The death of 30 asylum seekers, whose overloaded wooden boat crashed on the rocks of Christmas Island and sank, speaks volumes about immigration controls. This 21st century barbarism needs to be abolished, just as the slave trade was.

In the past year 5000 people made their way to Australia in flimsy boats via Indonesia. Most were from Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka fleeing war and genocide. Australia, as a key player in the US-led wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, is directly responsible for the desperate plight of those who turn to people-smugglers.

The journey to Australia invariably ends in prison or death.

 In the 1990s Paul Keating’s Labour government introduced mandatory detention for all refugees and asylum seekers, and whipped up fear of the country being over run by refugees.

Some migrants have been locked up for as long as seven years under indefinite detention rules. This form of brutality is an election- winner as John Howard discovered in 2001 when he turned away the Tampa boat loaded with refugees. He then incarcerated the refugees on tiny Pacific Islands, devoid of legal rights and well away from public scrutiny. The Labour opposition came out in support of Howard. Some opposition!

Naturally, Gillard’s Labour Government has carried on Howard’s policy, tweaking it ever so slightly; the asylum seekers are now locked up in East Timor instead of Nauru.

The detention centres are hell holes for people escaping hell. Christmas Island detention centre was built to hold 400 people; today it has 2726 prisoners. Thousands of children have been held in detention. An enquiry by the Human Rights Commissioner in Australia found “that children detained for long periods of time were at a high risk of suffering mental illness. Mental health professionals had repeatedly recommended that children and their parents be removed from immigration detention. The inquiry found that the Australian government’s refusal to implement these recommendations amounted to “..cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of those children in detention”. http://www.humanrights.gov.au/human_rights/children_detention_report/report/exec.htm

Since 2001 ships suspected of trafficking people in Australian territorial waters have been seized and forcibly removed.

Australia’s official policy is of non-racial border controls. That has been shown to be a lie in the treatment of boat people when compared to the tens of thousands of British and US citizens who stay in Australia with expired visas. These Anglo visitors are not hauled out to remote areas and locked up in detention camps.

That Australia is about to be “over run by hordes of refugees” is a modern myth. Yet Australia is a wealthy country that has escaped recession and has unemployment levels of just over 5%.

New Zealanders like to think that this country has a much more humane approach than Australia. Unfortunately New Zealand also has a shameful history. From poll taxes against Chinese, to revoking NZ citizenship for Samoans, to dawn raids and deportations, migrants have faced hardship and discrimination.

Fears of overcrowding are also raised in New Zealand, despite this country being number 200 out of 239 in population density.

Concerns that migrants will be a drain on the economy are equally unfounded. Migrants bring skills and knowledge and as workers are exploited by capitalists who profit from their labour. As workers migrants produce more goods and services than they consume.

Migration is a result of capitalist globalization and people naturally seek better lives and to escape war and poverty. The bosses who benefit from the system of globalization should be made to pay for greater facilities to meet the needs of migration.

Some presume wages will be driven down by new migrants. The answer is for workers to unite with migrants to push wages up. In fact, New Zealand history shows many migrants brought union experience which helped workers here make solid gains.

Bosses would like us to think that border controls are to “protect our way of life” Immigration laws only benefit  the class who make and administer those laws. They allow capitalist governments to control the movement of labour and wages.

Some think open borders is a utopian demand and that the best we can achieve is more humane immigration policies. It is the idea of immigration controls being humane that is utopian. With controls come detainment, deportations, and people smugglers. The Workers Party stands for workers freedom, including complete freedom to move around the planet.

In July this year, the Victorian branch of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) took an important step forward and disaffiliated from the Australian Labor Party (ALP). Over 85% of those who took part in the vote voted to disaffiliate. Dean Mighell, the secretary of the Victorian union, told the paper Green Left Weekly, “Our members have watched over a long period of time as the ALP has attacked their union. . . They like the idea of their union being politically independent and putting their interest first and not the interests of any one party. We didn’t get any sense that members don’t want us campaigning on political issues that affect them. But they don’t see themselves as wedded naturally to the Labor Party.”

Affiliation hinders workers

Mighell noted the affect that being affiliated to the ALP has on unions campaigning for their members, saying, “What I’m bitterly disappointed about is that the union movement only seriously campaigns when the conservatives are in power. In reality, we’ve got conservatives in power now.” The union “looked at how we achieve political change for our members and what the most effective way was to do it”. They decided that they would be much more effective politically by ending their affiliation to Labor.

The process in Australia which provides the background to this disaffiliation is neatly described in the September 10 newsletter of the Socialist Party in Australia. They note that the long period of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments saw systematic attacks on workers, bringing about growing working class disillusionment with Labor and questioning of the usefulness of union affiliation to a party which was attacking their wages, conditions and living standards.

“Since the Hawke-Keating ALP governments of 1983-96,” the newsletter records, “the relationship between the ALP and the more militant unions has slowly begun to unravel. The ALP now stands for privatisation, user pays, and a general diminishing role for the public sector. Unions are expected to sell these cuts to workers on behalf of the party. This is the role that the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) plays today.

“The past 20 years has not only seen the party shift to the right but it has been emptied out of its working class base. It lacks even the most basic level of democracy and it is now just as connected to big business as the Liberal Party. These developments have not gone unnoticed by some sections of workers.”

The newsletter also notes that the Victorian ETU has regenerated itself in the past 15 years, from “a stale branch into a dynamic, strong organisation that is full of active members.” This change in the union in turn brought about “growing pressure in the branch to ditch the link to Labor and this was proven by the overwhelming vote to disaffiliate.”

NZ Labour and the unions

In New Zealand, a process of disaffiliation of unions from the capitalist Labour Party began much earlier, during the fourth Labour government in the mid-late 1980s. Only two significant unions, the Engineers (now the EPMU) and Service and Food Workers (SFWU) remained affiliated. Their leaderships continued to act as conduits for the economically right-wing politics of the Labour Party to be filtered into those unions.

Since the demise of the Alliance party as a significant political force, several small unions have unfortunately drifted back towards Labour, most recently the Maritime Union.

In the next issue of The Spark we’ll look at how poorly union affiliation to the NZ Labour Party served workers historically and why no unions should remain attached to a party which is dedicated above all to managing capitalism.

A protest organiser  spoke of how 254 Tamil Asylum Seekers refused to leave the boat for fear of being locked up in an Indonesian detention centre or being deported back to Sri Lanka.

Returning to Sri Lanka is not an option, as one man who had returned to see his ill mother had been thrown in prison, without charges being laid, and is still locked up.

“The refugees are rightly demanding that they be given basic human rights and that Australia, as a signatory of the UN Refugee Convention, adhere to its international responsibilities” Priyaksha said.

The treatment of the Tamil asylum seekers highlights all the more the need for open borders. The Workers Party view is that while capital, commodities and rich people get to travel more freely around the world, workers’ freedom to move is increasingly restricted. Big companies can move freely to where labour is cheaper, for instance, but workers can’t move freely to where wages are higher. Labour and National governments favour free trade agreements, for instance, while imposing new racist immigration restrictions.

It’s in the interests of workers to support each other and make common cause for the maximum freedom possible.

Protests on 18 January for the Tamil’s cause are also being held in Australia, Canada and Britain.

Continuing a precedent followed over most of the last decade, the Australian government has increased the military budget well above inflation, with a 56% increase in the last seven years and 9% in the last year, to $25.66 billion dollars, with expectations that it will rise to $29.47 billion in 2010, a rise of 12.9%.

This is an important development in the attempts by the Australian ruling establishment in their move away from the traditional Australian defence position of border control and response to one of regional projection and incursion to maintain and develop Australia’s interests.

In its most recently released Defense White Paper, the proposal was made for the purchase over the next ten years of 12 new submarines, 20 corvette patrol vessels, cruise missiles, 100 new top-of-the-line fighter aircraft, 1100 new armoured personnel carriers and high-altitude unmanned spy planes similar to those used by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is part of a re-orientation in Australia’s evolving imperialist aspirations dating back to the invasion of East Timor in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and the growing political fear of China namely a growing role in invading and pacifying “unstable neighbours” and a realisation of the weakening of US strength and influence in the Pacific and South-East Asia.

While economically China and Australia have ever increasing ties, namely through the growing consumption of Australian minerals and resources by Chinese industry. Political tensions still exist between the two nations, with China developing stronger ties within the region, notably both East Timor and Fiji. Both countries have until recently figured quite centrally within Australia’s sphere of influence and China’s ‘intrusion’ into this sphere is an affront to the existing US-Australia’s Pacific hegemony.

With the ongoing decline in the strength of US foreign power, the change in focus of the Australian military, heralded by this and previous budgets, indicates a more active role in building up deterrence measures against any potential threat, be it pro-democracy marchers in Tonga or anti-ANZAC protests in East Timor.

While the rhetoric raised surrounding the possibility of conflict with China is raised with a degree of jingoistic urgency. The reality is very different. The Australian Defense Intelligence Organisation, seconded by the Office of National Assessments, have both come back and reported little expectation of the Chinese `threat’ eventuating within the next twenty years, an analysis shared by the US military, currently focusing on many decades of counter-insurgency operations ahead of them.

The question needs to be asked then, why is this policy direction being followed, and what is the role of New Zealand in this enlarged role of `South-Pacific sheriff’? To what extent is the `yellow peril’ bogeyman of Chinese expansion being used as a sop to justify huge increases in defence expenditure, coupled with much more aggressive incursions into the domestic affairs of neighbouring countries. The by-product of this change in defence policy is the increased pressure on New Zealand to buy into this manufactured panic and increase its military budget to match that of Australia, serving only to force more cuts and attacks on the working class, to pay for it. The arms companies will be laughing all the way to the bank.

A whole heap of no-hoper homeless
Why  on earth should we help them survive?
They don’t buy our chairs or appliances
When their dole payments arrive
Even if we display them on special
The homeless won’t buy a tv
They say they’ve got nowhere to plug the thing in
They’re plainly not like you and me.
They don’t have 600 race horses
Or a hundred and sixty odd stores
Or a fortune of one point six billion
And they’re probably covered in sores.
Survival should be for the fittest
Those who get up and get to the goal
Like the beast in the depths of a jungle drought
Who governs the water hole.

Don Franks

However, just like the New Zealand Labour Government’s introduction of the Employment Relations Act shortly after their election in 1999, the ALP’s proposed new industrial legislation actually promises to change very little for workers, as the following report from the Socialist Party of Australia makes clear.

Many workers have welcomed the news that Labor Party PM, Kevin Rudd is going to ‘dismantle’ the previous Howard government’s industrial relations laws. The reality of the situation is that far from dismantling the laws, Rudd plans to leave most of Howard’s Work Choices legislation intact.

On February 13 Labor introduced the Workplace Relations Amendment Bill into parliament. While the bill does outlaw new Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) it also allows bosses who have used AWAs in the past to use a new form of individual agreement called an Interim Transitional Employment Agreement (ITEA).

These agreements are practically the same as AWAs and will be allowed until the start of a new industrial relations system that won’t be functional until 2010. All existing AWAs will also remain in place. Considering everyone now agrees that individual contracts were the key plank in winding back wages and conditions, this is hardly a radical shift away from Work Choices.

The laws will only include 10 very basic matters that will underpin Awards and Agreements. Rudd will also ask the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to ‘modernise’ and ‘simplify’ all of the current industry Awards. These buzz words are mere code for stripping back Awards to a bare minimum and the process will not lead to any improvement in working conditions.

Under Labor’s new laws ‘flexibility’ clauses in all Awards and Agreements will allow bosses to roll over many conditions into annualised salaries. What Howard achieved through individual agreements, Rudd is doing under the guise of ‘flexibility’.

The bill maintains all of the worst aspects of Work Choices. It makes next to no changes in relation to unfair dismissal and union officials will still be subject to the draconian right-of-entry laws. This hinders unions from organising and representing their members properly.

Workers will only be ‘allowed’ to strike in a bargaining period. Which is only when an agreement has expired. The requirement that workers will have to conduct a secret ballot before taking industrial action also stays. Any worker who takes ‘unauthorised’ industrial action will face fines of up to $6600 just as they did under Howard. Unions are still threatened with large fines if they don’t stick to the rules.

Disgustingly Labor has also said that it will maintain the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). The ABCC is armed with extraordinary powers that allow it to prosecute unions and workers for alleged ‘illegal’ industrial action. This body has been the main tool bosses in the construction industry have used to deal with unwanted strikes.

Not surprisingly many bosses are quite happy with the content of Rudd’s IR laws. Australian Industry Group chief executive, Heather Ridout said the Bill was “balanced and workable for business”. She knows that in an economic downturn it will be the Labor Party who will be much better placed to keep workers in check through their control of the trade unions.

Unfortunately instead of campaigning in the workplaces and on the streets to force Labor to introduce decent industrial laws, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) have decided that they will waste millions of dollars on advertising campaigns to lobby conservative MPs.

This approach is a total waste of time. Considering the ACTU are professional negotiators you would have thought they might have got some better assurances than ‘Work Choices Lite’ before spending the millions of dollars getting Labor elected.

The union movement needs to take on an entirely different approach to politics. Because Rudd has no alternative economic policy to that of Howard he will be forced to carry out the same policies. Every time that will mean putting the interests of big business ahead of those of working people.

Rudd has already started preparing the working class with comments like “we must have wage restraint”. This proves that Rudd just like Howard is happy to let workers bear the brunt of any economic downturn while his big business mates are looked after.

The solution is for the union movement to organise an independent political and industrial campaign that is focused on shop floor organising and the mass mobilisation of workers. This campaign would produce propaganda, but mainly its task would be to organise industrial action to fight against individual contracts, to shut down the ABCC and to ensure we have the right to strike.

Anything short of this will only end in disappointment and the working class going backwards during Rudd’s time in office.

In the recent Australian General Elections, the eleven year reign of John Howard and his Liberal-National Coalition government was ended with a victory for the Labor Party and its leader Kevin Rudd.

The elections saw a significant voter shift towards Labor, with Howard even losing his own seat in the election to Labor challenger Maxine McKew.

While no one is sorry to see Howard and his Coalition thrown out, the facts are that “Kevin07″ and Labor will be no better than Howard was.

A major reason for the Coalition’s defeat was the unpopularity of its “WorkChoices” industrial relation (IR) legislation, a frontal attack on the Australian working class and the Australian union movement, that made it harder for workers to strike, made it easier for employers to force their employees onto individual workplace agreements rather than collective agreements, and banned clauses from workplace agreements which supported unions.

Despite the ALP’s promises to “oppose the Howard Government’s industrial relations legislation in every respect, at every stage until the next election”, Rudd changed the position to being “removing many of the worst aspects of WorkChoices”.

Rather than ditching the massively unpopular WorkChoices in its entirety, Rudd has instead given it a facelift, in a similar way to what the current Labour government in New Zealand did with National’s Employment Relations Act.

Businesses with under fifteen workers will still be exempt from unfair dismissal laws, with the original legislation exempting businesses with under 100 employees.

Restrictive right of entry rules into workplaces for unions introduced under WorkChoices will remain and secret ballots (rather than open ballots) to decide on carrying out strikes will continue, strikes will become banned except during periods of collective bargaining. (emphasis added)

The new Labor government has stated that “Federal Labor will not allow industrial action to be taken outside a clear set of tough rules”, and that “Small business will be protected from unlawful and disruptive union activity.”

All of this should prove to anyone with a brain that the ALP government and “Kevin07″ is no more worker friendly than the Howard government that preceded it, and should be opposed with just as much vigour as the Coalition was.

Rudd has reconfirmed that Australian troops will continue to occupy Afghanistan indefinitely, saying that “Australia is here in Afghanistan for a long haul”.

While Rudd has confirmed that he will pull Australia’s 550 combat troops out of Iraq, 500 “non-combat” troops will stay in the country doing “re-construction work” (aka building, maintaining and repairing military bases and so on).

Rudd has pledged to continue with the “intervention” into the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, described by former Northern Territory MP, and Indigenous leader John Ah Kit as “in some ways genocide”.

All of this clearly shows that (despite what some on the left may claim), Kevin Rudd and the Australian Labor Party is not, never was and never will be worthy of any support whatsoever, and despite Howard being gone, it’s still the same old bullshit.