the Banner Bright

Alan Kohler — hardly a raging lefty: “[W]eak wage growth has been the most pressing economic problem for years, and arguably the most pressing social problem is the financial disadvantage of women. Too many jobs are chronically underpaid, and they are mainly the ones done by women: aged care, child care, nursing, waiting, interior design, book editing — in fact virtually any job done mainly by women is both undervalued and underpaid. … Right now, there is a ballooning crisis in health care and aged care because workers simply aren’t paid enough for the pressure they’re under in the pandemic: there’s no buffer, and unions are warning of an exodus from the industry if the job is not valued more highly. It’s not so much that individual employers don’t want to pay their staff more, although there’s undoubtedly some of that. Most businesses value their staff and want them to be happy. But they can’t charge their customers more, or think they can’t. With child care there is a circular ceiling on prices: operators can’t charge more than the mother earns, otherwise it’s not worth going to work and having the children looked after by someone else (that is, another woman). But as discussed, women are often poorly paid, which flows to those looking after their children.Government subsidies for aged care, child care and health care could be increased sufficiently to lift wages, thereby socialising the solution rather than putting the burden entirely on those using the services.”

Prof Megan Davis [$]: Changing the date is akin to lipstick on a pig. It moves the date but doesn’t address the more complex underlying issue that drives anti-Australia Day sentiment, and that is the place of First Nations people in our nation. … The Uluru Statement from the Heart … seeks a primary reform — the right to be heard. It calls for a constitutionally protected voice to parliament for First Nations people. It presents a vision for the ­nation that is anchored in the ancient cultures of this continent. It combines better indigenous participation in the democratic life of the state, as Aboriginal advocates have been asking for over a century, with the agency of a ­national referendum. … The voice to parliament is in effect a duty to consult First Nations on laws and policies that impact them. Closing the Gap is decade-long evidence that this does not happen now. The bushfires and the vaccine rollout are recent evidence that First Nations are excluded from policy discussions on matters that impact upon them. … [The Uluru Statement] is a rallying call for all Australians. It is the voice to parliament referendum — more than any debate over a future republican model — that would truly unite our nation.”

Claire G Coleman [$]: “Every year 1994, on January 26, Australians have celebrated the invasion and subsequent genocide of Indigenous people. Every year, … [t]he calls to change the date, the calls to abolish Australia Day, become increasingly loud. Perhaps people are beginning to see what the day truly is for many people — a spasm of jingoistic white nationalist fervour and an insult to Indigenous Australians, the survivors of genocide. … The original decision to celebrate January 26, to hold Australia’s national day on the date that the continent was invaded and the genocide of Indigenous peoples began, was a political one. It can be seen as nothing more than a statement of intent, to celebrate and idealise Australia as a British colony and, above all, as white. … I consider it the responsibility of the coloniser to fight against the colony, even to dismantle it. You outnumber us, you have the political power, although you apparently lack the political will to do better than you are doing. … The colonisers benefit from the colony. Every coloniser and descendent of colonisers, every non-Indigenous person, is advantaged by the colony. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the colonisers work to dismantle their own privilege. That is something for you to reflect on: how much do you believe in justice? Even that is not enough. It is time to ask yourself: what can you do for the people of this land, what are you willing to do? Do you think you are doing enough? Honestly?”

Julie Edwards: ”[W]e justly talk about the impact of climate change on our environment, our homes and livelihoods and our future generations, seldom do we reflect on the ways in which the existing harms of the prison system overlap with and exacerbate the impacts of climate change for some of the most marginalised in our community. … In December 2018, a riot at Alice Springs Correctional Centre was linked to a heat wave, exacerbated by overcrowding and a lack of air conditioning in cells. Excessive, prolonged heat takes its toll in a variety of direct and indirect ways:  disrupting sleep, causing health problems, and creating conflict. Between January and July 2019, Alice Springs experienced 129 days over 35°C and 55 days over 40°C. … Just last week in Roebourne, a small mining town in the north-west of Western Australia, incarcerated people sweltered through an unbearable 50-degree day in small prison cells without air conditioning. … [W]e need to rethink our justice systems. We require a more humane response that prioritises addressing the underlying causes of offending to drive down the need for prisons in the first place. … This reorientation, from prisons to interventions that hold people to account and support people to lead crime-free, safe and healthy lives, should be seen as an integral part of a just transition to a sustainable future.

(In 2020, the WA Labor government defended the lack of air conditioning in the Roebourne prison, saying “there are some people who literally don’t like air conditioning”.)

Kristin O’Connell: “All poverty is ultimately income poverty. And its number one cause in this country is abhorrently low welfare payments. We don’t need more food banks, more rebates, more niche supports that are impossible to find out about, let alone access. We need money. … We’re long overdue for a new measure of poverty in this country. Until then, the best we have is the Henderson poverty line, dating back to the 60s. When people on jobseeker lived at this level temporarily in 2020 because of Covid-19 supports, we heard of the relief it brought, and also how many people still went without (more than a third still regularly skipped meals, medication and healthcare). This is the rate unemployed people and advocates have been pleading to have brought back urgently while the long-term work of better understanding poverty and rebuilding public investment in housing, healthcare and education is done. Both major parties are committed to tax cuts for the rich, negative gearing and capital gains tax policies that fuel astronomical house price growth — and pouring good money after bad on farcical defence projects. Yet they have the audacity to lecture us on careful spending. Both have staunchly ignored every shred of evidence about how government-inflicted poverty and ‘mutual’ obligations are destroying lives and killing people. … So no, whether Liberal or Labor, you’re not for the poor. You’re at war with us.”

Solidarity with NSW public school teachers, who have been forced to strike because the NSW government is intent on imposing a real wage cut, which will only exacerbate a teacher shortage. Dan Hogan: “Public school teachers and principals in New South Wales are striking [today] over the government’s failure to address spiraling shortages, stagnant wages, and unsustainable workloads. All options have been exhausted in negotiations with the NSW Department of Education. We have no other choice but to strike. … It is no secret to staff, students and parents connected to public schools that the state education system is built on the unpaid overtime of teachers. The Department’s decade-long austerity project has driven teachers out of the profession en masse, acted as a deterrent to ward off new talent and created a teacher shortage. Not only has its modus operandi of making teachers work more for less wages (or no wages at all) degraded the working conditions of teachers — it has also overseen a decline in positive education outcomes for students. The Department is yet to acknowledge the direct link between the working conditions of teachers and learning outcomes for students. … Gaining higher wages through industrial action would see the abolition of the government’s 2.5 per cent wages cap, which would be a huge benefit to all public sector workers whose pay and conditions are presently trapped under the cap. … The struggle has been developing since the 2011 imposition of the wages cap. Again, it does not take an overpaid bureaucrat to work out there is a direct link between ten years of declining learning outcomes and a decade of austerity measures. The wages cap has locked in a material decline in teacher wages.”

(This neoliberal approach to public sector salaries is not limited to Liberal governments. The Victorian Labor government uses an even tighter wage cap to avoid real negotiations with its employees over their pay — and in fact is going to further tighten the cap from 2% to just 1.5% next month.)

Bernard Keane [$]: “Consider the extent of wage theft: The remarkable diversity of organisations involved: large retail employers Bunnings, Target, Super Retail Group, 7-Eleven, Subway and Ampol; the Commonwealth Bank, NAB, Westpac, the ABC, Monash, Melbourne, UNSW and Sydney universities; prominent law firms, prominent restaurateurs; Crown, a host of smaller retailers, NGO Red Cross, Optus, IBM, Telstra, Regis Healthcare, the Australian Sports Commission; The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) announced last week it had started legal action against Coles, claiming it had underpaid 7500 employees a total of $115 million between January 2017 and March 2020; that follows the FWO taking Woolworths to court in June over its $390 million (including interest) underpayment of staff; the Finance Sector Union today revealed it will launch a major court action against NAB in relation to wage underpayment and unpaid overtime… Nearly 90% of job ads in foreign languages specified below-award rates of pay, according to a Unions NSW survey… The steadily mounting evidence shows that Australia’s economic history of the last decade must be re-evaluated: wage theft has not been an incidental, occasional feature of the industrial relations system, but a key, intentional characteristic of Australian industrial relations that has had a significant positive impact on corporate profitability and significant negative impact on household income, directly through lower wages and indirectly through pressure on wage growth. … [A]ny economic policy or analysis that fails to recognise wage theft is a design feature of the Australian economy is wilfully blind.”

Prof Megan Davis: “It is rather odd that in Australia, unlike the rest of the world, there is a naive belief that truth comes before justice, truth comes before a treaty, and justice will follow the truth. … One of the sources of disgruntlement and frustration is how rarely the justice requirements − what does repair look like? − follow the truth-telling, and how little changes in power relations. … [Consider] the discomfort of many First Nations people following the Uluru Statement from the Heart, as allies ran off on truthy jaunts with truthy projects, well ahead of the mob. Before the Uluru statement, the language of truth and truth-telling barely featured in the nation’s narrative. After it, truth-telling is exigent, yet entirely detached from the political ask. Take note of those who are spruiking truth without constitutional voice. Notice who is not advocating for political power and structural reform. … The pithy tagline for the Uluru Statement from the Heart — ‘Voice, Treaty, Truth’ — in some ways invited this. It gives the false impression that change is an à la carte menu and one can simply pick what suits, even though these three proposals are connected, meaningful and not interchangeable. The reform is Voice: Makarrata. … Allies tend to cast aside the justice components of the Aboriginal struggle because they don’t want to be political — they want to be safe. … The idea that truth automatically will lead to justice is fraught. It is illusory. It is an ahistorical belief that is simply not borne out by the evidence. It defies the demands we have made as Aboriginal people for rigorous evidence-based thinking and public policy in Indigenous affairs. Beware the ally spruiking truth.”

The Human Rights Law Centre has produced a report outlining the systematic repression of climate activism in Australia, through the “introduction of harsh and at times unconstitutional, anti-protest laws targeting climate defenders… enforcement of punitive bail conditions and excessive penalties for minor protest related offences… [s]tifling civil society by defunding climate education and threatening to deregister charities that engage in climate activism” and “[t]argeting activists with litigation, and surveilling and infiltrating climate defender groups”. They note: “In the face of governments’ inertia, climate activism has been vital in helping persuade big business to change their ways: Equinor, BP, Santos and Chevron have abandoned risky oil drilling plans in the Great Australian Bight, Australia’s four major banks have agreed to exit the thermal coal sector on or before 2035, and Australian corporations including Coca Cola Amatil, Bunnings Warehouse and Officeworks have committed to sourcing 100 per cent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. Global Warning calls for urgent and immediate reform to stop the attack on climate defenders, including by establishing a federal integrity commission, capping political donations, and strengthening legal protections for activists by introducing an Australian Charter of Human Rights.” Read the full report.

Benjamin Clark: “Australia used to tackle intergenerational inequality via state and federal estate taxes. They once accounted for around 10% of state government tax revenue. But relentless campaigning by farmers and small businesses saw Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland government axe theirs. The other states followed in fear of a retiree exodus, filling the revenue hole with pokie machines. Fraser joined in by abolishing the federal tax in 1979. It’s often claimed we can’t bring them back, or make bequests subject to capital gains tax, because it would be political suicide. … What imperilled Australia’s previous estate taxes was perceived low thresholds and the ease with which families with good accountants could dodge them. They also often applied to one’s spouse, handing opponents the potent political weapon of grieving widows. Targeting very wealthy households only, encompassing large gifts before death, and exempting spouses would help neutralise these lines of attack. The Australia Institute’s 2016 proposal is a sensible one — they’d exempt everything up to $2 million, tax fortunes between $2-10 million at 20%, and above $10 million at 30%, which would generate approximately $5 billion revenue per year. Advancing such a proposal would be an uphill battle against entrenched interests. But it’s past time we tried to bring ‘death taxes’ back from the grave.” Doing it at the federal level would also help avoid a race to the bottom.