Solidarity meets in cities all around the country. Check here for details of the latest upcoming meetings.

MELBOURNE

Melbourne Solidarity meets 6:30pm every Tuesday at the New International Bookshop, Trades Hall, corner of Victoria Parade and Lygon Street, Carlton. All welcome. For more information contact David on 0418 316 310 or melbourne<at>solidarity.net.au

Tuesday March 9

Public meeting at Melbourne University at lunchtime and later the same evening at Trades Hall

WHY CARBON TRADING WILL FAIL

GAGGED CSIRO ECONOMIST CLIVE SPASH SPEAKS OUT
on why Rudd ’s CPRS will fail the climate

1pm Melbourne University

Physiotherapy Th, rm 219, 2nd floor, 200 berkeley st
Sponsored by Solidarity, Postgraduate Environment Network, Office for Environmental Programs.

And also that evening
6.30pm tuesday trades hall meeting room 1
(Cnr Lygon and Victoria st, Carlton enter via Victoria st)
Sponsored by Solidarity and Climate Action Centre

Tuesday March 16

Haiti: The humanitarian myth

The US spent $85 billion bailing out insurance company AIG, but won’t cancel Haiti’s debt
of $1 billion, to help with earthquake relief.  They have sent 20,000 troops, while aid missions
have been turned away - what’s going on?

Tuesday March 23

Labor in Power: How Bob Hawke and Paul Keating introduced neo-liberalism
From deregulation of the banks, to privatisation and enterprise bargaining, why did Labor in Australia
mirror the rightwing attacks of the Tories and US Rebuplicans overseas? From attacks on unions, to
carbon trading, to pushing the market further into education and health - why is Rudd continuing their
legacy today?

Tuesday March 23

Should The Climate movement support the Green’s carbon tax proposal?

With Rudd’s CPRS stalled in the Senate, and support for the scheme falling, the debate about solutions to climate change has opened up. The Greens have proposed an interim two year carbon tax, based on the CPRS framework. But this proposal will be just as ineffective. Instead of a carbon tax The Greens should be demanding “No New Coal”, regulation of emisssions and direct government investment in renewable energy and public transport.

SYDNEY

Labor and neo-liberalism: Hawke, Keating and the Accord

Kevin Rudd responded to the global economic crisis by denouncing the “failure of neo-liberalism”. Yet the Hawke-Keating Labor government pioneered these policies in Australia during the 1980s and 1990s. At the centre of this was their Accord between the government and the trade unions. It was responsible for cutting real wages and increasing inequality in order to boost business profitability. This forum will discuss how the period gives important insights into the way Labor governs, and helps us understand the influences in shaping Rudd’s own economic policies.

7pm Thursday March 18
Brown St Hall, Brown St, Newtown

Sydney Solidarity meets 7pm every Thursday at the Brown st hall, on Brown st above the Newtown library, just off King st. All welcome.

For more information contact Jean on 0449 646 593 or sydney<at>solidarity.net.au

PERTH

For more information contact Trish on 0405 597 598 or 08 9339 7128 or perth<at>solidarity.net.au

BRISBANE

Brisbane Solidarity meets 7pm every Tuesday. Meetings are held at the the Trades and Labour Council Building, Level 2, 16 Peel St, South Brisbane (unless otherwise listed). All welcome. For more information contact Rob on 0424 265 730 or brisbane<at>solidarity.net.au

Saturday March 27, Foundation Life Members Room (FLMR, Rm 104)

First floor, central, west side Graduate Centre, 1888 Bldg

Melbourne Uni, near corner Swanston & Grattan Sts Parkville

dayschool leaflet 

10am-11.30pm

From Invasion to Intervention:

A History of Racism and

Resistance in Australia.

Speaker Lucy Honan

11.45pm-1.15pm:

Two sessions, a choice of

Marx’s Ecology: Capitalism,

Climate and Crisis

Speaker Jasmine Ali

or

The Global Financial Crisis -

Did Keynes save the world

economy?

Speaker Feiyi Zhang

2.15pm-3.45pm:

Obama’s new imperialism?

Afghanistan, Palestine and Haiti

Speaker Shannon Price

All welcome, to register call Jasmine Ali

on 0405 317 787, or email

melbourne@solidarity.net.au

Registration Waged:$5

Unwaged: gold coin donation

Abbott is convinced he is on a winner. His thinks his line that Labor’s Emissions Trading Scheme is a “big new tax on everything” has struck a chord.
Encouraged by an opinion poll boost, Abbott is systematically embracing Howard’s policies—the 1950s view of women, WorkChoices, turning refugee boats around at sea and extending punitive welfare quarantining to all beneficiaries.
His rise in the opinion polls is a worry, though the polls show that the Liberal primary vote is still well below its losing effort in 2007. But to understand Abbott’s rise, we need to look at Kevin Rudd.
In June last year, history professor Greg Melleuish wrote, “Rudd has been many things in the few years since he entered the public spotlight. He has been a good Christian, a fiscal conservative, a good bloke and a social-democratic true believer. He has the capacity to shed his skin and acquire a new one as circumstances change… Rudd is Australia’s first post-modern Prime Minister.”
Rudd certainly wants to give the appearance of taking on the big issues.
But what happened to the education revolution? Public education needs more teachers and more funding, but Rudd offered (and hasn’t delivered) a laptop for every student. He introduced the MySchool web site and NAPLAN tests to create competitive league tables.
Rudd described climate change as the “great moral challenge of our generation”. A year ago, in his essay in The Monthly, Rudd favourably quoted Sir Nicholas Stern’s comment that climate change is “the greatest market failure in human history.” But the market is at the centre of the CPRS, which would hand hundreds of millions of dollars to the big polluters and coal bosses. As soon as the Liberals stalled the legislation, Rudd put climate change on the back burner.
Similarly, the house insulation fiasco has rattled Rudd. He thought the scheme would kill two birds with one stone—look like he was doing something about climate change and boost a shovel-ready industry as a short-term response to the global financial crisis.
But there are doubts about the effectiveness of house insulation as an energy saving measure. The $2.45 billion dollars spent could have built five solar power stations, each able to power to 45,000 homes.
But it was the short-term appearance that mattered to Rudd. Even the job creation element lies in ruins—scrapping the scheme may cost up to 2000 jobs.

Hospitals takeover
Now, Rudd has made another big announcement—hospitals will be taken over by the federal government. Rudd told a press conference, “This Australian Government is going to get on with the business of fundamental health and hospital reform.”
But the scheme has all the hallmarks of Rudd’s other failures. It won’t even come into effect until well after the next election.
Real health reform means more beds, more nurses, more doctors, more funding, but all that’s on offer is re-shuffling the deck chairs of health administration.
There will be no new money for hospitals for the next four years. Worse, Rudd is proposing that hospital funding will be based on the economic rationalist case-mix funding—paying hospitals at a nationally set “efficiency price” per service.
This is the funding scheme that has directly led to the shocking state of hospitals in Victoria and Queensland. Under-funded federal hospitals will be no better than under-funded state ones.
Despite his talk about “making a difference”, Rudd is unwilling to challenge the status quo or disturb the pampered existence of the establishment.
In his Monthly essay, Rudd quoted George Soros on the financial crisis: “the crisis is not caused by an some external shock…the crisis was generated by the system itself.” Soros was right, Rudd declared, but he has shown no inclination to do anything about the system.
A year ago, he railed against the bonuses paid to the Wall Street bankers: “these are epic numbers generated by a greed of epic proportions,” he wrote. But Rudd has done nothing about Australia’s profiteering banks. This year, Westpac’s top 15 executives got an average of $3.3 million, while the Commonwealth’s executives got an average of $4 million. The average bank worker’s pay is $40,000.
Real reform of the education system will rely on teachers defending public education and banning NAPLAN tests. Genuine hospital reform will need nurses’ unions and doctors to fight for more jobs and more funding. The climate campaign will need to fight for the government to build renewable power stations. Unions need to fight the anti-union laws (see page 24).
Until that happens, Abbott’s popularity will grow while Rudd pulls Labor further and further to the right.

“The only one of the Ten Commandments that I am confident that I have not broken is the one about killing, and that’s because I haven’t had the opportunity yet.”
Tony Abbott gives us yet another reason not to vote him into office

“You’re dealing with a crazy man. You’re asking what can I do to placate a crazy man? Having got what he wants he will still kill you.”
Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on the madness of the market

“Chile has benefited enormously from the free market reforms it passed under dictator Augusto Pinochet.”
The Wall Street Journal says that dictatorships help prepare countries for earthquakes

“At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the ‘excuse’ that ‘all’ young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families.”
Nina Funnell on her experience meeting Rudd after a speech on our ageing population

“The poor will always be with us.”
Abbott on why he would not commit to Rudd’s goal of halving homelessness by 2020

“I probably feel a bit threatened, as so many people do…”
Abbott admits his homophobia on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes

On Wednesday March 3, 150 people packed a community hall in Tennant Creek for a protest meeting against the imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Muckaty Aboriginal Land Trust, 100 kilometres north of the town.
There was a strong mood of defiance. Local people feel deeply betrayed by the Rudd government.
Before the 2007 election, clear promises were given that Howard’s draconian Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (CWRMA) would be repealed and a nuclear waste dump would not be forced on the NT. But Labor’s new National Radioactive Waste Management Bill (NRWMB) is just as draconian. Whole sections have literally been cut and pasted from Howard’s laws.
The NRWMB suspends the NT Land Rights Act, Aboriginal Heritage protection laws, all relevant State and Territory legislation and the Environmental and Bio-Diversity Conservation Act. Resources Minister Martin Ferguson also has the discretion to suspend any other legislation that might get in the path of the dump.
Spent nuclear fuel rods are returning from France and Scotland in 2015. They have been sent overseas for reprocessing from the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney.
Lucas Heights should be shut down and its toxic refuse managed on site where there is expertise and resources. But under the racist logic of Australian politics, vulnerable communities on Aboriginal land are being targeted for a dump.

Dumping on Land Rights
The Northern Land Council (NLC) nominated the site at Muckaty in May 2007 under the CWRMA.
The NLC claim that traditional owners from Muckaty, all members of the Ngapa clan, signed a contract with the federal government to offer up the land. The NLC refuse to make the contract public and it is unknown how many signed.
Twenty three Ngapa signed a strong petition against the dump in 2009 and others have written letters of protest. But the idea that the land just belongs to this small group of people is a total fiction invented to justify the waste dump.
The Ngapa are only one of five clan groups within the Muckaty Land Trust, which has hundreds of registered members. A report done by the NT Land Commissioner, which led to the hand back of the land in 1993, says clearly that all members of the Land Trust must be considered “traditional Aboriginal owners of any part of the land”.
Under the NT Land Rights Act, any contract would require the “informed consent” of all people on the Land Trust. But this law remains suspended, allowing Ferguson to play divide and rule.
$12 million has been offered to the signatories. This will be paid into a trust fund for educational scholarships, roads and housing. These are basic citizenship rights, denied to increasingly desperate NT Aboriginal communities unless they accept a toxic trade off. A substantial cut will go to the NLC.

Fight Back
The meeting resolved to fight the dump, if necessary with direct action to stop it being built. A mass demonstration will be held over the Easter Weekend. Muckaty traditional owner and campaign leader Dianne Stokes told the Centralian Advocate she would block the Stuart Highway.
A motion from the MUA, pledging to put a ban on the unloading of nuclear waste bound for unwilling Aboriginal communities, received a loud cheer.
At their February full council meeting, Unions NT resolved to support communities and unionists refusing to co-operate with the dump.

By Paddy Gibson

The campaign to stop new coal power stations is shaping up as one of the key issues for the climate movement—both in NSW and nationally.
In early March the NSW government gave “concept approval” for plans to build two new coal-fired power stations—one in the Hunter Valley and one at Lithgow. But there is still plenty of time to stop them going ahead. The government plans to sell the development sites for the two power stations together with the approval to build. It wants the private sector to build and run the new power stations. But it still has to find an interested buyer.
Delays to its power privatisation plans, where the government hopes to sell retail electricity companies and the “trading rights” to power produced in state owned generators, show that this will not be easy. The development sites for the new power plants are to be sold as part of the privatisation process.
In February the government announced a six month delay to power privatisation, abandoning its original schedule of completing the sale by June. As the Financial Review revealed, “Sources close to the government said the main reason for the delay was that it was waiting for additional competition in the process”. In other words there were not enough bidders.
This is good news for the campaign. The government had hoped to sneak the plans for new power stations through and avoid public attention. It released the environmental approval the same day as Kevin Rudd’s major announcement about his health takeover, hoping to avoid media coverage.
If the new power plants go ahead they will add 15 per cent to NSW’s total emissions. Even gas plants would add 7 per cent to emissions. And a report by independent consultants Arup found that emissions from the Mt Piper plant “could be up to 20% higher than the values presented in the greenhouse gas estimate”.
These emissions would be locked in for 30 years, the life of a power station.
Research by Greenpeace has revealed that there are a total of 12 new coal power plants being planned across the country, one in every state except Tasmania.
In Victoria, HRL is still struggling to find financial backers for its new brown coal power station in the LaTrobe valley. The plant is unlikely to be finished until 2013. The HRL plant will use new coal gasification technology, with the aim of reducing emissions from brown coal by 30 per cent—which would make it “only” as polluting as ordinary black coal. The Victorian government sees the technology as a way to allow the continued use of brown coal to power the state. Stopping these plans is one of the key challenges for the climate movement. If the movement is able to succeed in blocking new coal power stations we will be in a better position to force more rapid installation of renewables.
Stopping new coal power stations must also be linked to the uselessness of Rudd’s CPRS climate policy. If a policy that is supposed to reduce greenhouse emissions can allow new coal power stations to be built then it is worthless. Climate groups should be looking to call a national day of protest when the CPRS in back in the Senate in May, to call for no new coal power, no CPRS and for government funding for renewables.

By James Supple

Australia could cut emissions from electricity generation to zero in ten years for $40 billion a year, according to a preview of Beyond Zero Emissions’ first Zero Carbon Australia plan.
The plan, which is based solely on commercially available technology, relies mainly on solar and wind power to provide the country’s power needs.
Twelve large-scale solar power plants could provide 60 per cent of energy, with the remaining 40 per cent coming from wind turbines.
Twenty-four hour a day power from solar energy is possible through molten salt heat storage at the power plants, which would be heated to up to 650oC and then used to boil water for steam at night to produce power.
The plan was presented at the Transition Decade launch in Melbourne.
The Transition Decade campaign is based on the knowledge that the world is so close to a climate catastrophe that there must be urgent action to reduce emissions.
It is a response to the failure by state and federal governments to introduce policies that would significantly reduce emissions.
Such a transition plan could only be implemented through large-scale government investment in renewable energy.
The $40 billion a year to fund the plan could be raised simply by restoring the corporate tax rate to its 1987 level of 49 per cent, which would raise about $50 billion more in tax per year.

A carbon tax, proposed by The Greens as an alternative to Rudd’s CPRS, would increase power prices for ordinary people, and be just as ineffective in encouraging renewables as carbon trading
With Rudd’s CPRS stalled in the Senate, and support for the scheme falling, the debate about solutions to climate change has opened up.
The Greens have proposed an interim two-year carbon tax, as a transition to carbon trading, starting at $23 per tonne this year. Unlike the CRPS it would not involve tradeable permits, or the use of offsets, but as the Greens state “The scheme would operate using the proposed CPRS administrative framework”. The proposal originally comes from the Garnaut review, the report by free market economist Ross Garnaut that led to the CPRS.
The Greens are attempting to deal themselves back into climate negotiations with the government, rather than fight for solutions that would actually work. Given the scale of the problem, their carbon tax proposal is remarkable for its timidity. However timidity is not the only problem. A carbon tax will make getting solutions that work more difficult.
The Greens are proposing exemptions for “trade exposed emissions intensive industries”, just as with the CPRS.
This would include exemptions for companies like Alcoa, who have just done a deal to source their power from a coal-fired power station in Victoria, Loy Yang power. It will lock in their enormous use of power for the next 26 years.
Exemptions are designed to support Australian companies against international competitors. But being Australian companies does not make their emissions any less harmful to the climate. Climate change doesn’t recognise nations.

Problems
Carbon taxes are market mechanisms that, like Rudd’s CPRS, work by imposing a price on carbon emissions. This is designed to make polluting forms of energy more expensive, which would supposedly encourage the private sector to invest in renewables.
But a carbon tax set at $23 is far too low to do this. Renewables expert Mark Diesendorf estimates it would have to be set at $100 or more to make solar power competitive.
Energy producers would simply pass the cost of a carbon tax on to consumers. This means ordinary people would pay the cost of a transition to renewable energy—not the polluters.
Some argue increased prices for consumers could be offset by giving them back the revenue from a carbon tax or eliminating other regressive taxes.
But even the threat that prices might rise will alienate ordinary people. It is with good reason most working class people are suspicious of government policies that might raise their cost of living. We have experienced over 20 years of neo-liberal “reforms” designed to cut living standards and boost corporate profits. The climate movement needs to make it clear whose side we are on.
We need a mass movement to force our rulers to act to stop climate change. People will not join our movement if it could mean they can’t afford to drive a car, or if they are cut off electricity.
The right will attack a carbon tax in the same way Abbott has attacked Rudd’s CPRS—labelling it a “great big new tax” that will hurt living standards.

Regulation
If government is serious about stopping something dangerous, it bans it. DDT is banned because of its effects on the environment. So is asbestos. We need to regulate absolute limits on carbon pollution. Why allow companies to pay a tax and continue to destroy the planet?
Carbon taxes are always less effective than regulation. For instance taxing old incandescent light globes would reduce their use, but banning them stops it altogether. Taxing the car industry or petrol might force some poor people to stop driving, but requiring car manufactures to produce electric cars run on renewable energy alongside massively expanded public transport would make a real difference.

Funding renewables?
The Greens say that their proposal “Results in a surplus of $2.97 billion… which could be directed towards climate mitigation and adaptation infrastructure”.
We do need a way of raising money to pay for the building of renewable power generation. But this should come from taxing polluting corporations and the rich—those responsible for climate change.
If government was serious about funding a transition it could raise corporate tax and the highest individual tax rate back to where they were in the 1980s—corporate tax would go from 30 per cent back to 40 per cent and the highest tax rate from 45 per cent back to 60 per cent.
The movement must demand what is necessary, rather that try to come up with “solutions” that are acceptable to those who run our world, but that will not work.
Rudd claims carbon trading can be the key mechanism to fight climate change. The climate movement’s answer must be that a massive program of government spending to install renewable energy and public transport is necessary, not to argue for a carbon tax.

By Chris Breen

On January 31, residents at Ilpeye Ilpeye town camp in Alice Springs became the only Aboriginal land owners in Australia’s history to hand their land back to the Federal Government.
The following day Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin used extraordinary powers under the Commonwealth’s Northern Territory Emergency Response legislation to take control of community land title, saying she hoped the deal would usher in a “revolution in land tenure”. It won’t. The Ilpeye Ilpeye residents have been duped.
The Australian called the deal a landmark agreement that will allow town camp residents to own their own homes.
In reality, the Commonwealth is ratchetting up its aggressive push for control of Aboriginal communities. The deal is a cynical and divisive move driven by the collaboration of the Lhere Artepe Aboriginal Corporation who have openly supported government attacks on Tangentyere Council, the representative body for the other 17 town camps.
Unlike most residents of other town camps, the estimated 60-100 residents of Ilpeye Ilpeyeare Arrente people and have Native Title rights over the camp land. Because of that, they are entitled to “just terms compensation”. In effect they are selling their Native Title in return for a small investment in basic infrastructure and ownership of the homes on the town camp site.
Even worse, the deal will leave other town camp residents short changed. The compensation money paid to Ilpeye Ilpeye residents will be taken out of the $150 million the government allocated for housing repairs and to connect water, power and sewerage to all the camps.
Macklin has portrayed the deal as a shift of emphasis in Indigenous policy “from a rights agenda to one of individual economic empowerment”.
But claims that individual home ownership benefits communities are a sham. With unemployment over 90 per cent, the stark economic reality is that there is no chance of most town camp residents ever owning their own homes.
Macklin says the government will work to establish “safeguards” to prevent non-Aboriginal people from buying the Ilpeye Ilpeye land in future. But there are no guarantees. Tellingly, Karl Hampton, Minister for Central Australia in the Northern Territory Government, says that the land could eventually be sold off to the “wider Alice Springs community”. The Ilpeye Ilpeye deal is no model for Aboriginal home ownership.
However, NT Labor Senator Trish Crossin has said the federal government will be investigating whether similar arrangements can be reached in Aboriginal town camps in Darwin.
The pressure will now be on other struggling Central Australian Aboriginal communities. But they are steadfastly refusing to sign 40-year leases, despite the threats from the Federal Government—“voluntarily” hand over control, or expect to be starved of basic services and infrastructure and threatened with compulsory acquisition.

SIHIP Failure
The Federal Government claims the recent completion of two houses under its $672 million SIHIP program as a success story, despite it taking two and half years to build them. Both houses are in the Top End community of Wadeye where residents were forced to sign a 99-year lease before the houses would be built.
In contrast a “protest house” at Ampilatwatja was built in February in just two weeks by trade unionists and the Ampilatwatja community who set up the camp outside the “prescribed area” following the collapse of services and infrastructure under the Intervention.
Walk-off spokesperson Richard Downs scoffed at the government’s achievement, “They’ve built two houses in two and a half years. At this rate the 15,000 Aboriginal families living in overcrowded housing across the NT will be waiting 15,000 years for a new house!”
Unfortunately, Kim Hill of the Northern Land Council has backed the government’s housing “achievement” saying “this will go some way to silencing critics of the SIHIP program”.
But far from the critics being silenced, opposition to the Intervention is growing.
Several hundred people attended rallies in Sydney, Melbourne and Alice Springs on February 13, the anniversary of Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations, to say no to the leases blackmail, and to demand immediate funding for houses and services and that the government scrap the Intervention.

Substandard Housing
The SIHIP program, started in mid-2007, promised 750 new houses, 230 rebuilds and 2500 refurbishments over 10 years.
But $56 million has been swallowed by administration costs and the government has further reduced the amount for refurbishing houses from $150,000 each to $75,000.
Territory Alliance contractors told recent Territory Council of Co-operation hearings that the cutbacks will mean many houses get a new bathroom or kitchen sink and benches, but other urgently-needed repairs will not happen.
One contractor revealed at the hearings, “…some of the houses which are forming the base stock for the work will not meet the standards of the Residential Tenancies Act.”

By Lauren Mellor

According to Minister Jenny Macklin, the new Intervention legislation would restore the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), fulfilling a key Labor’s election promise. It’s a lie.
Submissions to the Senate enquiry, including the Australian Human Rights Commission’s report, have revealed that Aboriginal people will not be able to use the RDA to challenge the Intervention.
Without inserting a specific clause in the new laws stipulating they are subject to the RDA, there is no legal basis for any challenge.
The new legislation simply brands racist Intervention laws as “Special Measures” under the RDA. “Special Measures” are supposed to benefit a particular racial or ethnic group. Although there is no such benefit in the Intervention, without the laws being subject to the RDA, the measures cannot be challenged.
The draconian powers of the Government Business Managers over communities, compulsory 5-year leases over Aboriginal township land, blanket bans on alcohol and pornography—all will remain in place.
In his final report, released on February 24, James Anaya, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights, again labelled the Intervention “racist”. Australia has been called to formally face this charge at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva this September.

Welfare quarantine still racist
Labor has tried to cover the explicit racism of Intervention by providing powers to extend income management to non-Aboriginal welfare recipients. But there will be exemptions for the elderly and disabled. However, the Liberals are refusing to pass the new laws, arguing that they would “soften” the welfare quarantine.
During Senate Inquiry hearings in Alice Springs, Labor Senator Trish Crossin assured angry Aboriginal pensioners that under the new system they would receive their entitlements in cash. In practice, Income Management would hardly change.
Centrelink would still determine whether to let NT Aboriginal pensioners off Income Management and has the power to declare people “vulnerable” and keep them quarantined. They can offer bribes of up to $500 a year to keep people on Income Management. Many Aboriginal pensioners will have to wait until July 2011 before they can even apply for exemption.
In contrast to the ongoing impact on Aboriginal people, Labor has given no indication that Income Management will actually be imposed anywhere else in Australia. Originally, the quarantine was to roll out across the NT in July. But at recent Senate Inquiry hearings, Labor Senators only referred to applying Income Management to specific areas such as Palmerston, a suburb 30 kms from Darwin.
Anywhere in the NT, the burden will fall overwhelmingly on Aboriginal people. In Central Australia, Indigenous unemployment is more than 70 per cent while it is only 4 per cent for the general population.
The Greens’ opposition to the laws might mean that the laws will never be passed. The Greens have provided useful criticism, but they have been too focussed on the “national roll-out” aspect of the new laws and warning that Labor is pushing for the most draconian changes to social security in Australia’s history.
National expansion of Income Management would be a disaster for any poor, working-class suburb. But Labor will not be considering areas outside the NT until after a review in 2012.
In reality, the laws are a cover for Labor to continue the racism as usual for Aboriginal people in the NT.
The anti-Intervention campaigns needs to get the word out that whether or not the laws are passed, Labor is not re-instating the RDA. That fact alone damns the Rudd government and the Intervention.

By Paddy Gibson