Critical Times

A lively counter to the APEC Forum was held in Melbourne in September, and attracted a wide variety of speakers and a very engaged audience.

The conference was titled, A People’s Alternative to APEC, and was organised by the newly formed International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS – Australia).

A flyer advertising the conference set out some of the issues that are concerning many Australian people at this time, and which the official APEC forum would never deal with openly. Now that APEC has come and gone, we can see that these warnings have been proven correct.

It read in part: “Let Howard and Bush know Australians don’t want their APEC agenda. APEC is used by the region’s rulers and multinational corporations to coordinate and implement policies that lead to hardship and impoverishment for the people in Asia-Pacific and Oceania. America dominates APEC to secure its economic and military control of the region. APEC promotes multinationals’ policies that drive down workers’ wages and conditions and enforce oppressive labour laws to give big business a free hand to exploit workers in the race to the bottom.”

The conference was opened by ILPS – Australia chairperson Len Cooper, who briefly outlined the history and aims of ILPS and the need to expose and resist imperialist domination of APEC.

Aspects of imperialism
The speakers at the conference provided the audience with a great wealth of information about various aspects of US and Australian government economic, political and military strategy in this region of the world. Following each speaker there was an opportunity for questions and some discussion, and there were many good points made and information shared.

Community activist David Spratt spoke on the critical issue of climate warming and the likely consequences of food shortages due to loss of potable water resources, as well as severe population displacement due to rising sea levels as the polar ice caps melt.

Brian Boyd, Secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, spoke about the links between Howard’s WorkChoices policy and similar legislation by the Bush administration in the USA. He emphasised the need to keep on organising on the ground.

Rob Stary, democratic rights lawyer, spoke of the growing restrictions on political protest and dissent, limits on workers’ collective organisation and the excessive secrecy generated by the so-called ‘war on terror’. He listed the abuse of international law and the increasing use of surveillance and detention to suppress political activity against the government. In Australia, this has sometimes progressed even further than the US where there is a Bill of Rights and some protection under the Constitution, while Canada and the UK also have more legal protections.

Monash University academic Anne O’Rourke presented a detailed analysis of the Australia – US Free Trade Agreement now that it has been in operation for two years. As predicted, the result has been very lop-sided with all the benefits going to the stronger American economy. In the first ten months the Australia to US trade deficit blew out by A$10 billion.

Sugar exports to the US have been excluded, while beef and dairy exports will have to undergo a ‘transitional’ period of 18 years. In the meantime, US agricultural exports to Australia are unrestricted.

The strict ‘rules of origin’ that require a set proportion of manufactured goods to be sourced in the country means that Australian cars which contain a high percentage of imported components cannot be sold in the US, while American cars, with all components made there, can sell freely in Australia.

The FTA also required Australia to cancel its ‘Buy Australian’ campaigns and introduced restrictions on government procurement procedures which favoured Australian companies over foreign.

It brought in restrictions on Australians being granted visas to conduct investment in the US, while of course, the same restrictions do not apply to US business people investing in Australia. This is one of the reasons Rupert Murdoch decided to hand in his citizenship and become a Yank.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is also under great threat from the FTA, as it tries to impose lower standards on Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, which oversees the introduction of new drugs and medicines, even GM food regulation. Even Australia’s acclaimed quarantine standards and the 50 percent Australian content on TV are cited as ‘trade barriers’.

A speaker from the floor introduced the example of the ALBA cooperative trade pact between Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua as an example of regional ‘fair trade’ arrangements that operated for mutual benefit rather than exploitation. This was a positive trend that was attracting great interest and support from other countries in South America and elsewhere and was a powerful counter to the US dominated NAFTA treaty.

The next speaker was John Langmore, President of the Australia UN Association and member of the Uniting Church Social Justice Committee, who described how the US-Australia Alliance had dragged Australia into an illegal war in Iraq, and that the US Bush administration was now gearing up for a ‘pre-emptive strike’ against Iran.

The Howard government was completely “obsequious” towards the US, which was behaving in international affairs like a “provocateur” and “rogue state”. It was no wonder that a recent survey had disclosed that support for the ANZUS Treaty had dropped from 45 percent to 36 percent, and that 70 percent of Australians now feel negative about US government policy. It was significant that people were able to distinguish US policy from the American people, who are well regarded by most Australians.

Jessica Morrison, who works with the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, spoke on the campaign against US military bases, in particular about protests at Pine Gap and during the recent Talisman Sabre military exercises in Queensland. These exercises were designed to improve “inter-operability” between US forces and Australian, in reality making sure that the US had control. As previously reported in Vanguard, there was a vigorous protest campaign against the exercises which mobilised thousands of people across the country.

She also spoke out against the push to expand uranium mining in Australia, pointing to the existence of 27,000 nuclear weapons currently available, and steps by the US and Australia to circumvent the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty by selling uranium to India.

Nick Maclellan, from Nuclear Free Pacific, was the final guest speaker, dealing with the situation in the Pacific Islands where global trade policies affect many countries even though they may not be members of the World Trade Organisation and other international bodies.

Often they are forced to enter into unequal trade relationships which impose conditions favourable to the corporate monopolies, such as privatisation, removal of tariffs, government service cut-backs, labour ‘flexibility’ and removal of visa restrictions.

Many of the Pacific islands are rich in oil, gas, minerals, and timber and fish stocks. To ensure multinational access to these riches, “deputy sheriff” Howard has sent in numbers of Australian military and Federal Police to enforce the new economic rules. There are also a large number of civilian and government advisors entrenched in the local country’s bureaucracies, overseeing and guiding the economic domination.

Against this process there has been quite active resistance, resulting in the expression “arc of instability” being used by Howard to justify even more interference. In stark contrast to the military spending by Australia in the region, the miserable level of formal “aid” has actually decreased. In fact remittances from immigrant workers who have migrated to find work in other countries are more than twice the level of “aid” coming from Australia.

During the conference, a number of statements were read out, putting the position indigenous spokespersons and communities opposed to the latest land grab on behalf of the mining monopolies. This was warmly received by those present, and was seen as an important area of resistance to the economic domination of Australia.

The conference was appalled by news of the arrest of Professor Jose Maria Sison in the Netherlands on trumped up murder charges. Professor Sison is chief political consultant to the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, who have been engaged in peace talks with the Philippines government since 1986. A resolution was passed condemning his arrest and violent police raids on other refugees and Dutch colleagues.

People’s Declaration
At the conclusion of the conference, the following “People’s Declaration” was carried:

“The Australian people, along with the vast majority of the peoples of the globe, long for a world without war and suffering, without exploitation, poverty, deprivation and oppression, without racism; they long for a world that has, and that protects a pristine environment, that is secure and welcoming, that is based on community and not rampant selfish individualism. They long for a real peoples’ democracy and not just the “choice” periodically between two or more parliamentary parties of the status quo, of the “old world’.

A new world needs to be won. It is not only worth winning but it must be won in order to save the globe from environmental catastrophe, from a nuclear holocaust, from constant war for profit, and from economic devastation for billions of the world’s people. A new world can be won but only by the mobilisation of the world’s people in their tens of millions; mobilisation around the burning issues of this epoch.

The people and delegates attending the Peoples Alternative to APEC conference pledge to work in the many struggles of the people consistently and continuously, and with determination regardless of the difficulties, in order to help mobilise the people of Australia…

We are determined to work with all who share our concerns and goals and to become part of that mighty movement of the people taking place throughout the world, in opposition to wars of aggression, poverty, environmental degradation, oppression and the creeping ‘fascist like’ measures taking place in many parts of the world on the pretext of the so-called ‘war on terror’.

In this regard, we reject and condemn the APEC leaders’ summit as yet another forum being used to force the peoples of the region to suffer from the continuing plunder and exploitation of their nations resources and wealth, and to suffer the cultural, economic and military domination of their nations by imperialism, especially US imperialism.”

Vanguard 17 October 2007