Israel’s brutal war against Gaza has cost at least 40,000 Palestinian lives, most likely many more. Nearly 2 million have been forced to flee their homes and are targeted even in declared safe zones. Israeli forces have flattened vital infrastructure such as hospitals, schools and water supplies. Such is the devastation in the territory that polio and other deadly infectious diseases now threaten even more lives.
Now, with the assassinations of senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the situation could escalate into a regional war. Israel has already done its best to bring such a war closer since 7 October, carrying out more than 6,000 attacks on Lebanon, 144 attacks on Syria and further attacks on Yemen and Iran.
Feda Abdelhady Nasser, a Palestinian representative to the United Nations, was absolutely right when she said on 1 August: “Violence and terror are Israel’s main and only currency. There is no red line for Israel, no law it will not breach, no norm it will not trample, no act too depraved or barbaric”.
The United States has backed Israel in all international forums and provides the weapons to massacre the Palestinians. It claims that it was given no warning of Israel’s assassinations, but it gives Israel vital intelligence that enables it to carry out these deadly acts.
Any regional escalation could draw America into direct military engagement. The consequences would be devastating for the oppressed working classes of the region—particularly those in Iran and Lebanon, who already suffer greatly under the authoritarian and reactionary rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah, respectively.
The US talks about furthering the “peace process” in Qatar, but nothing is on the table that will bring justice to Palestine. Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh and the US’s refusal to condemn it shows their attitude to these negotiations. The peace process is simply a fig leaf the US and the Arab leaders have adopted to cover their betrayal of the Palestinians.
The real attitude of many US leaders was shown by the 50 standing ovations Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received when he addressed a joint sitting of the US Congress last month. US politicians, who lecture other nations about the need to abide by the “international rules-based order”, cheer to the rafters a man facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court. 
The US itself is ramping up military spending. Last year, the government spent nearly US$1 trillion on its military, almost 40 percent of the world’s total. Adding in its NATO allies along with South Korea, Japan and Australia, the US-led bloc of states spent $1.5 trillion in 2023, 60 percent of the global total. All of this is in readiness for a war with China and potentially Russia, which themselves are rapidly building their military forces. 
With the death count increasing daily in Palestine, the media are fixated on the medal tally in the Olympics circus. While Gazans line up for rations, hoping to receive even half a serve of rice for the day, as starvation grips the territory, every Australian news site and news bulletin begins with a recapping of just how many ceremonial necklaces have now been handed out in Paris, often accompanied with sympathetic stories about the adults who cried because they failed to secure one.
While Palestinians desperately try to cheat death one more time, we are told about the horror of potential cheating in “the games”, be it by Chinese swimmers or Algerian boxers. The horror that adults who have dedicated their lives to the noblest of causes, such as swimming in a pool, might be cheated out of a ceremonial necklace. 
All the while, the purported grown-ups who sit in parliaments and editorial offices still can’t agree that the mass murder of 40,000 people, the destruction of a whole society, is a horror. 
The overwhelming tenor of the moment is that Australians should identify with Australian athletes in their struggle for supremacy—not with Palestinian children and families in their struggle for survival. The latter proposition is “divisive”, “controversial”. The former is supposedly “unifying”.
What a farce. What an indictment of what passes for public commentary. 
One of Australia’s chief allies, Israel, has spent ten months carrying out a genocidal campaign to wipe out an entire nation, and it is this cashed-up circus on the Seine that dominates the media. 
Any system that elevates the trials and tribulations of pampered, government-funded athletes above the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding in Gaza is morally bankrupt and has to go. 
One that allows trillions to be spent on weapons of destruction and that keeps the world on the edge of devastating conflicts year in and year out is not worthy of the name “civilisation”. 
We need to build an alternative to the capitalist system of perpetual conflict. That begins with fighting against Israel's war on Palestine, the government’s drive to increase military spending, the mindless jingoism fostered by the Olympic coverage and the entire capitalist agenda that is taking the world to the precipice. 
We need to build a socialist alternative.

Tom Bramble

Oppose Israeli escalation, build a political alternative

Thirty years after taking office in South Africa’s first democratic election, the African National Congress (ANC) has suffered a dramatic loss in support, registering a vote of just 40 percent at the 29 May national poll, down from 57 percent in 2019. 
The ANC’s electoral fortunes have been in decline since their peak in the 2000s and early 2010s, when the party notched up 65-70 percent of the vote, but this result marks a sharp acceleration in its declining popularity. 
The big drop in the ANC vote marks an end to its political hegemony among those it once led. This is most obvious in the townships where the ANC regularly recorded a vote of 90 percent or more. In Soweto and Tembisa, outside Johannesburg, and Khayelitsha on the dusty and impoverished Cape Flats, the party’s share of the vote dropped to 50 percent. In Umlazi, a township of 400,000 on the outskirts of Durban, the ANC vote plummeted to just 13 percent.
The falling vote share does not fully capture the drubbing, since millions of registered voters stayed away from the polling booths, and millions more, particularly young South Africans disillusioned with what was on offer, did not register to vote. Just 6.5 million out of an eligible voting age population of 42 million voted for the ANC at this election, down from 10 million in 2019, despite the population having grown by 3 million.
The main explanation for the ANC’s dwindling support over the past two decades is its failure to substantially confront the injustices of apartheid, the system of white supremacy that prevailed for most of the twentieth century. 
Living standards for most of the oppressed Black and Coloured population (“Coloured” in South Africa refers to multiracial ethnic communities) rose modestly in the first decade or two after the fall of apartheid, the new government funding programs to deliver water and electricity to poor communities. But living standards are now going backwards. The mass of Black South Africans live in substandard housing with poor sanitation and have inadequate health care, transportation and schools. 
Unemployment runs well over 30 percent, and above 50 percent for young South Africans. Even when the unemployed find work, wages are low. The government has introduced meagre grants, but these are equivalent to just half the income needed to meet the minimal poverty line, and millions of people do not get the grant each month. For tens of millions of Blacks and Coloureds, life has become a desperate struggle for survival.
Not all Black South Africans have suffered the same fate. Black politicians now dominate legislatures at every level except in the Western Cape. Black professors lead the country’s top universities. The chief justice is Black, as are the chiefs of the defence forces. Big business remains white dominated, but thousands of Black figures—including President Cyril Ramaphosa, a one-time trade union leader, later a millionaire mining executive—have become stupendously rich. Such figures use their political connections to win government contracts to enrich themselves, something the government prettifies as “Black economic empowerment”. 
Beneath this growing layer, a large Black professional middle class has also emerged and moved into previously all-white suburbs in the big cities. Inequality in South Africa is among the highest in the world: the top 0.1 percent of the population, 35,000 individuals, own one-third of the country’s wealth.
Corruption was a feature of the apartheid regime but has, if anything, become even more endemic today. ANC politicians at the national and provincial levels have looted the public purse. Jacob Zuma, president from 2009 to 2018, became particularly notorious for his corrupt relationships with the wealthy Gupta family, but he was only the most high-profile case. Grand corruption, in the form of a liberal democracy systematically favouring capitalist interests, has been a feature of all ANC governments.
The grinding poverty experienced by most Black South Africans has fuelled decades of protest. Shack dwellers have fought forced evictions. Township residents have demonstrated against electricity and water cut-offs. University students have occupied their campuses to oppose increased fees. Public sector workers regularly go on strike. The response of the ANC has often been brutal. Dozens of protesters have been killed, most notoriously at the Marikana platinum mine, where 34 striking miners were murdered by police in 2012. For many who still held out hope that the ANC would deliver for the working class and poor communities, the Marikana massacre ended that chapter and confirmed that the ANC was no friend of the common people.
The South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) have given the ANC government left cover. This “liberation alliance” led the struggle to bring down apartheid in the 1980s and early 1990s. But because the alliance partners were committed to a capitalist outcome, they sabotaged the potential for this struggle to go forward to socialism, the vision for a future for South Africa that animated millions of participants.
The 1994 “settlement”, which secured the continued domination of the country’s big business houses while giving state structures a new coat of paint, is responsible for the inequality and oppression experienced by much of the Black population today. SACP and COSATU leaders sometimes huff and puff about attacks on workers and the poor, but for the most part, they apologise for the government. They have been rewarded for their services by senior appointments in government and the public service. In the meantime, their organisations have been hollowed out.
In the absence of any fighting lead from these organisations, the main beneficiaries of the ANC’s loss of support at this election have been the Economic Freedom Fighters and the uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Party, which won 9.5 percent and 14.6 percent of the vote respectively. 
The EFF, led by former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, was formed in 2013 in the aftermath of the Marikana massacre and quickly won a following among young Black voters who had no loyalty to the ANC’s elders and believed the government was offering them nothing. The MK Party, founded just last December, pitched itself as a voice for the Zulu population and only narrowly fell short of winning a majority of votes in KwaZulu Natal, the country’s second-largest province.
Neither offers any solution to the pain and suffering of the mass of the working class. The EFF describes itself as socialist, but its main objective is to expand the number of Black capitalists running private corporations and state enterprises. The MK Party is a right-wing populist organisation encouraging tribal chauvinism, more powers for traditional chiefs and attacks on immigrants from South Asia and elsewhere in Africa. It is little more than a vehicle for former President Jacob Zuma to attempt to return to power on the back of a reactionary program. 
Even though the two parties compete for the votes of Black Africans frustrated with the ANC, they have much in common. The EFF’s Malema regards MK as “relatives” of the EFF and described its big vote at this election as “commendable”.
The strong vote for the MK indicates the dangers facing the South African working class in a situation where there is no large left-wing political alternative prepared to fight for working-class interests. In recent years, there have been horrific incidents of Black South African mobs assaulting African and South Asian immigrants on the streets, in their homes and at their businesses to drive them out of the communities. 
Such reactionary sentiments are also reflected in this election in the 16 percent vote recorded by the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party in KwaZulu Natal, on top of the MK’s 46 percent, and the 18 percent vote chalked up by the far-right Patriotic Alliance in voting districts dominated by Coloured voters. The ANC’s deportation of immigrants creates the context for this racist groundswell. Social dysfunction and the breakdown of economic life suggest that racist hatred will only get worse unless it is confronted head on.
The dawn of democracy in 1994 gave hope to millions of South Africans that the misery of the apartheid years would pass. Thirty years on, the rotten deal engineered by the ANC and its allies at the time has ensured that those hopes are now extinguished. The situation is bleak and set to get worse under the current line-up of political forces. The task today is the same as in the 1980s: to fight those who have betrayed the working class and poor and build a revolutionary socialist alternative.

ANC pays the price for decades of pro-capitalist rule

The fight to defeat colonialism in Kanaky confronts not just the Macron government but the Australian government as well. Successive Australian governments have turned a blind eye to France’s defiance of UN General Assembly resolutions to end its colonial rule in Kanaky and French Polynesia, and the Albanese government will be very concerned by the riots in Nouméa.
France’s ability to maintain its colonies in the Pacific is crucial to its credibility as a world power. Military considerations are to the fore, but that these colonies give France exclusive economic zones of 7 million square kilometres in the Pacific, potentially rich in minerals, is also a factor. This is the context in which Macron’s attempt to rig the electoral system in Kanaky takes place.
Given Australia’s own neocolonial interests in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Nauru and Fiji, and its arrogance towards the Pacific Islands Forum, it is hardly surprising that Australia should regard those fighting French colonialism as a threat. Australia sees France as a partner in maintaining imperialist supremacy in the Pacific, and in recent times, great power competition has come to the fore in shaping relations between the two countries.
China’s attempt to extend its influence in the South Pacific, evident in a joint security agreement with the Solomons and new aid packages for a string of Pacific nations, has brought Australia and France closer together to resist Chinese advances. 
Successive defence white papers, and in particular Australia’s AUKUS agreement with the US and Britain, are concerned with pushing back against China. With the US tied up in Europe and the Middle East, Australia has an even more crucial role in reinforcing US power in the Pacific. Good relations with France can only help in this regard. In May 2018, while visiting Australia, Macron announced an India-Australia-France axis in the Indo-Pacific region.
Although the 2021 decision by the Morrison government to dump the contract to purchase French nuclear submarines in favour of US submarines caused a chill in the relationship between Australia and France, the Albanese government has done its best to put things back on an even keel. 
In a series of meetings and joint statements, Australia has made clear its desire for a strengthened French presence in the Pacific and for closer cooperation between the two countries.
Shortly after winning the 2022 election, the Albanese government settled the breach of the submarine contract with a payment of €555 million to the French Naval Group. Albanese told a press conference, “France is of course an Indo-Pacific nation, and we share a commitment to a global order based upon the rule of law and shared principles”. No mention was made of France’s obligations regarding decolonisation under the rule of law and UN principles of self-determination. 
In July 2022, the two governments got down to business, publishing a communique setting out plans for military cooperation, joint military exercises, reciprocal access to military facilities, industrial and technological defence partnerships and the development of space defence facilities. This was formalised in February last year as a “road map”, a “new agenda for bilateral cooperation”. One of the first fruits of this agreement was the involvement of French armed forces stationed in Kanaky in the Talisman Sabre military exercises in Queensland last July. 
In the same month, Australia joined France in abstaining on key provisions of the annual UN General Assembly decolonisation resolution, objecting to clauses requiring administering powers such as France to end military activities in their non-self-governing territories.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong regularly expresses her support for the “Pacific family” and in 2022 told the UN General Assembly, “As Foreign Minister, I am determined to see First Nations perspectives at the heart of Australian foreign policy”. However, Australian support for self-determination of Indigenous peoples of the Pacific, a prerequisite for any relationship between equals, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Australia is deepening militarism and nuclear proliferation in a region that is still living with the health and environmental legacies of more than 315 US, British and French nuclear tests.
French colonialism in the Pacific has to go, but that will also require a fight against the Australian government since Australia is equally culpable in denying the people of the region their right to live in peace and to determine their own destinies.

Kanaky—The Australian connection

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says that the new budget is “a Labor party budget through and through because it is a budget for every Australian, not just some”.
That is the biggest lie. The Albanese government’s third budget provides the lion’s share of benefits to the well-off, the military and favoured sectors of the capitalist class and fails to address the major social problems facing the Australian working class—falling real wages and housing stress. 
Let’s start with the changes to income tax. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, those in the top 20 percent of taxable incomes will benefit from the revised Stage 3 tax cuts by $148 billion over the next decade, just under half of the total benefit of $318 billion.
Then there are the handouts to big business. The Financial Review declared the biggest winners from the budget as “businesses involved in the green transition”. The government’s new industry assistance program, “A Future Made in Australia”, will provide $23 billion in tax concessions, direct subsidies and grants over the next decade for the renewable energy and critical minerals sectors. The government argues that this will make Australia a “renewable energy superpower”. 
The whole concept that Australia will lead the world in renewables is pretty rich, coming just days after the government announced it was all-in on a gas-fuelled future. Besides, the lucky businesses receiving this money will not be interested in fixing the escalating climate catastrophe, only lining their pockets. If they can turn a buck, they will. If not, it’s too bad for the climate. And this spending, like the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act on which it is based, is aimed as much at building the infrastructure that can withstand a war with China as it is in responding to the escalating climate catastrophe. 
On the topic of war, the government boasts of its “generational investment” in the military, boosting defence spending by $6 billion to $53 billion this year. The budget projects this figure to rise to $100 billion by 2033-34. This splurge will take the military’s share of GDP to its highest for 40 years. These figures do not even factor in the hundreds of billions earmarked for the nuclear submarines that are part of the AUKUS pact, making the military a huge claim on public funds.
This budget ensures that big business and the well-off will keep their fortunes while the generals and arms manufacturers will wallow in money.
What about workers, students and the poor? 
Since 2019, real wages have fallen by 5 percent as inflation cuts into disposable incomes. For middle- and low-income wage earners, the drop has been even greater because they spend a bigger share of their incomes on essential goods and services, which have risen in price more than non-essential items. Those on JobSeeker are falling further behind.
Even though inflation has dropped over the past twelve months, wages are still not keeping up. Since the March quarter of last year, the cost of living for employees has gone up by 6.5 percent, while wages are up by only 4.2 percent. Rents are up by 8 percent, insurance is up by 16 percent, monthly mortgage payments have risen by hundreds of dollars, healthcare costs are up, and GP bulk billing is becoming rare.
This squeeze on working-class living standards comes on top of years of wage stagnation. Real wages are now no higher than they were in 2010.
What does the budget do to reverse this trend? Treasurer Jim Chalmers says that it will relieve cost-of-living pressures. The government’s press office, otherwise known as the Australian Council of Trade Unions, describes it as “a good budget for working people”. 
This is nonsense. For those on the lowest incomes, the budget offers no increase to JobSeeker, the age pension or sole parent allowances. The income tax cuts do nothing for those dependent on these payments since their taxable income is below the threshold. 
In refusing to lift these allowances, the government is ignoring the recommendations of its own advisory body which in April urged it to increase payments. 
Successive governments have treated the unemployed scandalously. The Albanese government has continued this shameful tradition, refusing to revert to the higher JobSeeker rate introduced early in the pandemic but cancelled after eighteen months.
There are also no measures in this budget to raise wages, nothing to stop companies from price gouging or landlords from raising rents, nothing to deal with lengthy waiting lists for elective surgery, and precious little for those with serious mental health needs.
Even the supposed goodies in the budget offer less on close examination.
<ul><li>The revised Stage 3 tax cuts will lift incomes for most workers. But for workers on annual incomes of less than $75,000, these only compensate them for the 2022 scrapping of the Low- and Middle-Income Tax Offset. For workers on higher salaries, the benefit is just a few hundred dollars a year, nothing like what is needed to restore real wages to where they were in 2019.</li><li>A 10 percent increase in rent assistance sounds good, but it only amounts to $19 a fortnight, far below the increase in rents. It only applies to those on social benefits, leaving millions to fend for themselves. It is also hemmed in by a range of restrictive eligibility criteria and does nothing to stop landlords from simply lifting rents again since the budget contained no measures to curb their greed.</li><li>Measures to encourage the construction of 1.2 million new homes by 2029 are meant to relieve the housing shortage. But this is all to be left to the private sector to deliver, and they won’t build homes unless they can make money from it. According to the budget figures, growth in dwelling investment will be zero next year after falling by 3.5 percent this year despite the government’s already-flagged funding commitments. The government’s own advisers predict that construction will fall short of the target by 300,000 homes. </li><li>A one-off $300 rebate on electricity bills for all households still leaves households paying more than before the hikes of recent years. The rebate is only for one year and does little more than artificially lower the inflation rate so the government can go into the next election boasting of its success in containing price increases. Gina Rinehart and her fellow billionaires are the recipients: a total waste of public money.</li><li>Funding for wage increases for aged care and childcare workers will help many low-paid workers, but because the government is staggering the payment of these funds and paying them to the operators rather than directly to the workers, there is no guarantee the workers will see the full amount.</li><li>A reduction in HECS/HELP indexation will reduce the outstanding debt, but it won’t affect annual debt repayments or prevent vice-chancellors and education ministers from raising fees and inflating student debt by thousands of dollars.</li></ul>
The Treasurer says that inflation is coming down and will fall further over the next year, relieving pressure on household budgets. The government hopes that falling inflation will encourage the Reserve Bank to relent on its high interest rate regime and give relief to mortgagees. 
But there is no certainty about this. 
Internationally, inflation is proving much stickier, and central banks are no longer set to cut interest rates at anything like the rate confidently predicted just six months ago. Those with mortgages can expect the interest squeeze to continue. And while inflation has fallen over the past year, the rate of wage increases is now tumbling, pulling down real wages. Even the bosses and the media have stopped screaming about the dangers of a (non-existent) “wage-price spiral”. 
The Albanese government’s third budget fails to alleviate the squeeze on working-class living standards. It is, as the Australian Council of Social Services argues, a budget with “a gaping hole in its heart”.
The problem is not just the dollar figures. 
For years, successive governments have white-anted public sector programs and handed them over to private companies. The Albanese government is now belatedly cutting back private sector consultants. Still, it leaves whole swathes of service provision, including aged care, childcare and disability services, in the hands of private operators. 
Government funding provides these private companies with a continuous flow of taxpayer money. None has any interest in meeting public need and for many, the real estate on which their property sits interests them more than those in their care. Government regulation of the sector is minimal, and private provision of services only leaves the public hostage to their price gouging. The lift in childcare subsidies to 90 percent of capped fees, for example, has done nothing to prevent operators from charging above the cap, taking parents back to square one.
The humiliation the unemployed face is not just the result of their low incomes but the poor treatment they receive at the hands of privatised employment services and the degrading and time-wasting mutual obligation requirements imposed on them.
Education, too, suffers from the private sector sucking resources from the public purse. The federal government pays more to private and religious schools than it does to public schools, only entrenching one of the most socially segregated education systems in the world.
So, too, with the housing policy, which is beholden to the private construction industry motivated by only one thing—their profit margins. This is obvious at the highest level. The Albanese government has set up the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council to provide it with “independent, evidence-based expert advice on matters affecting Australia’s housing supply and affordability”. Its chair? Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, CEO of $5 billion property developer Mirvac from 2012 to 2023 and currently a non-executive director of Macquarie Bank, Macquarie Group and Rio Tinto. Under such leadership, we can expect this body to have as much sympathy for the plight of tenants as the parliamentarians with their multi-property investment portfolios.
Everything about service provision to the most vulnerable is left to the tender mercies of corporations motivated by returns on investment, shareholder dividends and executive salary packages.
What would a budget that seriously addressed these issues look like?
What follows are some of the most obvious things the government could do to address the cost-of-living crisis and general dysfunction in public services.
Overhaul the tax system to reduce the burden on the working class.
Lift social welfare payments to the minimum wage and index them to average weekly earnings or the Consumer Price Index, whichever is the greater.
Kick private providers out of childcare, aged care and disability care and bring these industries under public control, adequately funded and democratically accountable to staff, users and their families. 
Fund public schools properly and ban the levying of additional charges.
Restore free university education and provide non-means-tested income support for tertiary students.
Fund Medicare sufficiently to fulfil its initial promise of delivering medical care to users free at the point of delivery.
Set and fund annual public sector wage targets to provide above-inflation pay rises.
Establish and adequately resource a public employment service agency to help job seekers find work.
Launch a program of public-sector home-building to ensure everyone has the right to a roof over their heads and introduce a rent freeze in the private rental sector.
Take energy generation and retailing back into public hands so that everyone may power their homes without swelling the coffers of giant energy companies.
Establish public enterprises to oversee the transition to renewable energy and new environmentally friendly products.
That is a long list and will cost a lot of money. But we could pay for it by no longer handing money to those who don’t need it. We could do the following to free up the funds to make a real difference in the lives of millions of workers.
Scrap the Stage 3 tax cuts for those in the top 20 percent of income earners, freeing up more than $148 billion over the next decade.
Eliminate subsidies to fossil fuel companies, which amount to $14.5 billion a year, and implement a super profits tax on the resources sector.
Abolish the various tax lurks for investors, such as the discount on capital gains tax and negative gearing concessions. Cancelling capital gains tax concessions for the top 10 percent would free up nearly three times as much as it would cost to lift JobSeeker to the age pension.
Tax those with superannuation balances of more than $2 million who use their super for tax-advantaged wealth management rather than provision for old age.
Return the corporate tax rate to the 46 percent that was in place until the 1980s.
Introduce a wealth tax. According to the Australia Institute, 93 percent of the wealth accumulation in Australia between 2009 and 2019 went to the top 10 percent. Let’s take back our share of these gains.
Impose an inheritance tax on all estates of more than $2 million. Australia is one of the few Western nations that doesn’t have such a tax.
End federal support for private schools.
Eliminate subsidies to private health insurance.
Slash military spending.
Such measures, however, are the furthest thing from the Albanese government’s mind. It is wholeheartedly committed to the interests of big business, the wealthy and the military. In this respect, Albanese is right. It is a “Labor party budget through and through” because, like all Labor governments before his, serving the capitalists is its priority. The government has few but crumbs for the rest of us.

Labor’s budget fills pockets of the rich, crumbs for workers

Israel’s bloody war in Gaza is soon to enter its third month. Three months of horror. Three months of mass killing and destruction. Fourteen thousand Palestinians dead, including at least five thousand children. The destruction of hundreds of thousands of homes, schools, hospitals, mosques and vital, life-sustaining infrastructure. 
From everything Israel has done so far, its goal seems clear—to drive the Palestinian population out of the Gaza Strip entirely, or, if that cannot be done, to herd them like cattle into a few square kilometres in the south. 
This is genocide, the attempted expunging of an entire population—a population comprising those who have already been driven out of their ancestral homes by Israeli terror and who are now facing a second dispossession, a second Nakba. 
Gaza will not be the end of it. Israeli occupation forces, including fascist “settlers”, have already ramped up attacks in the West Bank, killing more than 200 since October as they attempt to seize more land. The Zionist dream, and Palestinian nightmare, of “Greater Israel”, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, with Palestinians driven out or confined to wretched camps, increasingly seems like a real possibility.
And what is the West’s reaction to these horrors? To parrot the sickening line: “Israel has the right to defend itself”. The US continues to flood Israel with weaponry. Britain’s Royal Air Force does the same, flying military equipment to Israel from its base in Cyprus. The US uses the Pine Gap spy base outside Alice Springs to provide the IDF with intelligence. Australia supplies vital components for the F-35 bombers Israel uses to rain down hell on Gaza. 
With very few exceptions, the Western political establishment are cheering Israel on. Diplomatically, the US protects Israel from censure at the UN and stations battle fleets in the Mediterranean to enforce its writ.
The media in Australia chime in, regurgitating Israel’s talking points, with the ABC at the forefront. They invite Israeli spokespeople for interviews and let them openly lie without challenge. They invite Palestinian speakers and then interrupt them, insult them and call them liars. They spread lies about “beheaded babies” and Hamas using hospitals as command centres. 
The media continue to call it an “Israel-Hamas war”, as if they haven’t noticed that most of Israel’s victims are civilians and as if the Gaza Strip is an independent entity rather than a besieged enclave of terrified people. 
And when brave journalists speak up about the disgraceful news coverage of a war in which Israel has killed dozens of their colleagues in Gaza, their editors, several of whom have taken Israeli-funded “study tours” of Israel, threaten them.
+++++
If Western warmongers are united in support of Israel, they have not gone unchallenged at home. We are witnessing an unprecedented and inspiring wave of opposition to Israel’s murderous war. Pro-Palestine demonstrations, hundreds of thousands strong, have taken place in London and Washington, and more are coming. In Australia, opposition to Israeli barbarism is driving the biggest and most sustained wave of protest in support of Palestine in history. 
In response to previous Israeli wars on Palestine since 2008, impressive demonstrations of several thousand took place but dwindled fairly quickly. Now, it seems, things have changed. We are witnessing one of the most significant anti-war movements ever seen in Australia. 
The demonstrations are larger than any previous Palestine protests—between 30,000 and 50,000 strong in Sydney and Melbourne, up to 7,000 in Perth and Brisbane and 3,000 in Adelaide. Then there are the first school strikes for Palestine, attended by more than 1,000 in Melbourne and hundreds in Sydney.
It is not just the size but the number and consistency that are unprecedented. In most cities, marches have taken place every weekend since the war started, and numbers have if anything increased. There has not been a single political issue in Australian history—not climate change, not workers’ rights, not Indigenous rights, not LGBTI rights—that has had such a record of continuous mobilisation. 
The demonstrations have been defiant, young and energetic, with loud chanting and street sit-downs. Their demands have been straight to the point: “End the Bombing, end the siege”, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, “Israel, USA, how many kids did you kill today?”, ”Cut ties with Israel”, “Free, free Palestine!” and “Ceasefire now”, the last indicating the demand for an immediate end to the bloodshed, not “humanitarian pauses” that give way to more bombing.
Another indication of the vitality of these demonstrations is that, for many people, this is the first time they have protested for Palestine. Attendance at the rallies stretches beyond the Arab and Muslim communities, reflecting that support for Palestine is now becoming an important principle on the left and in broader society. 
There have certainly been bigger anti-war demonstrations in the past, most obviously with the Vietnam moratorium marches in 1970-71, up to 50,000 strong in a much smaller population, and the Iraq war protests in 2003 that mobilised 800,000 nationally. However, unlike the current protests, taking place weekly for seven weeks and counting, the three moratoriums happened over six months, and the monster Iraq demonstrations were one-off affairs.
Just as importantly, the current Palestine protests have taken place without any institutional support from the student and trade unions or the churches and are opposed by all wings of the ALP. 
Support from important sections of the ALP and the left-wing unions, particularly in Victoria, was a big factor in the success of the Vietnam moratoriums. These demonstrations were also the culmination of years of protests against the Vietnam War. With the Iraq war protests, the Victorian Trades Hall gave valuable support for the massive march of 250,000 in Melbourne, and the ALP signalled its, albeit half-hearted, support, leader Simon Crean speaking at the Brisbane rally. The Age newspaper gave substantial prior publicity for the Melbourne demonstration. 
That the ALP and some media backed the Iraq war protests reflected not just the unpopularity of the war but also divisions in the world’s ruling classes—the French and German governments opposed a US attack on Iraq without UN sanction. Protesting the Iraq war, therefore, seemed in line with important elements of capitalist opinion. The Vietnam moratoriums were similar, coming in the context of peace talks and when troop deployments were already being wound down.
Far from encouragement by sections of the political and media establishment, today’s protests for Palestine have been shunned, if not openly attacked, and have received very little media coverage. Where the media have taken an interest, it is to denigrate them as “anti-Semitic hate marches” or “dangerous” or, in the case of the school strike, to treat participants as dupes.
The politicians, Labor and Coalition, have been the same; in the early stages, state governments and councils tried to prevent marches taking place, while students striking for Palestine have been treated with condescension and, on occasion, as with the protest against Israeli shipping line Zim, police have violently attacked Palestine supporters.
Trade unions have not opposed the protests but have done little to support them beyond sending speakers. Professional organisations in the health sector have only issued “both sides” statements rather than condemning Israel’s war crimes.
The only political force to oppose the bombing is the Greens, but even here, they do not mobilise their supporters to attend the demonstrations or have a visible presence on the marches. 
Yet despite all this, supporters of Palestine have repeatedly come out in their thousands. The scale of the horrors of the war and revulsion at the actions of our government are driving people onto the streets, in defiance of our “leaders”.
The war continues nevertheless. But rather than despair, we must keep protesting for Palestine. And we need to do what we can to build a bigger movement that can one day challenge this horror, and that ultimately can bring down the whole system that causes it.

Israel’s genocide prompts historic movement

The royal commission into robodebt, which handed down its final report in early July, has confirmed that our country is run by ghouls—politicians, senior bureaucrats and high-paid lawyers characterised, in the words of Commissioner Catherine Holmes, by “venality, incompetence and cowardice”.
For more than four years, from 2015 until 2019, when the immoral and unjust scheme was halted, its architects and enforcers terrorised some of the country’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged people just because they could. Although not all, some have now been referred to the Australian Federal Police, the new National Anti-Corruption Commission and professional conduct bodies for public servants and practising lawyers. The chief offenders in this disgraceful episode must be thrown in jail.
The Robodebt scheme was an automated program that looked for discrepancies between Centrelink recipients’ reported income and Australian Tax Office yearly income data. The program, which was illegal and flawed, calculated “overpayments” ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. 
The estimated 443,000 Centrelink recipients identified by this process as having been paid more than they were entitled to were then subjected to a campaign of harassment via letters, emails and automated calls, including by private debt collectors on behalf of Centrelink. 
Debt notifications ballooned from 20,000 per year to 900,000 at the scheme’s height, between July 2016 and October 2018. 
Any presumption of innocence was abandoned; those targeted were required to prove that they had not been overpaid. If they did not pay or respond, possibly because Centrelink addresses were out of date, they faced having their tax returns or bank accounts illegally garnisheed in pursuit of what were overwhelmingly fake debts. 
The government’s depravity knew no bounds. Then Human Services Minister Alan Tudge appeared on Channel 9’s A Current Affair in late 2016 to warn victims: “We’ll find you, we’ll track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison”. When victims of the scheme went public, Tudge’s media adviser Rachelle Miller passed on confidential information to friendly media outlets to smear them. Unsurprisingly, this had the desired effect of intimidating others from coming forward.
At least three victims committed suicide after being relentlessly pursued over debts they could not pay. Many thousands more were subjected to intense stress and panic and endured months, if not years, of anxiety.
Cabinet ministers responsible knew from the outset that it was illegal. Scott Morrison championed the program as social services minister, declaring himself the “strong welfare cop on the beat”. He was the first to “disappear” damning legal advice, but others were implicated. Stuart Robert, government services minister from 2019 to 2021, continued to parrot the government’s lines in 2019, even after it was forced to settle a Federal Court test case.
Kathryn Campbell, secretary of the Department of Human Services from 2011 to 2017, publicly defended the scheme for its entire existence and did all she could to prevent its illegal nature from coming to the Ombudsman’s attention. 
Robodebt was eventually scrapped. Not because those involved suffered an attack of conscience. Nor did the system’s other supposed safeguards step in. Not the Ombudsman, who was convinced by the Coalition’s deception, nor the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which had been so corrupted by blatant political appointments that it was incapable of doing other than backing the government. 
It was only undone because the scheme’s victims stood up and objected and got some media attention. Several brave Centrelink staff also blew the whistle. In 2019, under legal pressure media investigations, the government pulled back and rescinded the debt notices. Only in November 2019, however, did it finally bury the scheme. Some small justice was done in 2021 when the government settled a class action brought by victims of the scheme, paying $112 million in compensation to 400,000 class group members—an average of just $280 each. This was not nearly enough.
The scheme was shelved because it was illegal and the government knew it could not stand up in court. But as Colleen Taylor, one of the Centrelink whistleblowers, asked, “Why wasn’t it stopped long before because of all the other reasons: immoral, unjust, unfair, cruel?”
The Royal Commission was damning in its findings, stating that “the dishonesty and collusion to prevent the scheme’s lack of legal foundation coming to light” was “truly dismaying”. The commissioner said, “People were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money” and “the scheme was launched in circumstances where little to no regard was had to the individuals and vulnerable cohorts that it would affect. The ill effects of the scheme were varied, extensive, devastating and continuing”.
The commission found that Scott Morrison—who, as social services minister, treasurer and then prime minister, was involved in Robodebt at every step of the way—“allowed Cabinet to be misled” about the legality of the scheme. It “rejected as untrue” his defence. It found that Social Services Minister Christian Porter “could not rationally have been satisfied of the legality of the scheme”. Tudge’s smear campaign against the scheme’s victims represented a “reprehensible” “abuse of power”. Stuart Robert “was making statements of fact ... citing statistics which he knew could not be right”. 
The commission’s findings were all couched in the measured language those in the ruling class use when publicly judging their peers. But those without such class prejudices can speak plainly: these fuckers made life hell for hundreds of thousands of people for years and should pay for their crimes.
It’s not just their cold-hearted cruelty, which enabled them to press ahead with Robodebt even as the toll of human misery piled higher, that makes the blood boil. It’s their bloody hypocrisy. They dare to claim they were protecting the public purse from welfare fraud, but these entitled scumbags live off the public purse in luxury. The politicians, senior public servants and lawyers responsible were all drawing salaries of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Several politicians have quit parliament since the scheme closed, but you can be sure they’ll be looked after. 
The nine-year record of the Coalition government was one of ministers serving their business mates first and foremost. But they also used millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on pork-barrelling in marginal electorates to save their political careers. Even now they are tapping the public purse, with eight former ministers racking up a taxpayer-funded legal bill of $2.5 million for their appearances at the Royal Commission.
Will justice be served? Government Services Minister Bill Shorten, who set up the Royal Commission, says those responsible “had gaslighted the nation and its citizens for four-and-a-half years”. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says that Robodebt was a “gross betrayal and a human tragedy” and must never happen again.
We shall see. Kathryn Campbell was appointed by the Albanese government last year to the specially created position of AUKUS pact adviser in the Department of Defence on a salary of $890,000. Given such treatment of key offenders, can we seriously expect a thoroughgoing purge of those responsible?
As for “never happening again”, the Labor government continues its predecessor’s persecution of the nation’s poorest. Ministers may not talk about “leaners and lifters”, as Liberal Treasurer Joe Hockey did in pushing austerity in 2014, but they continue to target supposed “welfare fraud”, even though the Royal Commission stated that such fraud was grossly exaggerated and served only to legitimise programs like Robodebt. In just six months, the government’s new employment services system has suspended welfare payments to hundreds of thousands of claimants, including Indigenous people, the homeless and people with a mental or physical disability.
It was ALP Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin who, in 2012, condemned tens of thousands of disabled people to even greater poverty when she introduced changes to eligibility for the disability support pension. As Rick Morton, one of the journalists who pursued the Robodebt story for years, writes in the Monthly, “It is no small irony that the party most effective at kicking disabled people off the pension and onto the lower-rate dole, despite having permanent or partial incapacities for work, was the Australian Labor Party”. 
And it was the Gillard government that, in the same year, also dumped nearly 200,000 sole parents onto Newstart instead of the more generous single-parent allowance, cutting their incomes by between $60 and $100 a week—a step the Albanese government has only partially reversed.
Robodebt may be gone, but justice won’t be served until the entire system is completely overhauled and made fit for those in need. In the meantime, those who made others suffer so grievously should now suffer themselves.

Royal commission into robodebt lifts the lid on the bastards who run Australia

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has accelerated a series of underlying trends in world politics that are leading us into a dangerous new world order. This new order is not arriving already formed, and there will be interruptions and reverses along the way, but four key features are coming into view:
First, the return of inter-imperialist rivalry as the key factor in world politics and an end to the illusion promoted by some liberals that the expansion of world trade and investment has rendered geopolitical competition a thing of the past.
Second, an intensive push by both the US and China to rally second-tier imperialists and others behind their banners to strengthen and expand their geopolitical blocs. The scope for smaller states to balance between the two big imperialists is dwindling.
Third, the subordination of economics to politics as the rival imperialist powers try to reduce their dependence on each other. When national security and international supply chains conflict, national security comes first. Energy is leading, but other sectors are following. 
Fourth, the increased possibility of a new regional or world war involving two or more imperialist powers. Even if such a war may not be imminent, the decisions being taken by governments today are all shaped by their belief that one is likely. 
The war in Ukraine has brought war and its miseries back into the heart of Europe. Heavy artillery and missiles are once again being used against major cities. Despite the onslaught on its neighbour, Russia has not prevailed. The Ukrainian resistance has pushed back Russia’s invasion.
The Biden administration has seized on President Putin’s aggression to weaken Russia. It has imposed deep and painful sanctions and directed tens of billions of dollars of military and financial aid to Kyiv. Ukraine’s success, with Western backing, has allowed the US to recover some of the prestige it lost after its disastrous Middle East wars and occupations, which culminated in its panicked withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
The US has attempted to hurt Putin as much as possible without provoking a direct clash between the two powers. The Biden administration rejected Ukrainian calls to impose a no-fly zone in the early days of the war. It has been slow to deliver long-range weapons systems out of fear that Ukraine might use them to push the war across Russia’s borders. The US certainly does not regard Ukraine as worth fighting a war over.
The Ukraine war has illustrated the US’s abiding power as much as it has revealed Russia’s weakness. The US has the most powerful military in the world, and its weapons systems and military intelligence have been used with devastating effects by Ukraine. The US-led sanctions against Russia have also demonstrated American financial firepower in the form of US control over the international flow of money and credit. None of its allies or enemies can mobilise anything like its resources, and the Biden administration has used this edge to draw its partners behind it and to intimidate its enemies.
Russia’s invasion has brought home to every European government that the US security umbrella remains indispensable. The war has undermined any pretensions of the German and French ruling classes that the European Union might be emerging as a uniquely independent imperialist bloc after the lengthy period of US continental domination in the post-WWII and post-Cold War eras. America has mobilised its power to make the European powers dance to its tune. Sanctions on Russian gas have demonstrated the limits of Germany’s economic strategy of trading with Moscow while relying on the US for military security. 
Indeed, the war has forced the German government, despite some resistance, to go along with the US’s broader geopolitical priorities, including switching out of Russian energy, even as this comes at a cost, at least in the short term, to German capitalism, which must now pay higher prices for US- and Qatar-supplied gas. The US has also used the war to break widespread opposition in Germany to higher military spending. Germany is set to double military outlays in coming years, and Finland and Sweden have applied to join NATO, significantly strengthening Western military capacity on Russia’s northern borders. 
Despite Ukraine dominating the news in 2022, China remains the US’s main enemy. The governments of both countries have been developing their military and industrial strategies on the basis that a clash between the two is likely. 
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US enjoyed an extended period of hegemony in the world system. Most countries found ways to operate within what the US calls the “international rules-based order”—the network of institutions and rules underwritten by US power that shape world politics. The US and China grew and restructured their economies through closer integration in this situation, particularly after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Those days are now gone. Thanks to the spectacular growth of the Chinese economy and the accretion of state power that has gone with it, China and the US are now contesting for control in the Indo-Pacific: about 60 percent of maritime trade passes through Asia and about one-third through the South China Sea. China cannot tolerate a situation in which it must play second fiddle to the US and be prevented from exercising what it regards as its proper role in the region. Boosting China’s strength in world politics has been one of Xi Jinping’s main priorities since becoming Chinese leader in 2012; this project was confirmed this year by the twentieth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which effectively appointed Xi leader-for-life.
China’s ambitions in Asia are a threat to the US. Washington cannot afford to see its Pacific fleet pushed out of East Asia, because this would signal to allies and adversaries alike that it is no longer “the world’s indispensable nation”, as Hillary Clinton once described the US. 
Both sides are developing a multipronged strategy to defeat the other. The Biden administration has inherited and intensified the Trump administration’s targeting of China across all domains. The US has worked with its allies to forge an anti-China diplomatic and military bloc in Asia. Chief among these are Japan, South Korea and Australia. All four have concluded that they must push back against China’s growing strategic threat to the US-led alliance, despite the disruption to trade and investment that this might entail.
The US and its allies this year stepped up efforts to integrate their militaries and prepare for war. The US plans to devote the bulk of its navy and air force to the region, and its three regional partners are also significantly increasing their military spending. As a result of the AUKUS pact and associated agreements, Australia is committed to buying a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines and providing the US military with bases for operations against China. 
Taiwan will be a flash point. As long as Taiwan is aligned with the US, China regards it as an obstacle to its control over the South China Sea. Xi has watched as the US mobilised NATO against Russia and fears that China might be subjected to the same coercion if it moves on Taiwan. He is doubling down on building China’s military and economic self-reliance to escape this fate. 
Taiwan matters to the US in a way that Ukraine does not. After decades of diplomatic evasiveness on the question, President Biden this year repeatedly stated that the US will back Taipei in the event of a Chinese invasion. So the US is pushing NATO to spread its reach into Asia. At the June NATO summit in Madrid, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan all attended for the first time. The statement issued after the meeting was the first to cite China as a threat, a “challenge to our interests, security and values”. Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada all dispatched warships to the South China Sea in 2021-22, an indication that the US is getting its ducks in a row for a forthcoming war.
Growing imperialist tensions have also made apparent the perils for US imperialism of too much economic interdependence. While the country exercised global hegemony, effectively suppressing inter-imperialist military conflict for a period, big corporations could freely choose how and where to invest and trade, with a few marginal exceptions (Cuba and North Korea, for example). This allowed for a partial disarticulation of commerce and statecraft. Even in sensitive sectors such as armaments, where the Pentagon is the main customer, US companies outsourced the production of steel and key electronic components to China. Now, the increased tension forces commerce to align with state priorities as trade and investment barriers go up and more solid geopolitical blocs form. In the recent past, control over global oil reserves was at the forefront of strategic thinking and military deployments, but the front lines today are advanced computational system manufacture and the inputs, such as rare earths and other minerals, required to manufacture them.
For China, there is nothing new about this. Beijing has long regarded business as a handmaiden to national power. China has for years been trying to foster greater self-reliance in core sectors, particularly in computing, semiconductors and satellite technology. This is what underpins the “China 2025” program, which aims to stimulate local production in a range of high-tech sectors. 
The US state is now playing catch-up. War in Europe, a potential clash in Asia and the disruption to trade caused by the COVID pandemic have all driven home to policymakers the risks inherent in supply chains involving China. There is bipartisan agreement that the business of imperialism is too important to be left to business people, and that business must bend to the will of the State Department and the Pentagon. As the Biden administration puts it: “Economic security is national security”. “Made in America” is now replacing globalisation as the guiding principle.
The US is attempting to reconfigure its industrial base to bring industry “home”—or at least to its close allies and away from China. Those industries most connected to the military are the priority. In the latter half of 2022, the White House signed off on billions of dollars in subsidies for local production of semiconductors, artificial intelligence, robotics and quantum computing. More tens of billions of dollars in grants will encourage the US production of solar panels, electric batteries and electric cars.
The other side of what one Financial Times commentator described as the US’s “total economic war” against China is its attempt to crush that country’s ability to upgrade its industrial base. In October, the US Commerce Department introduced export controls to limit Beijing’s access to cutting-edge technologies, whether for civilian or military applications. This is a trade war with teeth, propelled by imperialist rivalry. History has shown that trade wars are often just the precursors to shooting wars.
Energy security has been a big driver of imperialist policy, both East and West. This has been a US priority for years: if the Pentagon were forced to rely on imported oil, it could not be confident that its tanks and jet fighters would be able to operate in wartime. The US has now achieved self-reliance in energy and is a major oil exporter and supplier of LNG after billions of dollars in investment in fracking. This gives the US leverage against Europe. European governments have discovered the cost of relying on Russian energy and are now reopening coal mines and extending the life of nuclear power plants that were scheduled to close. The EU now depends on Russia for only 9 percent of its gas, down from 40 percent before the invasion of Ukraine.
China lacks sufficient coal and gas supplies to power industry and must secure a supply from friendly nations. Connections with Russia and Iran have grown this year, but also with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which have bridled at US attempts to regulate Gulf oil exports.
There has been some pushback by US allies against a new world order dominated by US and Chinese blocs. The EU has imperialist interests of its own that do not coincide with those of the US, particularly in relation to China. Washington is trying to reduce trade and investment links with China and to encourage its allies to do the same—from the perspective of the US ruling class, nothing is gained, and much is lost, if US companies withdraw from China only for European capitalists to fill the gap. 
So in Biden’s first year in office, the US pressured the EU to scrap the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with China that it was on the verge of finalising. But the German government and many German capitalists are keen to keep commercial relations open. In 2022, the German government approved Chinese company Cosco’s acquisition of a 25 percent share in a Hamburg container terminal despite an intensive US lobbying effort to block it. German companies BASF, Aldi, Hella and Siemens are all expanding their footprint in China, investing a record €10 billion in the first half of 2022, to the dismay of the US government.
Measures taken by the US to target China are also hurting the EU. The Biden administration’s massive subsidies for local production of high-tech goods are putting European exporters such as Dutch semiconductor company ASML at a disadvantage in the US market, weakening European efforts to build the industry at home, a key tenet of the EU’s “New Industrial Strategy”. With gas prices five times higher than in the US, in part the product of US-led sanctions on Russia, European producers have been dealt a double blow by the US. The European Commission is investigating tit-for-tat measures to protect European capitalists from predatory American actions. 
So while the US has used the Ukraine war to impose its prerogatives on Germany and France, it isn’t yet so clear that the European powers will submit all along the line when it comes to China—where the stakes for European capitalists and EU imperial strategists are higher.
One era in world politics is ending and a new era is unfolding. Imperialist rivalry is becoming more dangerous. Military budgets are on the rise. Nationalism is ascendant. We are not imminently facing a situation akin to August 1914, but the logic of developments is pushing in the direction of that ghastly moment when all-out imperialist war took the world into the abyss. The terrible weapons the imperialists have at their disposal, and the consequences for each should it fail to win, warn us of the catastrophe that lies in store for the world’s population if a new regional or world war breaks out.

Great power rivalry resurgent

Union coverage, in steady decline since the early 1980s, took another sharp turn for the worse in 2022. The latest figures, released by the Bureau of Statistics in mid-December, show that membership has fallen by 76,000 in two years, to 1.4 million, even as the workforce has grown. The outcome is that just one in eight workers in Australia are now union members, down from one in two 40 years ago. 
Declining union coverage is an international phenomenon, but the fall has been more pronounced in Australia than in most other countries. Australian unions have gone from having one of the highest rates of coverage in the West in the early 1980s to one of the lowest.
These figures do not fully convey the seriousness of the situation: just 5 percent of workers aged 20 to 24 are now in trade unions, compared to 21 percent of those aged 60-64. Unless radical action is taken, trade unions are heading for irrelevance.
What has been the ACTU’s reaction to this terrible news? Silence. Not a peep from the union peak body—nor from any other union. This is telling. That a big majority of workplaces in Australia no longer have a single trade union member is not enough to stir the union leaders into action says everything about the ruinous strategy that now dominates the upper echelons of the union movement. 
If your stock in trade is to run off press releases or call upper-house politicians to lobby them about industrial legislation, you don’t need a strong union presence in the country’s factories, warehouses, hospitals, schools and offices, active union delegates and a willingness to fight the bosses. 
It’s not that workers no longer have grievances or that the union leaders are unaware of them. The ACTU regularly refers to examples of workers being scandalously ripped off. It bemoans the dramatic cut in real wages that has occurred this year as prices have leapt ahead of wages. But the union leaders refuse to organise the kind of fightback needed to address these problems. 
Going back to the ACTU’s Your Rights @ Work campaign to bring down the Howard Liberal government in 2005-07, the union leaders have thrown members’ resources into electioneering on behalf of the Labor Party. Time and again, union delegates have been called up en masse to phone bank for Labor, to doorknock for Labor, to hand out how-to-vote cards for Labor. The leaders tell union activists that unions will get their rights back only with Labor in office and only then will higher wages follow.
This strategy is a dead end. The Rudd Labor government that won office in 2007 off the back of the Your Rights @ Work campaign was a disaster for workers. It introduced the anti-strike laws that shackle the unions today. But the ACTU boasted that these laws were a big win. The ACTU is doing the same today with the Albanese government’s new Secure Jobs and Better Pay legislation, which tinkers with enterprise bargaining but further reduces the right of workers to strike for higher pay and better conditions. The shackles are, if anything, getting tighter with these new laws.
Why does this matter? Because the unions cannot win unless they mobilise members for a fight. This could be political, campaigning to expose the fact that the Albanese government is on the side of the bosses, not the workers. It could involve mass demonstrations protesting against the savage wage cuts now being imposed on public sector workers by Labor state governments. It could be an industrial campaign involving serious strikes to break through the public sector pay limits, or solidarity action to support groups like the West Australian nurses, who were recently left to fight alone against the McGowan government.
Political and industrial battles matter not just because they result in higher living standards, but because they infuse the unions with a fighting spirit that draws other workers towards them, establishing the basis for union renewal.
The ACTU and the rest of the union leaders don’t want any of this. They’re in bed with the ALP and look to Labor to save them. Some do it because they’ve got political careers in their sights, but most are either too lazy or too scared to mobilise their members— because it’s too much work or it risks setting in motion a struggle that might escape their control. 
They want to appeal to the bosses on the basis of being “reasonable”; of being “partners” managing the business, the industry, the economy, capitalism. This is why the ACTU heaps praise on Labor’s new industrial laws on the basis that, by giving the Fair Work Commission even more power to cancel strikes, these laws might drive down Australia’s already very low strike rate.
The current membership crisis is the worst in the history of the labour movement. To turn things around, we need a complete change of course in our unions. This will involve a return to the kind of class struggle that built them in the first place.

Union membership in free fall as union leaders suck up to Labor

The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirm that real wages are falling at the fastest rate since the Great Depression, possibly even the 1890s, both period of massive unemployment.
Wages are up by 3.1 percent in the past year—but prices rose by 7.3 percent, meaning that real wages have fallen by more than 4 percentage points. This is at a minimum. Price increases on most essential goods and services are rising by more than 8 percent, eating even faster into household budgets.
This is not just a freak result. Real wages have been sliding throughout the pandemic. Since March 2020, inflation-adjusted wages have fallen in Victoria by 5.1 percent, in NSW by 5.8 percent and in Queensland by 7.4 percent. This comes on top of years of wage stagnation since the election of the Abbott government in 2013 
This situation is disastrous. It is also completely avoidable. At a time when the bosses have been screaming about labour shortages, with high vacancy rates and unemployment at 50-year lows, our unions should be taking full advantage of workers’ relatively strong bargaining position to score big wage increases. 
The bosses could be forced to pay up. In the private sector, in areas such as finance and insurance or real estate, where workers are mostly employed on individual agreements, bosses have been jacking up wages and granting sign-on or retention bonuses amounting to a 4.4 percent increase over twelve months, up from 2.9 percent the previous year. But in the public sector, where teachers and health workers are more likely to be on collective union agreements, the increase was just 2.4 percent, no different from a year ago.
There is no sign that public sector workers on union agreements will do any better in the next year or two, because many are locked into collective agreements that incorporate wage increases of just 2 to 3 percent for the full three years of the agreement. Workers in education, one of the more unionised areas of the workforce, are actually experiencing the lowest wage rises out of any—just 2.2 percent—as state governments and university vice-chancellors tighten the screws and meet little resistance from unions. Union agreements are now a drag on workers’ wages, a scandalous situation.
The Labor Party has been no friend of the workers. More often than not it’s been state Labor governments that have imposed wage cuts on teachers, public servants and health workers. 
Unless workers and unions begin to resist, the situation is only going to get worse. The Albanese government was elected in part on a promise to raise wages and bring electricity bills under control. It is now doing the opposite. Ministers tell us that we must accept wage reductions for at least the next two years to bring inflation under control, despite the fact that wages have had little to do with soaring prices. 
Together with the Reserve Bank, the Albanese government is trying to slow the economy to create more unemployment to hold down wages even more. Interest repayments on mortgages and credit card debt, rising at the fastest rate for decades, are also bearing down on workers. 
Labor’s new, misleadingly named Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill, which it and the ACTU tout as a way to lift wages, may only make things worse by giving the Fair Work Commission even more powers to order unions to end strikes.
Rising unemployment will give the bosses more ability to pick and choose workers, reducing the pressure to offer wage hikes to attract staff. 
While workers are getting screwed, the bosses are still raking it in: profits were up by 28 percent in the June quarter, and are now well above their long-term average.

Workers’ wages squeezed at a record rate

The revelation by ABC’s Four Corners program on 31 October that the US Air Force will base six B-52 bombers in the Northern Territory is the latest signal that the United States is preparing for war with China and confirms Australia’s bipartisan commitment to these murderous plans.
The Pentagon will deploy the B-52s to the Tindal air base near Katherine. US bombers have previously conducted exercises with Australian forces in the NT, but this will be the first time that they have been based in the Territory, most likely for six months at a time during the dry season, when Australia, the US and other allies undertake extensive war games involving thousands of troops.
Along with rotating the bombers through Tindal, the US reportedly will spend tens of millions of dollars on the base, building an aircraft parking apron, a squadron operations facility and a maintenance centre to support them. 
B-52 bombers are designed for one purpose—long-range missions to drop conventional or nuclear weapons. 
Australia may be far from the US Air Force’s target—China—but that is why the bombers will be stationed here. China’s growing military capacity is rendering the US’s biggest military bases in the region—Okinawa and Guam—vulnerable to Chinese missile attacks. Northern Australia, by contrast, is out of reach from all but China’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, but close enough for B-52s to bomb China and return to base in a single sortie. The US Air Force confirmed the Four Corners report, stating, “The ability to deploy USAF bombers to Australia sends a strong message to adversaries about our ability to project lethal firepower”.
The decision to host B-52 bombers represents a significant step-up in Australian integration in US war planning. It was made without any parliamentary vote or public scrutiny and came to light only when Four Corners found out about it in US tender documents. Even when questioned about the revelations the day after they were screened, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refused to discuss it, saying only: “We engage with our friends in the US alliance from time to time. There are visits to Australia, including in Darwin, that has US marines on a rotating basis stationed there”. 
In line with US conventions regarding US Navy submarines visiting Australian ports, the US will not inform the Australian public if the bombers are nuclear-armed. So much for the democracy that the US and allies like Australia say they are defending.
The upgrading of Tindal is part of a larger US military footprint in the Territory. Starting under the Obama administration, the US has rotated marines through Darwin, initially around 250 each year, but growing to 2,000 in what is a US base in all but name. The US will spend $1 billion on building eleven enormous fuel storage tanks and an ammunition bunker in Darwin, enabling the US to use northern Australia as a platform to wage war without relying on Guam or Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. This will increase the deployment of US military personnel in the Territory.
Four Corners also reported on the significant expansion of the secretive spy station Pine Gap, jointly managed by US and Australian intelligence agencies and situated 25 kilometres outside Alice Springs. Pine Gap is the US’ most potent foreign intelligence-gathering facility. It can listen in on communications anywhere in the vast expanse from the Middle East and Africa to the Indian Ocean, Asia and the Pacific (and on domestic targets in Australia itself). The information is transmitted directly to US regional military commands and the Pentagon, enabling the US to launch and sustain wars. 
These moves fit into a broader picture of hawkish US military posturing. In the Biden administration’s recent National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy, the White House defines the 2020s as a “decisive decade” of “geopolitical conflict between the major powers”. The US identifies China as its primary adversary as it is “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic and technological power to do so”.
The US regards Australia, along with Japan and South Korea, as its most important allies in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is the southern anchor of the Pentagon’s war gaming, a launch pad for the US Air Force and Navy and a base from which to blockade Chinese merchant shipping in the event of open hostilities. Australia is now thoroughly integrated into US war planning through the AUKUS partnership and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.
This has nothing to do with safeguarding peace in the Indo-Pacific—the rationale provided by the generals, politicians and foreign policy think tanks. By agreeing to cooperate with US efforts to maintain its domination of the Indo-Pacific, Australia is trying to prop up a status quo that has been hell for many in the region.
The US has waged murderous wars, most notoriously in Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s, which have resulted in millions of deaths. It has supported dictators and repressive regimes, from Suharto in Indonesia and Marcos in the Philippines to the generals in Thailand today. The US retains the world’s most powerful nuclear weapons stockpile and is the only country to use them in wartime. And its “rules-based order” works primarily for the benefit of US multinational companies and US banks to exploit trade and investment opportunities in the region (although, frustratingly for the US, China has itself taken advantage of this “order” in the past two decades). 
Australia has been the loyal lieutenant and fellow belligerent in much of this, not because it is simply an American puppet, but because the Australian ruling class regards a strong US as a prerequisite for its own regional ambitions and profiteering.
Australia’s decision to provide the US with basing facilities not only heightens the risk of a terrifying war that could cost the lives of millions of people in the Indo-Pacific but also makes Australia itself a target. China has already made clear that it regards any nation directly participating in an attack on China or providing facilities to enable such an attack as a hostile power. The most likely flashpoint is Taiwan, which Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed to “reunite” with the Chinese mainland. Some hawkish think tanks believe a clash between the US and China over Taiwan might occur as early as 2025. 
The drive to war in the Indo-Pacific must be halted or catastrophe will result.

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