Bob Carnegie, secretary of the Queensland branch of the Maritime Union of Australia, has caused controversy by breaking ranks with other union leaders to publicly criticise the Adani mine. He spoke to Red Flag’s Carl Jackson. 
CJ: Your stand against the Adani mine has put you at odds with a lot of others in the union movement. Why did you think it was important to speak out?
BC: It’s important because there’s only one race, and that’s the human race. I think we need another steaming [thermal] coal mine in this world like we need a hole in the head!
CJ: Why is it important for workers and unions to oppose the mine?
BC: This is where I have some differences with some of my colleagues. They see trade unions purely as representing the concerns of their members, whereas I think that unions have an industrial, social and a political purpose. As a trade unionist, I’m concerned we’re going to leave this world in a worse state for the younger generation. And as a trade unionist, I always thought our whole aim was to leave this world a better place than we found it.
CJ: Despite claims of 10,000 jobs, it has come to light that the Adani mine will generate only some hundreds of jobs in the construction phase, and fewer once the mine is operational. Adani management say that the mine will be fully automated. The Australia Institute estimates that it will lead to the loss of around 12,000 jobs elsewhere in the coal industry. Yet some union leaders continue to use jobs to justify their support for the mine – what do you say to this? 
BC: The union movement is at a very low ebb at the present time. Hence any talk about jobs means that certain trade union leaders will jump all over it. But what surprises me most about the Adani case is that, to the best part of my knowledge, no union has even signed an agreement with Adani. So firstly, we don’t know what the terms and conditions are going to be for the construction workers who are going to build it. And secondly, and possibly most importantly, whether or not it is going to be a unionised coal mine. But there’s a bigger question about our responsibility as a highly developed economy to cut carbon dioxide emissions – to be part of the solution and not the problem.
CJ: There’s another global student climate strike on 20 September. Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg has urged adults to join the strike this time. Will any unions here lead walkouts on the day?
BC: I think we’re a fair way away from that kind of political action at the present time. There will be people who take sickies on the day, no doubt, to support the students. I think it’s wonderful that young people are giving a lead on this issue. In the beginning of the movement against the Vietnam war it was university students and some high school students that first demonstrated. And the union movement eventually took that up. So that can happen.
I fully support the students being brave and trying to stand up against the destruction of this earth by capitalism. And that’s the problem in the end: the means of production are owned by a few – they’re not socialised. How can you develop a social good out of a system that’s based on ruthless competition, the destruction of the environment and the exploitation of working class people?
CJ: It would be technically illegal for workers to strike if they’re not in a bargaining period, should they do it anyway?
BC: I’m sick and tired of people telling me what’s legal and what’s illegal at work. In the end, we’re not chattel slaves on an American cotton farm in the 1850s. What gets me is that on ANZAC day, everyone talks about how people gave their lives for our freedoms, but then we acquiesce on the right to withdraw our labour. This is something we’re not fighting hard enough for by a country mile.
CJ: What would you say to rank and file unionists concerned about climate destruction and who oppose Adani?
BC: I would say go to their union meetings and speak their mind. The Australian trade union movement at the present time is in its worst position I have seen in my life. It would be good if the ACTU’s hierarchy realised this. One of the problems of the Change the Rules campaign was the slogan “change the government”. What we have to do as a trade union movement is organise independently and not be tied to the Labor Party. We need to develop policies that genuinely represent the trade union and working class movement.
CJ: What's the alternative to Adani? What kinds of commitments would you like to see from the state government in terms of renewable energy jobs?
BC: Good union pay renewable energy jobs in the mining towns themselves.
CJ: Do you think the union movement has the power to compel governments, whether Labor or Liberal, to do that?
BC: Absolutely. We still have the power to do it – if we’re prepared to go out there and fight. You go out there with a clear agenda and try to bring in the wonderful working class people in coal mining communities, they’re not going to be thrown to the wind. The wonderful people who work in steaming coal – not metallurgical coal [used for steel, not energy production] – should be in the renewable energy sector, which we need to be developing. And we need to make sure that transition is done in a humane and fair way. Blind Freddy can negotiate a redundancy payment. It takes far greater vision from trade union leadership to develop a new economy that’s based on renewable energy, and long term union pay jobs, so that their children will have a long term future. And so that the planet will have some chance of survival.

Carl Jackson

Queensland union leader speaks out against Adani mine 

The School Strike 4 Climate on 30 November was a resounding success, mobilising 13,000 students on streets across the country. The second act, on 15 March, is shaping up to be even bigger. 
Not only are more schools getting involved, but the peak body representing Australia’s university students – the National Union of Students – voted at its annual conference to get behind the national walkout. 
Here are four reasons you and your friends should not just get along to the next one, but help get the word out to make it big.
1. Scientists say that time is running out
The United Nations’ latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report estimates, on current emissions reductions commitments, that we are on track for a 3 degree average increase in global temperatures by 2100. This would create tens of millions of climate refugees due to sea level rises and food shortages as agricultural land is subsumed by growing deserts. In other words, we need radical action yesterday!
2. Australia is not doing enough
Australia is the 14th biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but ranks 11th for emissions per capita. Because of Australian politicians’ and capitalists’ love for coal, the country is responsible for 38 percent of world coal exports, a figure that could increase if new mine proposals are approved.
3. Politicians can’t be relied on
The climate change denialist cranks in the Liberal and National parties have shown that they are part of the problem, not the solution. But the Labor Party too is tied up in the fossil fuel madness. The Queensland ALP in 2010 set the Adani mega-coalmine in train, and it still refuses to scrap the project despite widespread opposition. Federal Labor under Bill Shorten has not opposed the mine.
4. Indigenous people need our solidarity
Australian capitalism’s insatiable thirst for minerals and agricultural land means it has a fundamental interest in attacking Indigenous people’s land rights. Look no further than the treatment of the Wangan and Jagalingou people, who are being sued for $600,000 by Adani for taking legal action against the company, which is intent on destroying their traditional land with one of the world’s biggest coal mines.

Four reasons to join the student climate strike on 15 March

The number of vertebrates (mammals, birds, fish and reptiles) declined by more than 60 percent between 1970 and 2014, according to a report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London.
Complex multi-cellular life has existed for around 500 million years. Palaeontologists say that, in that time, there have been five mass extinction events – “mass” events being those in which more than 75 percent of species disappear. 
We’re all familiar with at least the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (the one that killed the dinosaurs), which occurred 66 million years ago. The other four all occurred more than 200 million years ago, when life was much less complex. Save for the odd asteroid collision, mass extinction events are usually the products of major geological phenomena. 
We are now in the sixth mass extinction. It is unprecedented because it is the first caused by the social organisation of one species – homo sapiens. However, it’s not that humanity is the enemy of the environment. The capitalist system – ruled by a tiny minority of our species – is destroying both people and the planet.
For almost the entire existence of modern humans (approximately 200,000 years), we lived in harmony with the natural world. Although some earlier human societies damaged their environment, the global impact bordered on negligible. 
Compare this to the levels of destruction that commenced with the birth of industrial capitalism 200-300 years ago. Capitalist society is not organised to benefit humanity (or to protect the natural world that sustains us). It is all about exploiting people and the environment to make capitalist profits.
But the rampant exploitation of capitalism now has even NGOs like the WWF (a business-friendly organisation) sounding the alarm that this extreme destruction of animal life – which we rely on for everything from food to medical treatments – is also threatening our own existence.
The WWF’s Living Planet report demonstrates how. Here are two alarming statistics: approximately 87 percent of all flowering plant species are pollinated by animals, which means the huge loss of animal life is already affecting plant life. And crops that are partially pollinated by animals account for 35 percent of global food production. 
The principal reasons for wildlife loss cited in the report are land clearing, unsustainable agriculture and chemical pollution, particularly of the oceans. Unfortunately though, the WWF says the consumption habits of ordinary people are to blame. 
But since when do working class people (who always bear the brunt of environmental destruction) have any say over what land gets cleared, what gets produced or how society’s energy is generated? When do the bulk of people get a say over any of the major decisions that impact our world?
In the last 40 years, ever more power has been put in the hands of huge corporations – agribusiness, oil and gas, urban developers – that make decisions behind closed doors with no input from the rest of the population.
And with the rise of the global far right, their authoritarianism and rampant science denialism, capitalism is taking an even more destructive turn. There’s never been a more pressing time to build a radical alternative to capitalism.

More than half of vertebrates wiped out since 1970

A new bill that could soon pass in federal parliament opens the way for the military to be more easily deployed against Australia’s civilian population.
The Defence Amendment (Call Out of the Australian Defence Force) Bill, first introduced into the lower house in late June and now up to its third reading, rewrites part of the 1903 Defence Act. 
Currently, state and territory authorities can request military intervention only when they have exhausted all other options in a time of crisis. The proposed amendments would allow military intervention simply if required to enhance state and territory forces.
If a federal government perceived a threat against Commonwealth property, it could send in the army without the permission of the relevant state or territory government. 
The bill also adds the minister for home affairs to the list of persons authorised to send the in military, and gives soldiers and other military personnel greater stop and seizure powers when responding to an “incident”. It will allow the military to act as a police force.
The watering down of the conditions required to justify military intervention, and the deliberate vagueness of the language used, will make such an intervention much more likely.
The government’s justification for the increased powers is, predictably, the supposed threat of terrorism. The bill was set into motion by the publication of a government report earlier this year, making recommendations in light of the 2014 Lindt Cafe siege. 
But the new powers would open the door to the military being used against mass strikes and protests should they ever threaten the interests of the rich and powerful.
We have seen this before in Australia. In 1949, Ben Chifley’s federal Labor government sent the army to crush a strike of 23,000 coal miners in New South Wales. Their crime was to demand higher wages and better conditions after the awful years of the Second World War. Plus their union, the Miners’ Federation, was led by the Communist Party. 
The army was also put on standby after the dismissal of Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1975.
Around the world, as support for centrist political parties collapses thanks to the unpopularity of their economic austerity agendas, strong internally focused militaries have become more appealing to governments worried about mass public opposition.
This bill is part of a slide toward authoritarianism and should be rejected.

Are we going to see the military on the streets?

Security and immigration ministers from the “Five Eyes” security alliance countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States – quietly descended upon the Gold Coast for a two-day conference in late August. 
These conferences are never good news for the majority of people, and they usually conclude with the publishing of wish lists for more invasive state surveillance and repression powers. 
The Gold Coast get-together was no exception. And the choice of Australia as host country was probably calculated – less than a month later, then home affairs minister Peter Dutton introduced a bill into the parliament to implement one of its key – and most alarming – recommendations.
If passed, the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Bill would give the government the power to force telecommunications and tech companies to install secret spyware on devices so that the state can get around encryption. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of this attack on civil liberties and on the integrity of the entire internet.
In the years since the so-called War on Terror began in 2001, states have massively expanded their policing and surveillance powers, especially in the digital realm. Frustrating this expansion, however, has been the increasingly mainstream use of encryption. 
Activists, whistleblowers or anybody concerned to protect their communications, can easily access free and highly secure end-to-end encryption, using apps such as Signal, WhatsApp, Snapchat and even Messenger (by using its “secret conversations” feature). 
Even the world’s most powerful supercomputers can’t crack the encryption algorithms used in these services. The Department of Home Affairs estimates that more than 90 percent of data being intercepted by federal police is encrypted. So it is little wonder the state is seeking ways to crack people’s communications.
This is where the Telecommunications Bill comes in. If passed (which is likely at this stage because Labor supports it, albeit critically), federal agencies could read your messages and stored data without having to decrypt a thing. A critical joint submission to the parliament by the Communications Alliance, the Australian Information Industry Association and the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association explains: 
“Agencies could oblige a device manufacturer to preload (and then conceal) tracking or screen capture software (spyware) on commercial handsets which could be activated remotely.”
Earlier versions of the legislation put forward by the Turnbull government last year proposed giving agencies the power to force telcos and tech companies to design “back doors” into their systems to allow unfettered access to encrypted information. That was widely condemned by security experts: if a back door exists for government agencies, it would be only a matter of time until others pried their way through it. 
This was highlighted by the WannaCry global ransomware attacks. The WannaCry masterminds exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, which was stolen from the United States National Security Agency. NSA spies had been using it for their own hacking purposes.
Promoters of the Telecommunications Bill say it would not allow the introduction of back doors. But that’s no cause for relief, because secretly embedded spyware would be open to third party cracking.
The Five Eyes have been pushing for anti-encryption legislation for a long time. However, push back from civil rights groups and even telcos and tech companies has stymied their attempts – for now.
If this bill is passed it will be a world first, giving the green light to the other Five Eyes countries to do the same, and opening a dark new chapter in the era of government mass surveillance.

Government wants telcos to install spyware on your phone

“Queensland government: blood on your hands!” It’s a Monday morning, and the cries of up to 1,000 angry Brisbane construction workers echo under the facade of 1 William Street, the extravagant $650 million government office skyscraper commissioned in the dying days of the Newman Liberal National government. 
These days, however, the Palaszczuk Labor government rules this roost. Today’s CFMMEU and ETU rally, on 17 September, is about safety. The union recently chalked up a victory with the introduction of long-sought industrial manslaughter laws. Today, though, they’re demanding changes to the Workplace Health and Safety Act to give the unions more power to force the state’s safety regulator – Workplace Health and Safety Queensland – to do its job. The unions are also calling for the sacking of WHSQ director Simon Blackwood for his failure to hold cowboy employers to account over safety breaches. 
Addressing the crowd, state secretary of the CFMMEU, Michael Ravbar, pledges to kick off a state-wide campaign against industrial relations minister Grace Grace (a former general secretary of the Queensland Council of Unions) if the union’s demands for improved workplace safety are not met. As the rally wraps up, construction workers begin dispersing across the city. 
I barely make it a few hundred metres down the road when suddenly I am caught up in a human river of purple shirts and flags surging back towards 1 William St. The crowd swells to more than 500 workers from Together, the local branch of the Australian Services Union, representing Queensland’s public sector workers. 
They are holding a one-hour stop-work to protest the government’s wage offer to public servants. Most have been offered a paltry 2.5 percent, and some in so-called “core” services – education, child safety, youth and women – have been presented with a zero percent offer. According to the union, it’s the lowest wages offer made by a Queensland state government in the history of bargaining. 
“This is the first time that some of these core public servants have been on strike in more than 30 years”, Together secretary Alex Scott tells Red Flag.
As the fourth year of the Palaszczuk government rolls on, it is obvious that this government has done nothing for workers. Looking back, the differences between it and the Newman government are slim indeed.

Queensland government targeted in busy day of union protest

New data from the 2016 census reveal that more than 150,000 Australians aged 18-24, or 5.6 percent of that age group, provide unpaid care for a disabled, sick or frail family member or friend, up from 5.0 percent in 2006.
This is a disgrace, not only because their vital labour is unpaid, but because of the impact it has on the lives of the young carers and those requiring care. Professional care should be available for all those who need it. 
One of these 150,000, Queensland University student Corby Small, told the Courier Mail that she has looked after her wheelchair-bound mother since she can remember.
“It can be very isolating and you’re not really sure how to talk about it and no one really understands what you’re going through or how different your life is”, Small said.
The ongoing privatisation of aged and disabled care has made it more difficult for many families to access ongoing professional care. For example, there are about 4 million disabled people in Australia, but the federal government estimates that only 410,000, about 10 percent, are eligible for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
No wonder that the responsibility for the provision of care is increasingly falling on the shoulders of young people. Analysis accompanying the census data linked growing youth unemployment to the increase in the number of young carers.
Privatisation pushes a lot of socially necessary work from the public, paid, sphere into the private, unpaid, sphere of the home because care becomes dependent on a person’s income. 
The federal government has just announced a $35 billion splurge on new warships, proving that there is more than enough money in the system to provide high quality, professional care for all those in society who require it.

150,000 young Australians providing unpaid care

It’s budget day in Queensland, and 2,000 electrical trades workers from across the state’s south east are rallying outside parliament. They are protesting what the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) calls the “privatisation by stealth” of the state’s electricity services.
The Palaszczuk Labor government had been consulting with the union about the creation of a state energy company, CleanCo, to oversee a sharp increase in the production of renewable energy. But ETU leaders this month pulled out of the discussions, calling them “hollow, tokenistic and a sham”. 
“Instead of CleanCo building solar farms directly and maintaining public ownership, they’re going to be contracting them out and then selling the more expensive electricity back to Queenslanders via privatisation”, assistant secretary Keith McKenzie told Red Flag. 
McKenzie says that, along with the ownership of public services, the jobs and hard won conditions of workers are at stake.
This is not a new battle. The union has fought privatisation under the two previous state governments of Campbell Newman (Liberal-National) and Anna Bligh (Labor).
The government says that CleanCo will ensure that 50 percent of the state’s energy comes from renewable sources by 2030. While any move away from environmentally destructive technology should be welcomed, using environmental concerns as a cover for privatisation and undermining workers’ conditions should not.
The efficiency of renewable technologies, when compared to old coal generators, has convinced even some conservative politicians to accept renewable energy. State opposition leader Deb Frecklington, for example, in her post-budget reply speech pledged more renewable energy plants for a “future without coal”, a change from the hard pro-coal position of previous Liberal-National leader Tim Nicholls. 
The backflip isn’t a result of a newfound commitment to the environment, however. Renewable energy generation is fast becoming more profitable than coal-fired power. More important, Queensland politicians can see that the transition to renewables provides a golden opportunity to undermine wages and working conditions and transfer energy infrastructure into private hands. 
That’s what the union fears. Unlike most other states in Australia, Queensland still owns most of its coal and gas generators. 
Despite the opposition of the ETU, the Palaszczuk government is proceeding with its plans, announcing that CleanCo will be operational in October. The union intends to keep fighting, demanding no early closures of coal-fired plants and a guarantee that no workers will lose their jobs.

Fight looming for QLD electricity workers

Less than three years after the startling admission by the Queensland government that the deadly black lung disease – eradicated in Australia since the 1970s – is making a comeback on the state’s coalfields, a potentially bigger killer of coal miners is emerging: silicosis, which is caused by the inhalation of silica dust. 
Silica is one of the most common minerals in the Earth’s crust, present in most forms of rock, sand and soil, and therefore in a large number of derivative products like cement, bricks, mortar and glass. 
When inhaled, airborne crystalline silica is 20 times more toxic than coal dust. According to a recent study, 6.6 percent of workers in Australia are exposed to it; 3.7 percent are heavily exposed. 
Everyone, from bricklayers to glaziers to those who install engineered stone bench tops in kitchens, is at risk. Mining workers, whose jobs often entail blasting and cutting through large amounts of rock, are the most susceptible.
It’s not just miners working in poorly ventilated underground mines at risk, either. Workers in open cut mines (the most common mine in Australia today) are exposed to lethal amounts of airborne particles. 
In early June, 69-year-old Tyrone Buckton, who worked at the Goonyella Riverside open cut coal mine in the Bowen Basin for 30 years, fell victim to silicosis after being diagnosed in December. 
There is no reason workers should be subject to dangerous amounts of airborne particles if basic safety measures were implemented, such as watering down dust, proper ventilation and using safety masks. 
In Queensland, the miners’ union is demanding that the Palaszczuk government enforce a stronger safety regime on employers. Yet little action has been taken. 
A recommendation from a parliamentary committee last year to halve the exposure limit has still not been implemented. 
Even if it were, the state’s dust level regulator is a toothless tiger. There were 70 recorded breaches of silica dust level limits in the last 15 months. But in the last eight years, only 50 disciplinary measures and three suspensions of mining licences have been issued by the body. 
Queensland CFMEU president Steve Smyth told the ABC’s 7.30 that union members were growing impatient with the government’s inaction.
“Workers have had enough; we’ve had enough, and they can do the right thing by workers and simply, as a start, reduce these levels, have enforcement and have real action.”

Silicosis may pose a threat bigger than black lung disease

It’s a sight that would have Joh Bjelke-Petersen spinning in his grave. On a beautiful sunny day in the middle of the Gold Coast, nestled between the ensemble of skyscrapers and canal homes adorning “the Strip”, hundreds of trade unionists from a raft of industries gathered after walking off the job. They came out in solidarity with striking Gold Coast City Council workers. With more than 3,500 workers, the council is one of the city’s biggest employers.
As a contingent of hi-vis-clad construction workers joined the rally, one of the striking council workers cheered. “I’ve been working here for 27 years; I’ve never seen the CFMEU walk off site for us before! This only happens in Brisbane”, he told me.
The protest is against some new class enemies – Gold Coast mayor Tom Tate (currently under investigation by the Queensland corruption watchdog over his involvement in dodgy property deals) and the even more despised council CEO Dale Dickson (whose salary surpasses that of the prime minister).
This is the “glitter strip”, after all – there’s money to splash around. In preparation for the Commonwealth Games, millions have been outlaid by the council on new stadiums and revamping the Coast’s image. At the same time, the council is locked in enterprise agreement negotiations with its workforce and has refused to offer a decent pay rise or assurances of job security.
To add insult to injury, council has implemented a no-strike clause for the period of the Games. With rumours swirling around the workplace that Tate and Dickson are planning mass lay-offs and casualisation after the Games, workers are fed up. The air was electric as a motion was put from the crowd to march to Tate’s office.
A member of the Services Union, which covers many of the council workers, said: “We don’t want money, just job security. We have had a fair few industrial actions in the past, mostly over wages. They say the Games are for us, but it’s a big inconvenience. Many people just wish it wasn't happening. They want to contract out our work. There’s no democracy”.
The unions representing council workers have vowed further action.

Queensland union leader speaks out against Adani mine

Four reasons to join the student climate strike on 15 March

More than half of vertebrates wiped out since 1970

Are we going to see the military on the streets?

Government wants telcos to install spyware on your phone

Queensland government targeted in busy day of union protest

150,000 young Australians providing unpaid care

Fight looming for QLD electricity workers

Silicosis may pose a threat bigger than black lung disease

Gold Coast unions fighting for the right to strike

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