The changes to the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), announced in early May, have shown clearly where the government’s priorities lie.

Much has been made of the government’s commitment of $1.5 billion to a ‘Solar Flagships’ program in the budget.

Climate change has moved to the centre of Australian politics, and Rudd Labor’s climate opportunism is graphically on display. Having tried to lure Turnbull’s Liberals into voting for his CPRS by cutting the carbon price and offering to postpone it for a year, the Environment Minister Penny Wong is back to wooing The Greens.

In early May the Rudd government released Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030, a White Paper detailing their defence plans for the coming years. The paper argues for a further melding of Australian and US military forces and an extension of Australia’s imperial reach in the Asia-Pacific region.

Pro-abortion activists are rallying in Queensland to defend a Cairns couple, Tegan Leach and Sergie Brennan, who have been charged under Queensland’s Criminal Code with attempting to procure an abortion. The couple are due to appear in the Cairns Magistrates Court on June 11.

Rudd tried to dress up his first recession budget by announcing a small increase in the aged pension and more money for building infrastructure. But underneath that plenty of the handouts for the rich were maintained, and the unemployed—who will suffer worst from the recession—were ignored.

As boatloads of asylum seekers began to arrive in Australian waters in 1999, John Howard cranked up the repression and the anti-refugee rhetoric. Tragically, but perhaps predictably given their history, between 1996 and 2006, the Parliamentary Labor Party supported every move by the Liberal Party to toughen the laws against asylum seekers.

On Thursday May 21 Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin announced her intention to use Intervention powers to permanently acquire the Alice Springs town camps. Her move unleashed an avalanche of racism against Tangentyre Council and the residents of the camps.

On May 11, the ABC’s Four Corners ran a program exposing numerous cases of sexual abuse by National Rugby League (NRL) football players. The ensuing media frenzy unleashed a barrage of sexism, reinforcing the legitimacy of sexual abuse against women and exposing the lie that we live in a “post-feminist society”.

The Sri Lankan army has now completed its brutal conquest of the areas of the island previously controlled by the Tamil Tigers.  In the process the military hemmed hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians into a strip of coastal land, the Jaffna Peninsula.

In January, the government of Iceland was the first to be brought down by the global recession. Now, Iceland has moved sharply to the left following its general election in late April. The conservative Independence Party was trounced receiving its lowest vote in 80 years.

On May 2, Fiji was suspended from the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)—the first time ever for a member state. The PIF comprises leaders of 16 Pacific countries dominated by Australia and New Zealand.

In the face of Rudd’s failure to take serious action on climate change, we face the challenge of building the kind of movement that can force the government to shift. The 1970s anti-uranium movement provides rich lessons in how to build one.

Political leaders across the world are embracing Keynesian economic policies. But they are incapable of escaping capitalist crisis, writes Feiyi Zhang

The recession has brought a renewed interest in Marxist explanations of economic crisis. Rick Kuhn’s book is timely in this context. Published last year, it is the product of many years of study into the life and ideas of Polish-German socialist Henryk Grossman.

Recent comments by Sol Trujillo, former boss of Telstra, that Australia is a racist country have caused a storm.

WORKERS AT five universities in Melbourne—Melbourne, Monash, Swinburne, RMIT and Deakin, plus a Hawthorn college —went out on strike on Thursday, May 21.

On April 28, over 10,000 building workers in Melbourne and 3000 in Brisbane took illegal strike action against the Howard-era anti-union Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). The Rudd government still gives $33 million to the ABCC to police union activities on building sites.

As Solidarity went to press the results of the Brisbane Treasury Casino strike ballot were released. 

With Cessnock jail off the privatisation list, union activists including prison guards (PSA), teachers (NSWTF), nurses, AMWU and NTEU are seeking to extend the campaign across the state.
“This was a great day for the Cessnock community—and a good result for all those in the community who do not believe that prisons should be run for profit by big corporations,” said PSA general secretary John Cahill.
Cahill says that the PSA will now target Labor MPs in the western Sydney electorates surrounding the Parklea prison—still up for sale by Corrective Services Minister John Robertson.
“The arguments against a private prison at Cessnock are the same as the arguments against a private prison at Parklea—the justice system should not be run for profit,” said PSA general secretary John Cahill.
On May 31, stalls were held in about 20 electorates across NSW targeting Labor MPs who still support the government privatisation push—of prisons, power services and generators, ferries, lotteries and rail services. The Labor heartland seats of right wing power brokers, Joseph Tripodi and Eddie Obeid, were among those targeted.
These are the same people who backed former treasurer Michel Costa’s 2008 attempt to privatise NSW power generators. Union opposition to this neo-liberal agenda saw both Premier Morris Iemma and Treasurer Michael Costa lose their government positions last year.
Current Premier Nathan Rees and other members of cabinet must ditch their privatisation plans once and for all. Polling shows that Labor faces a hiding in the next election.
Junking their Liberal-esque policies might be a start to turning that around.
Around 800 party and union members rallied outside a meeting of the party’s administrative committee to demand that the committee uphold the NSW party’s position against privatisation.
The Labor government is trying to get the committee to re-interpret the meaning of ALP policy which states “Labor opposes the private contract management of prisons”.
Rather than imposing cuts, the NSW government should be boosting government spending for public sector employment such as green power jobs as well as metro and light rail extension.

By John Morris

Review: The Baader-Meinhof Complex Directed by Uli Edel
In selected cinemas now

Review: Samson and Delilah, Directed by Warwick Thornton
In selected cinemas now

Review: Global Warming and the Political Ecology of Health , By Hans Baer and Merrill Singer
Left coast press, $49.95

On Sunday May 24 Jenny Macklin, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs put a gun to the head of the Tangentyere council, which represents town camp residents in Alice Springs. The Rudd government is currently denying funding for badly needed housing in Aboriginal communities across Australia, until control of the land and housing is signed over to the government.