Hundreds of refugees rallied outside Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s office in Oakleigh, in south-east Melbourne, on Monday, demanding permanent visas for those who have still not gained protection more than a year after the election of the federal Labor government.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers claimed last week that the average Australian worker is $3,700 “better off” than a year ago, citing this as proof that Labor in government has delivered on its promise to “get wages moving again”. The West Australian newspaper called it “Labor’s wages growth win”. Other media headlines could almost have tricked you into thinking that workers are getting richer right now.
If decisions in Australia were made by people with common sense rather than business-loving pro-capitalist sycophants, Qantas would be nationalised. The company has repeatedly made headlines since the beginning of the pandemic for a variety of attacks on its workers and customers.
Australia’s goods and services tax is the one tax that the rich in this country love.
As the referendum approaches, the key dynamic in the debate is clear. The conservative right views a defeat for the Voice as a chance to strike a devastating blow against support for Indigenous rights among the Australian population. In the process, it is reviving every racist myth in the play book: Indigenous people shouldn’t get “special privileges”; opposing anti-Aboriginal racism is actually “dividing the nation”; and the colonisation of Australia had only a “positive impact”, in the words of Jacinta Price.
We are in the midst of a housing crisis. One obvious way to alleviate this would be to build hundreds of thousands of public housing properties. But the state and federal Labor governments have refused to do this. Instead, they are offering tax cuts for the rich and handouts to private developers.