Critical Times

Amongst the plethora of submissions to the Australia 2020 Summit the following was submitted by the SPIRIT OF EUREKA COMMITTEE. It grabbed Critical Times attention due to its far reaching proposals. If readers know of other submissions that really challenge the status quo please email them to us and we will consider them for an airing on our site.

The link to Australia 2020 Summit, Spirit of Eureka Committee is

http://www.australia2020.gov.au/submissions/viewTopic.cfm?id=6927&count=1

Topic1. Australia’s Future Security – Domestic And Foreign Policy

(a) How Australia best protects its national security interests in the face of an increasingly complex threat
spectrum, including terrorism, bio-security and other threats to human security.

The most important and effective measures the Rudd government could take in securing a safe domestic environment in Australia is to implement comprehensive measures to combat racism and ignorance, promote understanding and respect for different cultures, religions, nationalities; take measures to build unity and ensure economic security and well being for all members of our society.

The current anti-terror laws established by the previous government are divisive, create insecurity and spread fear, suspicion and conflict in the community. These laws erode basic civil and democratic rights and have led to breaches of international human rights. The anti-terror laws should be dismantled and replaced with Clauses in the Constitution that enshrine the democratic rights and liberties of Australians and the rights of all citizens to economic security, including decent living standards, union rights, affordable housing, public health and education, secure employment and accessible community services.

(b) Australia’s relationship with the US
Australia’s close integration with the US military poses the biggest external threat to Australia’s security. Australian defence forces and foreign policy have become a mere appendage of US military forces and policies. “All the Way with the USA” has led to Australia’s blind involvement in US wars of aggression, invasions and occupations of sovereign countries, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Australia plays host to America’s significant and highly secretive military bases, central to America’s military activities around the world. These US military bases are essential to US global espionage and military strategies for wars of aggression. They make Australia not only a military target, but a nuclear target. Australia’s designated role as the US deputy sheriff in the Asia-Pacific region and its pandering to US political and strategies reduces Australia’s sovereignty and security.

Australia needs an independent foreign policy that respects and promotes mutual co-operation, peace, security and prosperity with other countries. Australia needs an independent foreign policy that advances human rights and labour standards through fair trading arrangements with others in the global economy.

Closing down foreign military bases and joint military exercises will be a first step in protecting the security of Australia’s people and sets the path towards to an independent foreign policy.

Topic 2. Role of Unions in Australian Society

Unions are central to making our society a better place for working people. For these reasons the Rudd government should completely dismantle WorkChoices and abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

For more than 150 years Australia’s trade unions have been the main driving force in establishing and advancing decent working conditions and the living standards in this country. Unions and their members continually strive to achieve decent wages, workplace rights and conditions that protect and improve work and family life balance, provide a secure environment for raising children, caring for the sick and aged and contributing to the collective well being of our communities. Ultimately, the conditions of working people’s lives and society as a whole are determined by their relationship to their work – wages, union and workers’ democratic rights in the workplace, working conditions and entitlements.

Unions have always led the struggles for decent wages, safe and healthy working conditions and entitlements that have secured improvements not only in family life but also in the wider community and Australian society in general. The conditions gained by unions and their members include: the 8 hour working day, health and safety on the job, rest breaks, sick leave, paternity leave, carers’ leave, annual leave, job security, long service leave, superannuation, redundancy provisions and the right to work in an environment free of harassment and bullying by employers. All these have led to improvements in family life for all members of our community. Union activities protect working people and the wider community from the extreme excesses of employer exploitation and alienation. Without unions and the collective action of their members child labour, low wages, long working hours and 19thCentury working conditions would still be with us.

Inadequate wages, job insecurity, long working hours and oppressive and unsafe working conditions produce stressed and fragmented families struggling to survive under the pressure of financial hardship.

The hard fought for workplace conditions achieved by unions and their members are now universally accepted as fundamental to the well being of our communities. It is imperative that the rights of unions to organise and take collective action to defend and improve working people’s conditions at work, home and the wider community need to be formally recognised and protected by laws in a fair and just society.

Unions have a long tradition of supporting community services, good quality and affordable housing for people on lower and middle incomes; social services; public health and education and liveable local community environment. Union campaigns have secured a decent living wage and workplace conditions that have benefited all working people, their families and communities.

Unions by their very nature are collective organisations of working people pursuing common economic and social interests of the whole community, and countering the cut throat competition of self-serving and selfish individualism.

We urge the Rudd government to legislate for the rights of all people to join unions and act collectively in defence of their well being and advance their working conditions, including the right to withdraw their labour collectively, as inalienable rights in a truly democratic and just society.

Topic 3. Future Directions For The Australian Economy

Investment of revenue from the mining boom and from polluting industries needs to occur rapidly into the development of a new regulatory framework to favour green development, new environmentally sustainable manufacturing industries and jobs (including manufacture of public transport rolling stock), mass expansion and integration of transportation systems (eg tram and bus infrastructure into existing freeway systems, etc). In the future each country will be forced to re-establish its own key industries of what currently is globalised manufacturing. The Australian government must not only assist any attempts to reclaim manufactureing, but must also plan and regulate coordinated infrastructure between enterprises and transport facilities. How?

Currently, three unions along with a range of community partners in Victoria are playing a central role in this regard. The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the Electrical Trades Union, the Plumbers, Gippsland Trades and Labour Council, Geelong Trades and Labour Council, Moreland Energy Foundation, with assistance from Everlast Pty Ltd are establishing a Cooperative Business, Earthworker Cooperatives, manufacturing the green technologies. Over two years they will establish factories in Moreland, Gippsland and Geelong which will manufacture Solar Hot Water units. The industry and jobs will be entirely owned and controlled by Australian workers so the jobs never move offshore. Across the two years they will diversify into the manufacture of the full range of green technologies. This is a healthy beginning to a not-for-profit, social sector of the Australian economy. This sector will give Governments many more options in setting climate benchmarks through Public Social Partnerships. This in turn will aid the transition towards the post-carbon economy. Globally these unions are investigating union-to-union trade agreements in the region, which look at labour movement-supported, cooperative joint ventures.

Australia has focused too much upon the “global supply chain”. We must move beyond Australia’s role as a world quarry and primary product supplier towards environmentally sustainable industries and manufacture, a greening of the agricultural sector with massive civil defence support to farmers to regenerate soil, diversify the range of green produce and establish a water plan for the whole farm sector to regenerate the land. With massive support our farm sector can become an organics hub.

Sovereign control over the Australian economy and nation will have to be re-established in order to respond to the new, global warming imperative. A sovereign Australian Government cannot be limited to the one option of Free Trade Agreements. Governments must support the Australian people, through their unions and community organisations, in the development of the union-to-union, Social Sector Trade Agreements which will focus on alliances between planned and socially owned sectors. It is imperative that attempts at sustainable economics are not constrained by competition from corporations motivated by a desire to drive costs down and who engage in environmentally unsustainable practices. Tight national government regulations and initiatives are necessary to protect the growth and development of environmentally sustainable industries by the social sector.

Our watchwords must be: Sovereignty, Sustainability and the Social Sector.