The University of New South Wales’ website banner asks, “How will you change the world?” The answer, presumably, is, “By clearing poor people out of places that rich people don’t want them to be in”. How else to explain last year’s appointment of Andrew Walters to the position of vice-president of finance and operations?
The university advertises Walters’ “extensive experience in the mining industry as Chief Financial Officer of the Botswana operations of diamond mining company DeBeers”, a position he held between 1999 and 2002. In 2001 he oversaw the privatisation of the company. By moving from public to private ownership, DeBeers hid its involvement in the Botswana government’s oppression of Bushman tribes. Survival, a global advocacy group for tribal people’s rights, noted in 2002:
“The last self-sufficient ‘Bushmen’ of the Kalahari desert have been brutally thrown off their land and dumped in resettlement camps. Behind the government’s actions lurks a deep-seated racism – and the prospect of riches from diamonds under the Bushmen’s land …
For all the talk from the university about global responsibility and international citizenship, the appointment of Andrew Walters starkly shows its ultimate interests.
“In February, in an operation overseen by a retired army general, trucks moved in, the Bushmen’s water pump was disabled and their water tanks emptied. (Since surrounding cattle ranches use most of the previously available water and have lowered the water table, the Bushmen, whose land is desert, now depend on water pumped from boreholes.) Almost all the Bushmen were trucked out; some were threatened with being burned in their homes if they resisted.”
In response to demands from Survival for DeBeers’ policy on the Bushman, the company said that “a policy to cover indigenous rights would head straight down” the path of apartheid South Africa.
Background in a company like DeBeers is perfect for gaining employment in Australia’s institutions of higher learning. Vice-chancellors and university managements have spent years pushing for further privatisation and deregulation of tertiary education, which has become Australia’s third largest export industry.
The profit-driven university system doesn’t want you on a campus if you don’t have the money to pay. Students are treated as customers, maximum amounts of labour are squeezed out of academic, support and tech staff, and business administrators are hired to manage all of this as efficiently (profitably) as possible.
For all the talk from the university about global responsibility and international citizenship, the appointment of Andrew Walters starkly shows its ultimate interests. The “global citizens” UNSW wants to create are those who fit his image: individuals who have the tenacity and cunning to run corporations that traipse across the world exploiting, thieving and killing for profit.

Gene Brownlie

From diamonds to degrees: changing the world by screwing people over

They work at one of the largest single-business office complexes in the southern hemisphere – the Optus “yes campus” in Macquarie Park. They clean the six office towers that make up what the telecommunications giant describes as its “state-of-the-art” home in Sydney’s west. It’s a building complex, Optus boasts, that emphasises shared spaces “where ideas can be exchanged”.
Earlier this month, 35 workers had an idea that they wanted better pay and secure jobs. Their boss, Jani King Cleaning, had a different idea. One of the Jani King franchises is contracted by Optus to clean its “campus”. When new owners bought the franchise, they tried to sack some of the cleaners. The workers responded with an immediate strike. 
The cleaners, who are now members of United Voice, stood together as the boss tried to divide them, offering permanent contracts to some in exchange for selling out the others. Pradeep, who has worked at Jani King for three years and organised the strike, argued for secure, permanent contracts and fair conditions for all.
“We are united, we are together”, he told Red Flag. “We want fairness for all of us; we work hard.”
He explained that many of the workers have been at the company earning as little as $18 an hour, without superannuation payments, for more than five years. They had talked about fighting for better conditions before their 1 June strike. “We always thought that if we do it, it will create too many problems”, he said. “But it’s too much now and we have to stand against them.”
After the strike, Jani King management negotiated with the workers and United Voice, and offered casual jobs with the promise of permanent contracts to follow.
However, Pradeep says that their fight continues. Management is now refusing to follow through on its pledge of secure contracts for everyone and has also included a pay cut in the deal. “We got played and suffered a lot. They went back on their word”, he said.
Exploitation and mistreatment of cleaners are common in Australia. Many in the industry are paid below minimum wage. Bullying and intimidation are widely reported. New management at Jani King have followed in this tradition.
“He talks to us like we are not even human”, Pradeep says of one of his managers. “Nobody really thinks of cleaners as human.”
Pradeep says that their plight has also been ignored by Optus. The company has not responded to the workers’ attempts to discuss their treatment at the hands of its contractor.
Through its Clean Start campaign, United Voice has spent years trying to establish basic conditions across the cleaning industry. It says that the widespread use of subcontracting arrangements is responsible for “perpetuating and exacerbating” the worst practices in the industry.
Pradeep is determined to keep the Jani King workers’ struggle going until they win all of their demands. “I’m standing up for all of us. I really want to fight this.”

Spontaneous cleaners’ strike in western Sydney

The chaos of recent storms across the New South Wales east coast highlights the ineptitude of the capitalist state when it comes to coping with disaster.
The storms raged from 19 to 22 April. The effects were widespread, but it was the most vulnerable who fared the worst.
Countless homeless people were forced to brave the elements, with emergency accommodation and shelters well over capacity. Many waited for hours in the cold for the chance of somewhere warm to sleep or access facilities to dry their wet clothes and blankets.
Eight people died, five of whom were elderly residents of regional areas trapped in flood conditions.
Infrastructure in affected areas was in shambles for days. More than 200,000 homes lost power. Roads and traffic lights went haywire and public transport was severely slowed or shut entirely.
There is a longstanding problem with infrastructure in Sydney. It is not uncommon, for instance, for some metropolitan train stations to flood in heavy rain. Yet successive governments continue to cut spending on public infrastructure, instead plotting the privatisation of public assets like the state’s electricity infrastructure. Sydney’s public transport network is notoriously outdated but billions are pumped into useless projects like the WestConnex toll road. 
This is the logic of capitalism. Cost-savings and profit-making always comes before human need. 
Ordinary people, though, shine during these times. Hundreds of State Emergency Service volunteers spent hours answering calls for help. Electricity workers – who face uncertainty about their jobs after privatisation – braved treacherous conditions to reconnect power to hundreds of thousands. Community groups sprang into action to offer assistance to those who needed it. 
“It’s when our philosophy I think comes to the fore, when we’re going through bad experiences and we all tend to come together and share the nothing we’ve got”, said Jenny Munro, Aboriginal activist in an interview with National Indigenous Television conducted under a dripping wet tarpaulin at the Tent Embassy she helped found in Redfern.
While we listen to politicians mourning the destruction caused by natural disasters such as this, we shouldn’t hold our breath for them to do any of the things needed to mitigate the damage in the future.

From diamonds to degrees: changing the world by screwing people over

Spontaneous cleaners’ strike in western Sydney

Vulnerable hit hardest as storms ravage Sydney

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