Critical Times

The following was a leaflet distributed to the May Day Rally in Adelaide, on May 3rd.

The Oath of Eureka
We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties.

The rights and liberties of working people continue to be under attack in this country.

This is despite the existence of wall-to-wall Labor Governments that come into office with promises to ease the burden on working people’s families.

Although Premier Rann is the National President of the Australian Labor Party, he is presiding over a major attack on working people’s entitlements to support when injured. This comes only months after working people voted his Labor Party to office in Canberra.

Historically, Labor governments have always been somewhat shaky on matters of principle. This unsteadiness is born of the conflict between their electoral promises to working people, whom they pretend to serve, and their subservience to big business, whom they really serve and which largely sets the agenda regardless of which party wins office.

The Labor Party stands exposed as a party of the developers, a party of the investors, as a party of the manufacturers. It has worked its way through its unsteadiness and has now come out openly as a party of the business community.

The Labor Party in SA badges itself as “pro-business, pro-growth and pro-mining”.

It is unrelenting in its preference for private sector profiteering through public infrastructure building, operation and maintenance (the so-called public-private partnership, or PPP, model).

It is attacking and resisting compensation claims by the Stolen Generation.

Its so-called “anti-bikies” legislation has far-reaching implications for civil liberties, giving the Attorney-General unlimited powers to declare any organisation a “proscribed organisation”.

As an employer, its latest round of enterprise bargaining “offers” make Scrooge McDuck look like a philanthropist! It is engaging in award-stripping on a grand scale by, for example, redefining TAFE lecturers “ordinary hours” of employment as 7am to 10pm!

It has returned over $500 million to employers by its cuts to payroll taxes and aims to return an even bigger amount by reducing the employer levy that pays for WorkCover. It is even capping the amount “bad” employers – those that regularly kill and maim workers – must contribute to the scheme.

It is proposing that SA WorkCover become one of the meanest and most unfair in Australia by denying SA workers the right to sue employers for negligence leading to injury. This alone adds an average $28 million to payments in Victoria.

There is growing anger amongst people directed at Labor. Rank and file members are sick of hearing “We hate to do this, but…” from their elected members.

So what can be done?

The Liberals merely compete with Labor in their service to the business community. Minor parties remain largely ineffective.

In the immediate sense we have to continue to build the community and union base of the Your Rights at Work (YRAW) movement. The solid community base of YRAW was the major factor in defeating Howard’s Work Choices and in electing the Rudd Labor Government. The northern and southern YRAW groups are already active in opposing the WorkCover proposals.

But we also need a national perspective, particularly as a new Federalism develops with national and nation-wide Labor governments.

There is an immediate problem with the absence of a Bill of Rights. A Bill of Rights shaped by people’s demands would see the despicable construction industry Task Force established by Howard and maintained by Rudd closed immediately. Why should working Australians not be protected by a Bill of Rights?

Our Constitution is an anachronism. It exists as a remnant of a weak, three-way compromise between British colonialism and business interests that were divided between state and national preferences.

Why shouldn’t we have a Constitution shaped by demands from the people, demands that would incorporate our preferences – for national independence, for social justice, democratic rights and respect for the traditional owners of the land? A Constitution permeated with the democratic spirit of Eureka?

A Eureka Constitution for a Eureka Republic?

A Constitution not just for a Republic, but for a just Republic!

Distributed by the Movement for Rights and Liberties
May 2008