from david marr ….

"That was a disgrace. One of these men is going to be our prime minister on 8 September and neither had a fresh policy, a new idea or a new line to offer.

Everything has been heard before. Even the evasions were familiar.

Imagine three more years of these men talking at each other.

The win or lose question between now and polling day may be this: which of these two can you still bear to listen to when you know they're both talking blather?"

meanwhile ….

Trust them – to screw us ….

There is one thing certain to come out of the 2013 federal election writes Ben Hillier in Socialist Alternative. The contest will be won by a right wing pro-big business party intent on attacking workers and the poor.

The backdrop to this year’s poll is the unwinding of the mining investment boom and the softening of the economic outlook. The May Budget outlined revenue write downs of $60 billion over 4 years. The 2 August mini budget added another $33 billion on top of those – and this might yet be optimistic.

Revenues have not grown at Treasury forecast rates – but they have nevertheless been growing. Will they continue to do so? A note from investment bank Morgan Stanley to investors on 5 August, if accurate, suggests not. The advice warned that the size of the investment drop-off in the mining industry has been underestimated:

“A severe and prolonged decline in Australian E&C [engineering and construction] activity appears to be the most likely outcome. Australian E&C activity has grown continuously for twelve years with activity in 2012 some 598 percent above that of 2001.

“The golden run is over – our forecasts now suggest we are entering a period of double digit declines in activity driven by declining E&C [expenditure], an event that is unprecedented in the 27 years of data we hold … we think the real downturn is only now about to begin.”

Kevin Rudd wants to fight the election on the question of which party is most capable of “transitioning” to a new economic growth model. Yet a production gap is opening that no other industry seems capable of filling. That will open the possibility of recession.

A transition to where?

The period since the onset of the global financial crisis has seen new government spending initiatives – such as pension increases, secondary school funding increases, a nominal commitment to equal pay in the community sector – announced side by side with cutbacks in other areas.

Labor has been giving with one hand while taking with the other: single mothers losing parenting payments, tertiary education funding facing cuts of $2.3 billion, people being pushed off disability support pensions, several billion dollars stripped from the public service, a levy on bank savings that will be passed on to those with the least money etc.

We are now transitioning to a period where the cuts are going to come faster and go deeper; spending on services for those who really need them will be under the microscope while executive salaries will be left to increase unchecked.

The bosses have been increasingly vocal about their desire for an industrial relations system that gives them more power over workers and allows more “flexibility” to pay people less. They want a productivity revolution to increase what they squeeze out of workers.

Their backers in the media have bemoaned the “culture of entitlement” that grips the country. They’re not talking about CEOs and mining magnates who have seen their fortunes lifted astronomically over the course of the decade. They are talking about workers who think that the majority of the population deserves, in a country of such abundance, a decent working life and well funded social services.

Labor says that the great danger lies in the election of a Liberal Party beholden to big business. But both parties fall over themselves to please the Business Council and the super wealthy.

It is only a matter of degree when attempting to differentiate between the two. Both are for low corporate tax rates, both have bent to the wills of the giant banks and mining companies, both are committed to a neoliberal user-pays model of service provision that is increasingly privatised and both place the market above the environment.

In fact, Labor has attempted to outbid the Coalition as the most pro-business manager of Australian capitalism. Leading party figures attack the conservatives for being fiscally reckless – to the point where the Liberals’ paid maternity leave scheme is attacked for being “too generous” and an impost on business. Treasurer Chris Bowen boasts that the ALP is the party responsible for “financial deregulation [and] government enterprise privatisation”.

Rudd’s election announcement focused on plans for “a new national competitiveness agenda” to help lift the fortunes of Australian capitalists. He spoke in the language of partnership and “common interests”. But the wants of business are counterposed to the interests of workers and the poor. The only partnership business is interested in is one that neuters any opposition to its agenda.

When the PM asked, “Who do you trust?” he was speaking to that business community. He wants to reassure them that he can manage the transition to slower growth while maintaining their profits as high as possible.

How that happens is clear: by pushing the burden of any crisis onto workers and the poor. The Liberals and Labor are united in that project. In that regard, this election provides no real choice at all.

and, from john passant ….

The Australian election – no class, no working class ….

I watched the ‘debate’ between the two factions of neoliberalism on Sunday night. Clearly Kevin Rudd is a better snake oil salesman than Tony Abbott.

Rudd has the gift of being able to convince us to eat Labor’s shit sandwich and then for us compliment him on his culinary skills. Abbott can’t do that, and that is something the ruling class must be a little worried about.

After all if Abbott as Prime Minister can’t win us over to his attacks on unions, living standards and public services, he might end up provoking a fight back from workers.

But maybe the need of the one percent to further improve their wealth and profit rates by attacking jobs and wages and making us work longer unpaid hours overrides any fear they have of workers striking to defend jobs, wages and conditions.

Certainly the ACTU, the peak union body, won’t lead any real resistance to either Labor or the Liberals. They’ll kill it. After 30 years of class collaboration from that leadership,  strikes are now at historically low levels and the share of national income going to capital was until recently at its highest ever recorded. The slight drop is a result of the collapse in business profits across the economy.

This lack of strike action has set the agenda for the neoliberalisation of Australia since the election of the Hawke Labor government in 1983. The end result of 30 years of class collaboration has been at various times real wage cuts, shoveling more and more money to the rich and powerful, a massive drop in union membership and an ongoing shift to the right on both economic and social issues.

The one challenge to that is Equal Marriage. That is on the agenda because activists across Australia have fought and rallied and drawn in more and more supporters in a campaign for equal love that has forced Labor to offer a conscience vote within 100 days if they are re-elected.

This is an election ploy by Labor, not born of a genuine commitment to marriage equality. A future Rudd government should promise to bind all Labor parliamentarians to vote for equal love. Equality can never be a matter of choice to avoid.

We need more Equal Love type actions in campaign after campaign, even merging them into a better world here and now campaign around issues as seemingly diverse as same sex marriage, refugees, the gender pay gap, indigenous poverty, homelessness, the defence of jobs and increasing real wages.  The link to them all is capitalism and its need to exploit workers to make a profit from our labour.

OK, that isn’t on the agenda right now and is more about my hope exceeding the reality today. However Equal Love does show that amid all the doom and gloom and rank social and economic conservatism of Labor governments we can fight for and be in the position to eventually win real change.

As the BLF says, if you don’t fight you lose. We haven’t, and we are.

The lack of any sort of working class perspective at all was on display in the first debate on Sunday night between Rudd and Abbott. Both mentioned jobs. Neither of them offered a plan, a way forward, any suggestions, to address the predicted worsening of unemployment over the next 6 months from its current 5.7% to 6.25%. Absolutely nothing.

In fact both parties plan to cut jobs in the public service. Labor’s recently announced increased efficiency dividend will cut another 5000 public servants from the payroll, on top of the 5000 they got rid of last year. The Liberals have promised 12000 public servants will go by natural attrition, although now Joe Hockey is talking about this being the starting point for reducing the public service.

Another example of the paucity of ideas was the ‘debate’ about aged care. The Liberals will reduce ‘redtape’ on aged care workers as their plan for the sector. Rudd muttered something about making it more attractive for people to work in the sector.

I have a novel suggestion. Increase their wages 50%. And in answer to the usual where’s the money coming from I have a simple answer. Tax the rich.

I watched the ‘debate’ between the two factions of neoliberalism on Sunday night.

Clearly Kevin Rudd is a better snake oil salesman than Tony Abbott.

The alternative to Labor and the Liberals is struggle.