07.03.1996

Australian elections: Right steps up class war

Marcus Larsen of the Communist Party Advocates sums up the Australian general election

The conservative Liberal and National Party coalition won last weekend’s Australian federal election. The result ends 13 years of government under the Australian Labor Party.

The result was a landslide victory for the coalition, which has turned the ALP’s 12-seat margin into a 45-seat majority in a 148-seat parliament. The middle-of-the-road Democrats maintain the balance of power in the senate.

Running on a campaign to win Australia’s ‘middle ground’ and win the ‘battlers’ away from Labor, the Liberal Party under John Howard kept its policy cards close to the chest. There was little in substance to separate the parties. However, areas that separated the parties in the election were key.

The editorial of the Sydney Morning Herald on the day before the election was spot on when it stated: “What separates the contenders is their commitment to the hard part of key policies in relation to industrial relations and micro-economic reform” (March 1).

This means that the ALP could not complete the political tasks it began for the ruling class. The resounding victory of the conservatives is not a sharp turn to the right, but an ongoing movement along a continuum.

The 13 years of ALP government are characterised by a dismantling of financial regulation, class collaboration and industrial ‘peace’ through the Union-Government Accord, privatisation and an orientation to Asian markets.

The catchwords of industrial relations and micro-economic reform mean putting workers on individual contracts, moving unions out of the workplace and, importantly, breaking the backbone of the trade union movement - the wharfies, seamen and miners. The Maritime Union of Australia will be the main target of the conservatives, as the miners were in Britain.

Probably most disturbing about the election result was the resounding win for a handful of openly racist populist politicians: two independents (one disendorsed Labor and one disendorsed Liberal) and two from the ultra-conservative National Party.

For revolutionaries in Australia, it is time to take stock of the outcomes and possibilities that the new government brings. In the lead-up to the election, the secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Bill Kelty, began to talk left and militant in preparation for the possibility of a Liberal victory. He said that in the absence of the wages policy in the Accord (read, wage decline and increased profits in exchange for industrial peace and an improved ‘social wage’), workers would pursue 5%, 10%, 20% or 30% wage rises. Is it surprising that some workers voted Liberal if the union leadership promised these sorts of wage claims if they win?

With the Liberal victory, there is much talk of ‘industrial war’. Kelty has resigned from the Board of the Reserve Bank because it may now ‘come into conflict with his union responsibilities’. How there was no conflict under a Labor government, I don’t know. The militant Maritime Union is preparing for a big fight.

With prime minister-elect Howard saying there will be no war against the unions about five times a day, it seems clear it is around the corner. We will have to mobilise working class forces with or without the union leadership. Last year’s miners’ strike is a taste of what is to come.

The unions have shown they have plenty of muscle left, but the bureaucracy tries to turn this power on and off like a tap. Militants and revolutionaries will have to try to build this power and keep it on.

In such a climate, the Labor Party and the union bureaucracy will begin to pose left. There will be a determined attempt to channel any outburst of activity back into the ALP and the union bureaucracy.

Without a Communist Party, or even a serious pro-Party pole, it will be very difficult to turn any activity towards independent working class politics. However, it will be the duty of all class militants to begin this task.