn what it means to be displaced by crises as the climate catastrophe displays that it is already underway.

We need to be taking lessons from the Cisarua project for Australians here as well as for the small percentage of the world’s displaced that have asked Australia for a safe future.

We must speak to the people who require assistance and listen to their needs instead of speaking over them. In the case of Australia’s refugee policy, we wasted billions on toxic cruelty when we could have done much better in ways that cooperated internationally and supported people humanely.

We must also steer clear of the disaster capitalists who would profit from every one of our catastrophes, with bonuses, growth, and profits as their goals, and apparently no care for their responsibility to the survivor or the taxpayer.

 

This essay was first published in Pearls and Irritations as A little support instead of billions on toxic cruelty

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Climate change deniers, theocrats and neoliberals meet in London for the scariest Halloween Party

It was helpful of Greg Sheridan to advertise in The Australian (27/10) the new ultraconservative conference that he is attending in London. While his column is no doubt intended to recruit, it is useful in shining a spotlight on a traditionally shadowy architecture of influence.

Apparently 1,500 citizens from around the world are gathering at the O2 venue over Halloween in London to talk about how to save the world from the “elites” at a cost of AUD2870 per head. The new body promoting conservative activism is the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). The body’s tagline is that the “The ARC of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” The “ark” wordplay to denote them as saviours of Western Civilisation is no doubt intentional.

One of the key figures organising this event is John Anderson, former National Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister. He recently appeared at Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Australia conference which was a Trumpist rallying cry against the Voice to Parliament and LGBTQIA+ rights. He also spoke at the reactionary Family First NZ conference. More significantly, Anderson, according to the ARC site, runs “Australia’s pre-eminent politico-cultural video podcast,” an “enterprise” that has 400,000 subscribers.

On his program, Anderson interviewed the unbearable Jordan Peterson; now they are at the helm of this nascent body. Peterson is one of the stars of the internet manosphere where he makes his money selling sexism, Western chauvinism and climate denial. Joining these two as founder is Baroness Philippa Stroud, formerly of the Legatum Institute, an influence body whose “lead sponsor” is the Legatum Group, representing a Dubai-based private hedge-fund billionaire. This is the “think” tank that fought for the strictest Brexit with no tariffs, and drones to cope with the Irish border issue. The economic conditions created by “think” tanks such as this have one million British children living in “destitution,” more than doubling the figure over the last five years.

The pretext for forging this alliance is that climate action is going to destroy the ability to provide food for humanity, pushing us into poverty. Recent scientific findings that point to evidence that all “life on Earth is imperilled” by the climate crisis are not accepted. Desmog has described the ARC conference as a key event in the “climate crisis denial movement.”

Of the international crowd, 150 are Australian. Anderson and Sheridan are to be joined by former Prime Ministers John Howard, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. Anti-abortion activist Amanda Stoker is on the advisory panel alongside Howard, Abbott and Andrew Hastie. Angus Taylor, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Ted O’Brien and James Paterson are attending, as is Barnaby Joyce. Mark Latham is too. The only political surprise is Julian Leeser who was a more moderate actor in the Voice debate.

Most delegates are coming from the UK and the US. Sheridan counts 300 as deriving from Europe. One of the most noteworthy American attendees is new House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is a fully-fledged theocrat. He has been described by a colleague as a “despicable bigot of the highest order.” The list of figures on the advisory board alone features notables representing climate denial, Western chauvinism and ultraconservative religious beliefs from around the world. It also has what Sheridan characterises as “serious business backers.”

Anderson explained to Sheridan that, “Citizens in the West feel marginalised, treated with contempt by the elites.” The Voice was apparently a project of the “expertocracy” that patronised the voter. We need elites, but “the right elites.” This reflects a trend in the National Conservative (Nat Con) movement that, while pitched at actual elites, demonises the intellectual “elites” as the crisis in society. It feigns populism while aiming to control all the behaviours and beliefs in the populace that are not “traditional.” It is simultaneously statist in its disdain for the individual’s choices and libertarian for the “conservative” business world.

This is an important moment to read prize winning journalist and historical researcher Anne Nelson’s “Shadow Network” book, recounting the history of the Council for National Policy in the US. It illustrates the strategies at work in this body as well as the global Atlas Network. The “think” tanks and organisations formulated in this model unite disparate actors in cutting edge strategies led by a multitude of misleadingly-named bodies to foster ultra-free market policy and ultraconservative social goals. Many of the plutocrat funders are fossil fuel billionaires.

The game-plan of the Atlas Network was rolled out for the Voice to Parliament referendum, as UTS lecturer Jeremy Walker examined. The 500 Atlas affiliates around the world have consistently worked to break the union of Indigenous populations and environmental action impeding resource extraction. Their ploys include depicting climate activists and environmentalists as terrorists or extremists. This has been the case for Indigenous environmental protectors around the world. They have also worked to co-opt some First People with mining profits to break unity and fight the resource extractors’ opponents for them. ARC Advisor Magatte Wade heads Atlas affiliate “Center for African Prosperity” where she argues climate activism is the new colonialism, intended to impoverish Africans.

The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), an Australian Atlas affiliate, has strong personnel connections to the Advance body that led the No campaign through its Fair Australia brand. Advance shares personnel and an address with sites that that promoted a range of disruptive and contradictory positions against the Voice, including a Christian one (not least because spiritual connections to country are a pagan threat). The cluster includes an anti-climate action offshoot called “Not Zero.” Advance has personnel and logistical connections with Whitestone Strategic consulting, a shadowy company that also has links with the Pentecostal movement’s peak body, the Australian Christian Lobby, and with Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party. It’s uncertain how much damage to the referendum was achieved by Advance and friends: they seem a clumsy attempt at the Atlas model.

Nelson illustrates how the possible American political collapse into fossil fuel-embracing, theocratic authoritarianism was created over 50 years with the kind of networking reflected in the ARC conference. The O2 event trumpets the spread of the fossil fuel-promoting, ultraconservative movement internationally, work that Atlas has been carrying out in secret.

This might be 2023’s scariest Halloween party.

 

This was first published in Pearls and Irritations as An ultraconservative shadow network is forming, designed to influence you

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Greed is the problem, not workers

Of course, The Australian republished Andy Kessler’s ridiculous Wall Street Journal column, “The decline of work in a spoiled society.” Those News Corp bedfellows continue to miss that they are at the core of the problem.

The pandemic drew back the curtain for the workers of the West, casting a glaring spotlight on the fact that they were cogs in a machine churning profit for the power brokers. Billionaires took off on joyrides to space, in rockets built of the workers’ stolen wages. Emergency workers received mere thanks for dying in excessive numbers to keep the upper echelons safely serviced in their beach home escapes. Nurses saw that their dedication had been exploited for unfair pay as their shifts ballooned. Teachers learnt they were actually childminders to allow capitalism untrammelled access to parent workers.

This edifying revelation only built on the growing crisis of 2008’s financial crash. Taxpayers’ money was demanded to refund the financial sector that had gambled away its wealth. In the US, 10 million Americans lost their homes, mostly left sitting empty. In the UK, bankers got their bonuses back as austerity policy savaged the lives and communities of the taxpayers who’d funded their bailouts.

Over the Cold War, a combination of factors kept the gap between rich and poor narrow. Partly the financial circumstances of the era; partly a society that required a large educated and healthy workforce to maintain mass-employing sectors. Partly, though, it was the bowel-clenching fear of the rich and powerful that their own masses could revolt to seize the means of production.

The resultant conditions meant that unionised workers could support their families with some spending money on the side. After capitalism’s collapse in the Great Depression and the nightmare of two World Wars, the bargain seemed worthy.

In the wake of the Cold War, neoliberal ideologues and extremists won the battle for understanding how the economy should operate. Milton Friedman’s diktat that the shareholder was the corporation’s only responsibility became the operating principle. Maggie Thatcher killed “society.” The workers were to be recognised as inanimate parts of the machine. The threat of starvation would keep them obediently clocking in, clocking out, clocking in.

Meanwhile, the Cold War reticence about ostentatiously displaying wealth with the prospect of revolution to chill the peacock urge, was replaced by reality TV where everyone could see just how stupid and venal the wealthy actually can be.

In America, the social contract is broken. The poorest workers slog between several jobs, often on poorly maintained public transport, without healthcare. Teachers drive Uber after hours to pay the rent. In the UK, private school alumni threw the country’s well-being off the Cliffs of Dover in pursuit of defunct imperial grandeur. Both countries’ discontent was channelled against people with a different skin colour, seeking safety. The “revolution” to date has taken the form of electing populist-nativist clowns who made all their problems worse.

Liz Truss was the final straw in this revelation of the cold calculations underlying neoliberalism. There would be unaffordable tax cuts for the rich and further austerity for the rest.

In Australia, the crisis of worker investment is different. Rising prices creating rising profits eat into the wages of those previously getting by. The Reserve Bank is driving up interest rates, again eating into survival funds, instead of begging profiteers to cap their greed. Policy promoting property as an investment rather than a necessity is robbing the next generation of the chance to join in that mode of securing their future. Landlords increase rent because that is “the market,” and renters become desperate.

Australia’s workers are, on the whole, better paid than our American parallels but the same pressures that the neoliberal ideologues have imposed on that nation are grinding away at the readiness of workers to give over most of their working hours to employers.

Signs of poverty are becoming more overt in Australia. The recent story about a mother wanting to keep a pot of yoghurt as a Christmas treat went viral, shocking to a complacent population.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has taken some steps in his election promises to address the implications of these factors. One that drew howls of outrage from the Murdoch Dog Line was the promise to make menstrual products available in places where people might not be able to afford them. To any person willing to take a moment, it is clear that being forced to choose between food and sanitary products is a crippling decision.

To the Murdoch commentators, Andrews’ decision was an outrage. Regular Murdoch columnist Gemma Tognini fulminated that the promise was, bizarrely, “sexist” as well as “shallow, populist, cosmetic and desperate.” Then again, she is the columnist that equated accepting Dan Andrews to Chamberlain “attempting to appease a monster.”

In the worldview of the News Corp columnist, and their ultra-free market ideology, anyone not working hard enough is choosing to be unable to afford menstrual products. Pandering to this laziness encourages the slacker life.

Andy Kessler argued that what workers get from the ever-more poisonous bargain is “human capital” which he decodes “as what workers learn on the job is theirs to keep.” But too many jobs now, like the grinding immiseration of Amazon warehouse workers, grant little in the way of skills or satisfaction.

He demanded the American government “please stop paying people not to work.” At a moment in employment history where too many people are working in jobs that barely pay survival salaries because human labour remains cheaper or more precise than automation, the only way to get people to work at all is to starve them thoroughly rather than slowly.

A better option might be to abandon ultra-free market ideology as the destroyer of systems it has proven to be. Clearly, workers need to be and feel valued to sign over their lives to the awful jobs we need done. America’s extremes illustrate the utter failure of their neoliberal religion.

Removing obscene profits for executives and shareholders as the driving force of corporations would be a start. A fairer division of the spoils is necessary to keep society functioning. This might need to be achieved by higher taxes on the top tier, since they don’t seem to understand the crisis their never-sated greed has created.

This was originally published at Pearls and Irritations as Greed and a spoiled society: workers are not the problem

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button