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CFMEU

Gary McCarthy's tirade against the CFMEU NSW construction division [Write On, GLW #486] cannot go unanswered. The CFMEU does not claim to have led the anti-apartheid movement or the green bans of the 1970s. The Building Workers Industrial Union and, in particular, the Jack Mundey[-led] BLF played key roles in these struggles.

The CFMEU across Australia, including NSW, has continued this tradition. If McCarthy is unaware of the union's ongoing involvement in green bans, he should go to a less spectacular scale Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo, or Erskineville Park, or the Museum of Contemporary Arts at Circular Quay — all saved by CFMEU NSW construction division green bans.

McCarthy, rather than slandering the union, should also recognise the outstanding work done by the union on the current campaigns against mandatory detention of refugees and in support of the Palestinian people. McCarthy talks tough and left, but is never seen at left rallies or pickets.

Peter McClelland
NSW president
CFMEU construction
division
Lidcombe NSW

Federal budget I

The recent federal budget is yet another example of a federal government which sees politics through a narrow prism of marginalising and excluding those who are vulnerable and seen as different.

The history of this government is littered with attacks on uni students, the unemployed, the assets of older Australians who have to go into nursing homes, refugees and other Australians who rely on government assistance to survive.

The attempt to increase the cost of prescription drugs and restrict the availability of the disability pension should be resisted and rejected. It is generally accepted that the government wants to reduce the numbers on disability pensions by 200,000, through their normal review processes. This represents a loss of $52 per fortnight for a recipient who is forced on to Newstart.

Most recipients of the disability pension are older Australians who have little chance of gaining meaningful employment. By tightening the work practices and medical tests a new disability pension applicant will just about need one foot in the grave to qualify for a pension.

The proposed increase to the cost of prescription drugs for Australians again places the burden on those who can ill afford it.

We must continue to agitate for radical change in Australia where everyone is seen as an equal and of the same value, not marginalised, excluded and powerless. Only then will Australia be a society that cares and nurtures its people for everyone's benefit.

Beverley Hicks
St Helens Tasmania [Abridged]

Federal budget II

There is nothing positive in the latest federal budget. In the 2002 budget there are not even promises of jobs, training, no new public homes, no education opportunities and no vision for most of the long-term unemployed or those with disabilities.

Pay As You Earn “baby boomers” paid their taxes and earned their pension. Now the government is bleating about too many baby boomers to pay them a pension. People with back problems are also being attacked when the fault lies with continuing bad Australian work practices in the past. A message to Tony Abbott: Not everyone pushes a pen for a living. Some have done heavy work since their teenage years and wear and tear shows on the backs after 30 years of such work.

Whatever happened to the GST? Wasn't the GST going to pay for increases in government spending? Where has it all gone? Has it been a complete failure? I am fed up with hearing that the country can no longer afford to be mutually obligated to its citizens.

Mary Jenkins
Perth [Abridged]

East Timor

East Timor has been an independent nation for one hour now. World leaders are in Dili for the celebrations — including John Howard, Gough Whitlam and Bill Clinton. One question they should ponder is how many East Timorese their policies helped to kill.

Australia exported Steyr rifles and ammunition and trained Kopassus special forces at Canungra near Nerang. Britain sold Hawk jets and numerous other military materiel while the US was the biggest military benefactor supplying helicopters, M16s, naval vessels and training.

Ordinary Australians in their thousands came to oppose Australia's complicity in genocide. Forty thousand protested in Sydney on September 11, 1999, over the post-referendum butchery and the world's complete inaction.

Few protesters have made it to Dili to join in the celebrations because too many bigwigs are there all expenses paid. One can only hope that Richard Woolcott, Gough Whitlam, Alexander Downer, Gareth Evans and others will ultimately face justice for complicity in crimes against humanity. Now that would be a celebration!

Gareth Smith
Byron Bay NSW

Charlie Chaplin

Phil Shannon's review of David Robinson's biography of Charlie Chaplin (GLW #491) was first class. So is Chaplin's My Autobiography (1964). In it, he tells of returning from school. His mother lay unconscious from starvation. I attended the same Kennington Road school as Chaplin, a generation later. The Chartist movement, whose long march (1837-50) began in northern England, held its final rally in Kennington Park adjacent to KR school.

Simon Bracegirdle
Kelvin Grove Qld

Illegitimate

I would go further than Willy Bach [Write On, GLW #490]. We not only do not need this government serving a four-year term, there should be a blocking of supply by the Senate, and another election. The Howard government has no legitimacy — it came to office on the back of lies and deceit. The refugees have no comeback on the slander thrown at home by Howard and his mates, and the bunch of shonky lawyers that passes for the Coalition leadership, knew that.

A double dissolution has been put forward by many others. It is time it was taken up seriously. The people in power that call themselves a government, and are about to try to put through “anti-terrorism” legislation that even mild-mannered commentators say will turn this country into a police state, has no legitimacy. It lied its way into power. The people of this country must have the chance to get rid of it.

Stephen Langford
Paddington NSW

Unemployment

Not content with the disgraceful budgetary attack on disability pensioners, employment services minister Mal Brough has declared his ambition to dramatically worsen the lives of “cruising” unemployed people. This reminds us of two characteristics of government politicians — their extraordinary priorities, and their lack of respect for differences between people.

The passion to prevent a minority of unemployed people from receiving a supposedly excessive income is unmatched by a comparable zeal to ensure that millions of higher-income recipients do not receive an unjustly large income and that most unemployed people do not receive an unjustly low income.

Due to genetic and/or social factors, some people are much keener on paid employment than others. A good society accommodates, as far as is practical, people with unusual or unpopular preferences.

Some bias towards employment is justified on economic incentive grounds to ensure adequate tax revenues to properly finance public goods and support for the most disadvantaged. Beyond this, however, governments should not favour marketplace production.

A just government strives to achieve a low level of inequality of wellbeing between people, and allows the extent to which wellbeing derives from paid employment to be determined by individual preferences — not by an illiberal, productivist state ideology.

Brent Howard
Rydalmere NSW

From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, May 29, 2002.
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