March in March Gold Coast: Down with the corporatists
Add
In a speech to the Gold Coast March in March today, managing editor David Donovan minces no words in explaining why it is important Australians reject Abbott and his "corporatist" neoliberal agenda.In 1996, after his election loss to John Howard, Paul Keating famously said:
"When you change the Government, you change the country."He was right.
During John Howard's seemingly endless rule, the country changed profoundly.
John Howard coveted the popularity of Pauline Hanson and so, after he had put her in gaol and stolen all her supporters, he adopted her ugly, divisive, racist, small-minded policies as his own.
It worked well for him.
The country was changed forever.
Indigenous Australians, asylum seekers, multiculturalism, scientists,
academics, artists — anyone opposing Howard and his big financial
supporters were in his sights.
And who were his big financial supporters? The graspers, the
grifters, the plutocrats, the big corporations — all the people who fund
the Liberal Party for millions every year.
Let’s call them ‘the corporatists’.
Howard said he wanted to make Australians "relaxed and comfortable"
and to do that he spent the profits of the mining boom buying the votes
of upper-middle bogans and cutting the taxes of his financial
supporters.
Building Australia didn't get a look in. He may have put up a few flagpoles — but not much else.
By 2005, the people who were paying the Liberal Party's bills wanted more.
It was time for Howard to pay back more of his debt to them. And how
did they want it repaid? They wanted to pay their workers less, of
course.
And so Howard brought in WorkChoices.
WorkChoices, let’s be very clear, was about nothing else than paying
working men and women less and taking away their entitlements and
conditions. This was something the corporatists had always wanted
ideologically and financially.
Howard tried to give it to them. But he failed.
To save his miserable carcass, in the 2007 campaign against Rudd, Howard even tried to use the same phrase as Keating:
"When you change the Government, you change the country."But unluckily for him, the people said:
“Exactly!”Howard tried to give the corporatists cheap people. But, thankfully, he couldn't manage it.
After a brilliant campaign by the trade unions of Australia, the Australian people voted Howard out.
And there was much rejoicing.
And the country did change with Rudd — for a while.
Before six months had elapsed in his prime ministership, Rudd had said sorry to the Stolen Generations. He had abolished the Pacific Solution. He had ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
He had, most importantly, started spending money on home insulation and vital school infrastructure, which also managed to save Australia from the Global Financial Crisis.
We were getting our country back. We were regaining the respect of
the world. We were working to solve the problems besetting humanity. We
were building assets for our families and communities, which we could
all use and about which we could be proud.
The corporatists gritted their teeth.
Then Rudd went further — too far for them.
He wrote an essay in The Monthly decrying neo-liberalism. Warning bells rang for the corporatists.
The alarms moved up an octave when Rudd tried to bring in an ETS. The Liberal Party leader of the time, Malcolm Turnbull, also supported action on climate change, but the corporatists pulled one of their dirty tricks with Godwin Grech and got rid of him with ease, bringing in a thick-headed compliant stooge in the shape of Tony Abbott.
Australia ‒ the miners, the bankers, the foreign media moguls ‒ they all
got together and hounded Rudd out of office.
In came Julia Gillard — so they used the obvious dissension in the Labor Party to undermine her as well.
She wasn't meant to win in 2010 — but she did, just. And she and the
Independents did a good job in shepherding Australia through the last
three years.
But you wouldn't have heard that from the biased, yellow, Tory press.
A U.S. national, with far too much interest in Australian domestic
affairs, set to work on vilifying and destroying Australia's first
female Prime Minister. And the level of misogyny, bigotry and hatred
stunned everyone with a shred of decency in their soul.
It may not be a popular thing to say — but Australia was well-run by Julia Gillard.
Can we say the same today?
With Murdoch running the PR for the Liberals and the Abbott camp,
there was never any doubt he would become PM. The vitriol and bias from
the owner of 70% of Australia's press was beyond anything we have ever
seen — anywhere in the world.
The front page that sticks in my mind is the one saying: 'Kick this mob out'.
Media bias doesn't get much cruder than that.
And so Abbott was installed above us as Australian Prime Minister.
Now allow me to let you in on a secret. I think the people who put
Abbott in power know he won't stay there long. He is too bigoted, too
awkward, too unpopular, too strange, too aggressive, too extreme, too
out of touch with the mainstream of Australian society...
In short, he is too much of a dickhead to be Australian prime minister for very long.
So the people who really run this nation need to get their neoliberal agenda through as quickly as possible.
And we have seen that in the first six months of Abbott's Government.
Keating and Howard said, when you change the Government you change
the country — well, everything is changing very quickly under Abbott.
The auto industry has gone, penalty rates are going, the Barrier Reef
is about to wear a layer of sludge and Gina Rinehart looks like she
will soon be able to get her wish
and pay no tax at all. Oh, and Rupert Murdoch will soon be able to own
every newspaper, television station and radio station in Australia.
The corporations ‒ the ones who really run things ‒ have got their
dream by having Tony Abbott in power. They think they have won.
We must make them think again.
It is us ‒ the people who have marched in March all over Australia,
100,000 of us and more ‒ who will stop their evil plans for Australia.
They think they've got us on the run. But who do they think they're kidding?
Their time is coming swiftly to an end.
It is time for us to say: Down with the oligarchs. Down with the
plutocrats. Down with the people who will make your children work for $2
a day.
Down with Gina Rinehart. Down with the IPA.
Down with the mindless media that will fill your mind with propaganda and rubbish. Down with Murdoch.
Down with Abbott and his neoliberal henchman.
Down with dickheads.
Thank you.
You can follow David Donovan on Twitter @davrosz.
No comments:
Post a Comment