Pacific Islands Forum meets as region becomes a focal point of US confrontation with China

John Braddock & Tom Peters

Fiji is hosting the 51st Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting (PIF) from 11–14 July in the capital, Suva, chaired by Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.

The meeting is billed as one of the most significant in recent history, amid explosive geo-strategic tensions as the United States and its allies, Australia and New Zealand, seek to reassert their dominance and push back against China’s growing influence. At the same time, the climate crisis and rising sea levels remain the urgent existential issues for forum leaders.

Pacific Forum Island members in dark blue (Source: Wikimedia)

The PIF is the Pacific’s peak diplomatic body. Leaders from 14 countries, including the two local imperialist powers Australia and NZ, are gathering face-to face for the first time since 2019, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his New Zealand counterpart, Jacinda Ardern, are attending. Both have just returned from Europe where they addressed the NATO summit, giving full-throated support for the US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine and fully endorsing the militarist organisation’s expansion into the Asia-Pacific to confront China.

Indicating the deepening concern over intensifying geo-strategic rivalries and militarization, the PIF will for the first time not hold an in-person meeting for its 21 “dialogue partners,” who usually attend as observers. China, the US, Japan and others will all be effectively excluded.

The PIF itself is increasingly divided and unstable, with at least four leaders announcing at the last minute that they will not attend this week’s summit.

Kiribati President Taneti Maamau confirmed he was withdrawing from the PIF over dissatisfaction with the organisation’s leadership. Immediately, unsubstantiated allegations that China had engineered the exit appeared in the international media. 

Massey University lecturer Anna Powles told TVNZ that having an “ally” outside of the forum would benefit Beijing. The pro-NZ Labour Party Daily Blog declared Kiribati had “walked into the open arms of China.” The Sydney Morning Herald stated that “Kiribati is seen as a potential partner for China in the region.”

In fact, Kiribati is one of five members of the Micronesian subgroup of countries which last year threatened to leave the PIF, ostensibly over the appointment of former Cook Islands prime minister Henry Puna as secretary general, instead of a Micronesian leader. The five—Kiribati, Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia—have traditionally been aligned with Washington, although Kiribati switched its diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China in 2019.

An agreement to stay inside the PIF, reached last month following talks with the Micronesian leaders in Fiji, appears to be breaking down. It cannot be ruled out that the crisis was provoked by the United States or one of its allies, in order to break apart the PIF and intensify the confrontation with Beijing.

In addition to Kiribati, the Marshall Islands government announced this week that it is not taking part in the PIF summit, and confirmed that it is no longer a member of the Forum. The Marshall Islands has close ties with US imperialism and hosts a US Army base.

Radio NZ (RNZ) reports today that “Nauru’s Lionel Aingimea [is] also understood to not be attending [the summit], ostensibly because of the soaring levels of Covid-19 in his country.” Nauru and the Marshall Islands are among a handful of countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan and have no relations with China.

The current Cook Islands prime minister Mark Brown “has also pulled out, and said he wants to focus on the election, which is to be held in three weeks,” according to RNZ. The Cook Islands is a semi-colony of New Zealand, which controls the Cooks’ foreign and defence policy.

The PIF meeting follows a recent ten-nation tour of the region by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The visit included the formalisation of a security deal with  the Solomon Islands, prompting hysterical threats by Washington and Canberra of a possible “regime change” operation against the government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.

Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong in early June 2022 (Image: Senator Penny Wong Facebook)

Australia’s new foreign minister Penny Wong was dispatched to the Pacific to shore up relations. While her visits were couched in terms of “regional engagement” and “friendship,” in reality Canberra and Wellington have been delegated by the Biden administration to aggressively counter Beijing and line up island states throughout the Pacific behind the anti-China offensive.

Washington then announced the creation of a “Partners in the Blue Pacific” initiative involving the US, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Japan—all historic colonisers in the region—to address “growing challenges to the regional rules-based order,” i.e. the “order” established by the US by which it sets the rules globally.

The program declares it will “strengthen” the PIF while upgrading US diplomatic facilities, and very likely military bases, across the region. It has promised more contact with Pacific countries that at times “receive lesser attention,” and claims Washington will work in “partnership” with them.

However, as a commentary by the Development Policy Centre on July 5 noted, in the manner of its establishment the project “runs roughshod” over Pacific leaders while seeking to “impose a new hierarchy of preferred ‘partners’ from outside.” The project appropriates for its own purposes the PIF’s ‘Blue Pacific’ narrative while “pretending to share Pacific Islands agendas.”

Canberra and Wellington have been active in the lead-up to the PIF, meeting with the principal leaders and heavily promoting “regionalism” and the “Pacific family” against the “outsider” China. In fact the construct of a regional “family” is a pure invention. Behind the hypocritical phrase-mongering lies over a century of imperialist domination over the impoverished island countries, including interfering in their domestic affairs.

Following a meeting with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in Wellington last month, Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa said the PIF meeting would provide the opportunity for leaders “to consider security issues” in a “wider context” and “test the usefulness” of current arrangements. Ardern added that while every PIF member has the “sovereign right” to make their own decisions, “as a forum we’ll come together, we’ll discuss these issues” and “build a consensus.”

One of the “arrangements” referred to by Mata’afa is the Biketawa Declaration, signed in 2000 under intense pressure from Australia and New Zealand. The declaration states that “in time of crisis,” including when countries face “threats to their security, broadly defined,” the PIF must “urgently” take action together as a “family”—effectively overriding the principle of non-interference in the affairs of member nations. It provides a mechanism to rubber-stamp diplomatic, economic and military intervention anywhere in the region, at the behest of the major powers.

The Solomon Islands government is standing its ground over the agreements reached with China, setting the stage for a tense and divided summit of the PIF. Speaking to the Guardian last month, Collin Beck, the country’s permanent secretary of foreign affairs, said the China deal was needed to maintain internal security and help fight climate change.

Beck hit out at the international criticism that the deal had provoked. “We have various alliances that exist within the Pacific, which talk about the Pacific but the Pacific is not in the room,” he said, listing the Quad (a quasi-military alliance of the US, Australia, India and Japan) and the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US.

In a further sign of deteriorating relations, on July 11, the Australian newspaper said that five Australian “aid workers,” who had been employed to work as advisers on development projects in the Solomons, had been “blocked” from entering the country.

Meanwhile, many present and former Pacific leaders are insisting that the climate crisis—not China—is the biggest threat to the region. Pacific countries are already suffering from king tides, catastrophic cyclones, sustained droughts and the loss of low-lying islands to sea level rise.

In a statement in April, the Pacific Elders Voice group, which includes former leaders of the Marshall Islands, Palau, Kiribati and Tuvalu, as well Meg Taylor, the former PIF secretary general said that “the primary security threat to the Pacific is climate change”, adding that it was time that “the international community focus on these insecurities.”

Last week former Tuvalu prime minister and Pacific Elders Voice spokesman Enele Sopoaga sharply criticised the Australian Labor government’s target for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut by 43 percent, saying it was “far from being adequate.” “They need to do much more, they need to do not just these minimal targets, but move towards meeting more like 75 percent targets to catch up with the rest of the world,” Sopoaga warned, urging the PIF to discuss the issue.

Women for the Environment Africa 2023

Application Deadline: 15th August 2022

About the Award: In 2017, Women for the Environment Africa (WE Africa) was born through the determination of a small dedicated group of women conservationists frustrated with the current model of conservation leadership. They shared a conviction that a different style of leadership with more diverse and inclusive teams  and more collaboration and less competition would result in more conservation innovation and impact. This desire to “do conservation differently” led to the realization that we needed to both build a community of women conservation leaders in Africa to increase our resilience, and establish a transformational leadership course to increase our numbers at the decision-making tables. 

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility:

The WE Africa year long transformative leadership journey is for women who meet the following criteria:

• African nationals, current citizens of a country in Africa, or those who have had permanent residency in Africa for a minimum of 15 years
• A minimum of 15 years of experience working in the environmental space in government, NGO, or private sector in Africa including at least 5 years serving in a senior leadership role*
• A commitment to investing in your personal growth and participation for the full 12-month program
• A record of mentorship and desire to support future environmental leaders
• Access to reliable internet
• Able to speak and understand English conversationally
• A commitment to: 1) contribute USD $500 toward the cost of the course to secure your place; and 2) cover your travel costs to two in-person retreats for an estimated $1,500. Together your contribution represents approximately 15% of the course value.** 

*If you do not meet the requirements from the second point above, you may provide an explanation in the application about why you believe you are eligible.

**A limited number of scholarships are available to help offset costs for selected applicants.

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be Taken at (Country): Online and Offline (TBA)

Number of Awards: 20

Value of Award:

1. Membership in a community of passionate, experienced African women who are some of the most senior leaders in conservation today
2. Access to twelve months of 1:1 leadership coaching
3. An opportunity to create a new leadership vision for yourself and pursue a personalized leadership plan
4. Monthly online sessions to fit around your work schedule
5. Two in-person retreats for intensive personal and collective growth and community-building

Duration of Award: October 2022 to September 2023

How to Apply: CLICK HERE TO APPLY

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

UN agencies warn of “looming catastrophe” as global hunger rises

Jean Shaoul

United Nations agencies reported last week that global hunger and the chronic inability to access food soared in 2021.

A staggering 2.3 billion (30 percent) of the world’s population were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021, with nearly 12 percent facing severe food insecurity. Millions across the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Yemen and Syria already experiencing severe levels of hunger and poverty face the prospect of mass starvation.

Young girls line up at a feeding centre in Mogadishu, Somalia [Photo by Tobin Jones / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0]

This is set to worsen due to the US/NATO provoked war in Ukraine, with executive director of the UN’s World Food Program (WPF) David Beasley warning that the food crisis caused by the war would push countries into famine, causing “global destabilization, starvation and mass migration on an unprecedented scale.”

According to the WPF’s deputy director for research assessment Ronald Tran Ba Huy, 135 million people faced acute food insecurity before the pandemic in 2020. That figure had reached 276 million before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a figure set to increase to 335 million people in 82 countries in 2022.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022, published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and World Health Organization (WHO), said that up to 828 million people, nearly 11 percent of the world’s population, faced hunger last year. The number has grown by about 140 million since the start of the pandemic.

Undernourishment jumped from 8 percent in 2019 to 9.3 percent in 2020 and 9.8 percent in 2021. This has had a devastating impact on children. In 2020, an estimated 22 percent of children under five years of age were stunted, 6.7 percent wasted and 5.7 percent overweight. The report projects that nearly 670 million will still be undernourished in 2030.

Almost 3.1 billion people (40 percent) of the world’s population could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, an increase of 112 million since 2019 because of rising food prices stemming from the pandemic.

The UN agencies expect that nearly 670 million—8 percent of the world’s population—will still be facing hunger in 2030, the same level as in 2015 when the 2030 Agenda was launched with its target of Zero Hunger by 2030.

While the report blamed the war in Ukraine for skyrocketing food prices—food prices are 34 percent higher than a year ago and have reached their highest level since 1990—it failed to point out that the US government and its imperialist allies provoked the war and are intent on continuing it “for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia. They have imposed sanctions on Russia that have included banning the country from the SWIFT international money transfer system to destroy Russia’s economy by blocking its exports of fuel, food and fertilizers. This has driven up prices that were already soaring due to their failure to pursue a coronavirus elimination policy, thereby prolonging the pandemic, upending the world economy and disrupting global supply chains.

It is the world’s poorest both within and between countries that bear the heaviest burden, with 20 percent of people on the African continent facing hunger in 2021, compared to 9.1 percent in Asia, 8.6 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 5.8 percent in Oceania, and under 2.5 percent in Northern America and Europe. As Oxfam pointed out in a recent report, First Crisis, Then Catastrophe, food accounts for 17 percent of consumer spending in wealthy countries, but as much as 40 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa. But even within the advanced economies, inflation is super-charging inequality. In the US, the poorest 20 percent of families spend 27 percent of their incomes on food, while the richest 20 percent spend only 7 percent.

Global subsidies to the food and agriculture sector accounted for around $630 billion a year from 2013 to 2018 and are likely to reach $1.8 trillion a year by 2030. It is the giant agribusiness transnationals—the 10 largest of which are Cargill, ADM, Bayer, John Deere, CNH Industrial, Syngenta, DuPont, Nutrien, Yara International and BASF—that are most able to access subsidies. Some 70 percent of subsidies and state support go to producers, largely in the high-income countries, for staple foods, including cereals, roots and tubers, and meat and dairy at the expense of healthier, nutritious foods such as fruits, vegetables, pulses and seeds.

The report pathetically appealed to the advanced countries to consider “repurposing current public support to food and agriculture” that “often distorted market prices, did not reach small-scale farmers, hurt the environment, and did not promote nutritious food production.” This was the nearest it got to pinning responsibility for global hunger on capitalism—the economic system of producing food for profit, not need—and the subsidies provided by the world’s wealthiest governments to their own corporations.  

Why these same governments, which have sent millions to their deaths during the pandemic and are inciting a nuclear war with Russia that would kill millions if not billions, would “repurpose” their agricultural support systems to save the world’s poorest from starvation, the report did not say.

The UN agencies ignored the rampant financial speculation and profit gouging that are driving food prices ever higher. To cite one example, a Lighthouse Reports investigation, The Hunger Profiteers, concluded that in April speculators were responsible for 72 percent of the buying activity on the Paris wheat market, up from 25 percent before the pandemic.

The report also glossed over the rising tide of social inequality and its causes that has made it impossible for so many workers to feed their families. Thanks to the massive handouts to the corporations as stock markets collapsed around the world at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, the wealth of the world’s richest people soared more than in the previous 14 years combined, while global poverty deepened.

For most workers around the world, real-terms wages have continued to stagnate or even fall, while entire countries are forced ever deeper into poverty. The world’s poorest countries face defaulting on their debt repayments of $43 billion in 2022. They are being forced to slash public spending, including whatever limited social support they provide, to pay creditors and import food and fuel.

Last month, Wealth-X reported that there were 3,331 billionaires at the end of last year, up from 3,204 in 2020, one third of whom lived in North America. Their total wealth had surged by 17.8 percent to a record $11.8 trillion, a sum equal to 12 percent of global GDP, while few governments increased taxes on the richest. Even a fraction of this enormous wealth would end global hunger, with research in 2020 sponsored by the FAO and other food agencies estimating the cost of ending hunger by 2030 was $330 billion.

The UN agencies’ numerous appeals to the world’s richest countries for humanitarian aid have fallen on deaf ears as they turn their attention and resources to the war in Ukraine. They have pledged only about 18 percent of the $1.46 billion needed for the Somali people who face mass starvation, forcing the UN to cut its rations to those in dire need of aid. The amount needed pales into insignificance beside the imperialists’ expenditure on war and militarism that they like to justify in the name of humanitarianism. Last month, the G7 leaders pledged an extra $4.5 billion to tackle the food crisis, a fraction of the $28.5 billion needed, sending the message that millions must starve.

World leaders are acutely aware of the repercussions of the spiraling cost of food as workers demand pay increases and take to the streets in protest over their deteriorating living conditions in rich and poor countries alike. But the fight for decent wages, affordable food, basic necessities and a massive increase in wages means that the working class must unite across workplaces, industries, countries and continents in a global political struggle against the capitalist class and its governments and to put an end to the imperialist war.

French COVID-19 deaths pass 150,000 as Omicron BA.5 subvariant erupts across Europe

Samuel Tissot & Alex Lantier

The upsurge of COVID-19 in France and across Europe is a catastrophe for which President Emmanuel Macron and fellow European governments are responsible. Having repealed all measures to limit the spread of the virus this spring, they have left the population defenseless against a new wave now infecting millions in France and tens of millions across Europe.

Of a population of 67.4 million, France has confirmed 32.1 million cases of COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic, including 19 million from last December to last March, and 2 million over just the last month. On Friday, cases in France had increased 45 percent over the previous seven days. Currently, France has 2 million confirmed active cases of COVID-19.

Despite the availability of life-saving vaccines, such a massive level of infection exacts a devastating toll. Over 25,000 people have died of COVID-19 so far this year in France, including 1,200 people in the past month, and on Sunday the death toll in the country surpassed 150,000, according to the Worldometer tracker. Recurring waves of mass infection are also leaving millions in France with life-altering Long COVID, which affects an estimated 10-30 percent of COVID-19 patients.

The current wave is driven by the highly infectious and immune-evading Omicron BA.5 subvariant, which accounted for 67 percent of cases in France in the last week of June. Infections are exploding across the country, with the seven-day average of daily new cases increasing more than eight-fold since June 12, from 14,561 to over 127,000.

Compared to previous Omicron subvariants, vaccines are less effective against BA.5, symptoms last longer at an average of 7-10 days, and one can be infectious for longer. In addition to these properties, BA.5 has been able to spread rapidly in France’s highly vaccinated population, even though the country just experienced two recent waves of mass infection, due to the complete removal of social distancing guidelines and mask mandates.

France is, moreover, only the worst-hit country as COVID-19 explodes across Europe. Over the past month, the number of confirmed active COVID-19 cases have more than doubled to 1.7 million in Germany, 1.3 million in Italy, a half-million in Britain, and 130,000 in both the Netherlands and Belgium. Almost every country on the continent is experiencing a massive wave of infections that will soon rival that of the Omicron BA.1 surge last winter.

Due to a lack of testing and the prevalence of asymptomatic cases, the true total of COVID-19 infections is doubtless much higher than recorded in official figures. In Spain, where confirmed active cases per capita are five times lower than France, COVID-19 levels in Madrid wastewater are the highest since the pandemic began.

In France, official case totals are huge underestimates. Symptomatic individuals must pay for tests out of pocket, pushing them to get less reliable tests or forego testing altogether. The test positivity rate in the country is over 20 percent—well above the officially recommended 5 percent limit. Similar surges in test positivity rates can be seen across Europe.

High infection rates are translating to increased deaths across Europe, where deaths rose last week to 3,457. This was driven largely by increases in deaths in France, up 50 percent to 402, up 2 percent to 570 in Germany, up 81 percent to 581 in Spain, and up 36 percent to 578 in Italy. In the coming weeks, the number of fatalities will keep rising due to the delay between infection and the onset of serious illness.

Workers must be warned: The pandemic is set to continue indefinitely, at a devastating cost in lives and health, until the working class mobilizes internationally to compel the adoption of a Zero-COVID strategy to eliminate the coronavirus globally. This will involve a direct political struggle against reactionary capitalist governments in France and internationally.

Speculation by French officials that the emergence of the Omicron variant would cause SARS-CoV-2 to become “endemic” and gradually melt away has proven utterly false.

Macron’s policy of making COVID-19 “endemic”—i.e., letting it spread at will—is leading to a high baseline level of infection that periodically surges to hit much of the population. The current surge is already the third this year in the country, the previous ones having peaked at 6.8 million active cases in late January, and 2.8 million active cases in mid-April. Over the last eight months, active COVID-19 cases in France never fell below 350,000.

As in previous waves, the French government’s response is to cynically demand “vigilance” while letting the virus spread unchecked. Recently installed Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne only mentioned COVID-19 briefly in her inaugural speech to the National Assembly on July 6, acknowledging that “the COVID epidemic is not over.” On TF1 television later that day, Borne called for “everyone to be vigilant” before refusing to reintroduce even the most basic measure to slow the spread of this airborne virus: compulsory masking in crowded indoor areas.

Epidemiology Professor Antoine Flahault bitterly criticized Borne in Atlantico, writing, “The government is happy today with a policy of ‘living with the virus,’ capitulating to the virus as have several other European capitals.” While vaccinations meant the Omicron variant proved five times less deadly than the Delta variant, he noted that Omicron’s vastly higher spread amid the ending of social distancing nearly canceled out the difference.

Nevertheless, Flahault noted that COVID-19 is “claiming 55,000-65,000 deaths each year in France. In August 2003, when a summer heat wave claimed 15,000 lives, state authorities and the population and media unanimously considered such a toll among the elderly unacceptable. Measures were taken to prevent more such tragedies in future summers. Now, COVID-19 deaths have been counted out each night for 2.5 years, but we reacted to this macabre toll by collectively covering our ears.”

The class interests underlying Macron’s infection policy were on display on July 7, as Challenges published its yearly ranking of France’s 500 richest individuals. In the first year of the pandemic, these billionaires and multimillionaires saw their collective wealth rise by 31 percent as they profited from multitrillion-euro bailouts and stepped-up exploitation of workers kept on the job without protections. This year, their fortunes rose again, collectively rising above €1 trillion for the first time ever.

The recent successful suppression of a massive Omicron BA.2 outbreak in mainland China has once again shown that coordinated scientific policies can eliminate the virus in a few months. Adopted at a global level, they could end the pandemic.

Imposing such a policy will require an international offensive of the working class against the bourgeoisie and its middle class, pseudo-left defenders, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France. Mélenchon has played a key role in facilitating the Macron administration’s mass infection policy ever since the strict lockdown of May-March 2020, to which Macron was forced to agree as strikes spread across Europe amid the first wave of the pandemic.

In May 2020, even with case levels very low, when contact tracing and isolating cases could have eliminated the virus as in China and other Asia-Pacific countries, Mélenchon argued for keeping workers on the job amid mass deaths. Comparing the pandemic to World War I, he said: “We looked into the laws of 1915-16 to see what had been done. French society was a peasant society; all the men were at the front and were dying in the millions. We were interested to see how social cohesion was guaranteed at that time.”

Mélenchon indeed copied French social democratic chauvinists in World War I, who formed a so-called “Sacred Union” with far-right anti-Semitic groups like the Action française to back the war. Together with other leaders of his Unsubmissive France (LFI) party, like François Ruffin, he endorsed far-right protests last summer against vaccines and lockdowns initially called by neo-fascists like Marion Maréchal Le Pen and Florian Philippot.

General practitioner shortages across Australia heighten health crisis

John Mackay

Broad areas of regional and rural Australia are seeing a dire shortage of general practitioners (GPs), leaving the frontline of healthcare in what has been described by experts as a “perilous state.’’

Australian Medical Assistance Teams in Wilcannia offering door-to-door COVID-19 vaccinations and testing. (Source: Wilcannia On The Baaka Darling River Facebook)

An unprecedented decline in the supply of doctors has led to numerous towns and regional centres across the country without any GPs. It is not uncommon for one doctor to service the needs of thousands of people. 

This is forcing people to seek care from emergency departments in regional hospitals that are already overstretched due to years of funding cuts, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and now influenza. 

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), Richard Colbran of the New South Wales (NSW) Rural Doctors Network in the country’s most populous state said: “The reality is there isn’t a town in rural NSW that isn’t at risk of being able to sustain viable primary care right now. For every general practitioner that leaves the workforce there will need to be three to replace them to keep up with demand. After COVID-19, floods and bushfires, GPs have never felt a time when the system is in such a perilous state. They are exhausted.” 

Colbran said that at least 600 rural general practitioner proceduralists, who also work as doctors at local hospitals, have left their positions in the past 10 years. There are now fewer than 200 GP proceduralists working in rural NSW, with authorities concerned this number could dwindle to less than 100 within the decade.

Dubbo, in central NSW, has recently seen three of its twelve general practices close. Dr Ai-Vee Chua, a local GP told the SMH “I’ve worked in rural NSW for more than 20 years and the shortages we are seeing now are the worst they’ve ever been, especially with the increasing population.”

Dr Chua said patients were being forced to go to emergency departments because “they have no other option.”

In Queensland, Kingaroy in the state’s southeast is seeing a GP shortage so severe that waiting lists for local doctors are 8 weeks. There are just seven medical clinics for the town of over ten thousand, and practices are not taking on new patients.  

A recent report published this year by Deloitte Access Economics, titled the “General Practitioner work force report 2022”, found that the crisis will only advance, as the aging and growing population will see demands for GP services increase by 38 percent by 2032. 

The study reported that on current trends, the supply of GPs will decrease by 15 percent in the cities and 4 percent overall, resulting in a shortfall of 11,392 GPs in 2032. That would equate to 1 in 3 of the GP workforce.

The lack of basic healthcare services place both patients and staff at extreme risk. Earlier this year at Yass Hospital in southern central NSW, such a lack of doctors left a paramedic and an enrolled nurse to run the hospital. Twenty-four clinical staff associated with the hospital then wrote an open letter demanding urgent action over the staffing crisis and describing the situation as dangerous and unprecedented. 

Rural healthcare in Australia has been under-resourced for decades, subjected to funding cuts under both Liberal and Labor state and federal governments. For years, patients with acute serious illness have needed to be flown to city hospitals for urgent care. Sufferers of chronic diseases must travel to city or major regional centres for optimal care.  

The resulting anger in rural communities was evident in submissions to the NSW State Parliamentary Inquiry into regional, rural and remote healthcare. This inquiry, established in September 2020 following a succession of preventable deaths in rural and regional hospitals, which have underscored the disastrous state of health services in these areas. 

The conditions highlighted in the report have been superseded both in terms of GP shortages and the added and the intolerable workload of those who are left. However more recent findings from this submission reveal the deepening crisis in the future from GP shortages in rural NSW. Currently, Wellington NSW has a population of 10,000 and yet only one doctor practices at its local hospital. Over the next 5-10 years,at least 43 small communities in the state are at risk of losing GP services altogether. 

The South Australian and Northern Territory Chairman of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Dr Zakaira Baig told NewsGP earlier this year that the workforce shortage is “becoming an Australia-wide issue.” Baig said that attracting young doctors and medical students to general practice remains the biggest challenge as they have lost interest in pursuing a career in the field. 

“There are multiple reasons for it,” Baig stated. These include “the big discrepancy in remuneration for a GP and other specialists; while GPs are recognised as specialists, GPs are not paid at the same rate. Young doctors are often in relationships, there are no work opportunities for their partners if they go rural … so they are not keen to go rural unless there are special incentives. [There are also] limited schooling opportunities for children of rural GPs. Many move out to cities for this reason when their children grow up.”

 Many doctors choose to work in areas already well serviced by existing medical practitioners to avoid professional isolation and the expected excessive workload.

An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare study published just prior to the commencement of the pandemic in late 2019 revealed that “on average, Australians living in rural and remote areas have shorter lives, higher levels of disease and injury and poorer access to and use of health services, compared with people living in metropolitan areas”.

The report concluded that poorer health outcomes in rural and remote areas may be due to multiple factors including lifestyle differences and a level of disadvantage related to education and employment opportunities, however this also included limited access to health services.

Funding to primary care has not seen an increase for eight years. Patient rebates for GP services have been frozen since 2014, by the Abbott Coalition government, after the Gillard Labor government introduced it as a “temporary” budget measure in 2013. 

The result is GPs have been forced to charge patients “gap fees” to offset funding cuts, shifting the crisis onto the backs of the working class. With rapidly rising costs of living due to inflation many people are having to forego health care because they cannot afford the cost with dire consequences for the health and well being of ordinary people. It means without treatment preventable medical conditions advance to become chronic or life threatening.  

The new Albanese Labor government, in the course of the election campaign promised to inject very limited funds into health care. But within a matter of weeks of forming government, Labor has instead nominated healthcare as one of the key areas for spending cuts, as the national debt, accrued through handouts to big business over the past two years, is paid off by the further destruction of essential services.

South Korean autoworkers at Hyundai Motors vote to strike

Ben McGrath

Autoworkers at Hyundai Motors in South Korea voted on July 1 to strike, demanding improved wage and working conditions. Workers at Kia, GM Korea, and Renault Korea are also moving into conflict with management. These workers, like those throughout South Korea and internationally, are looking to take action as the ruling classes attempt to force the working class to pay for the growing economic crisis.

South Korean Hyundai autoworkers (Hyundai)

Of the 40,958 union members taking part in the vote, 81.6 percent voted to strike. The Hyundai branch has a total membership of 46,568 and belongs to the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU). If workers walk off the job, it would be the first time in four years. The Hyundai branch is the largest in the industry, with negotiations at the company often setting the benchmark for deals at other auto manufacturers.

Negotiations between the KMWU and Hyundai began in May, but broke down on June 22 after 12 rounds of talks, prompting the strike vote. However, the union announced on July 5 that it would postpone strike action and resume discussions with Hyundai until at least July 13.

Hyundai autoworkers are demanding a 165,200 won ($US126) increase in their basic monthly salary, 30 percent of net profits from 2021 in bonus pay, the extension of the retirement age from 60 to 64, and the reinstating of fired workers. Fearing job cuts, workers are also demanding concrete plans for building new electric vehicles in South Korea. Hyundai has refused to accept these demands.

Workers at Kia, which is also owned by conglomerate Hyundai Motor Group, have made similar demands, including a 162,000 won ($US124) monthly pay increase, 30 percent of operating profits in bonuses, and the operation of a bus system to take workers to and from factories. The KMWU Kia branch claimed it would walk out as well if Hyundai workers struck.

GM Korea workers are demanding a 142,300 won ($US109) monthly pay increase, 400 percent of regular wages as bonuses, and the reversal of a decision to close a plant at Bupyeong, Incheon by building electric vehicles. Workers at Renault Korea, formerly called Renault Samsung, are demanding 97,472 won ($US75) monthly pay increases, and the hiring of regular workers rather than dispatch or irregular workers who lack many basic job protections.

Workers at all the auto manufacturers are demanding the abolition of the peak wage system, which the companies previously introduced with the union bureaucracy’s approval. The system cuts the wages of older workers, who are currently forced to retire at 60. The unions claimed that they would later negotiate the system’s abolition in order to sell the cost-cutting measure to their memberships.

Hyundai workers must draw the lessons of past struggles, and in particular the previous four years, when the KMWU demonstrated it is not willing to wage any struggle for autoworkers. In 2019, Hyundai and the union reached a pro-company deal without a walkout, in the midst of a trade dispute between South Korea and Japan. The following year, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, the union forced a wage freeze on workers for the first time in 11 years.

On July 4, Hyundai CEO Lee Dong-seok delivered a thinly veiled warning to workers about the dire economic conditions. “Stagflation is spreading, another global economic recession is imminent, and the recession is likely to dwarf the global financial crisis of 2008… Besides, the ongoing automotive chip shortage and the recent strike in the transportation industry already led to approximately 90,000 cars that failed to be produced in the first half of this year.”

Lee’s reference to the trucker workers’ strike in the second week of June demonstrates both the power workers have, as well as the fear in corporate circles over the prospect of united workers’ actions.

The truckers’ strike ended abruptly the night of June 14 after their union, Cargo Truckers Solidarity (CTS), reached a back-room deal with the government to end the strike just as it was beginning to have a significant impact on companies, including Hyundai. Truckers received nothing more than vague promises, which the government has no intention of keeping.

Both CTS and the KMWU are affiliated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which postures as militant, and at times even anti-capitalist, but seeks to subordinate workers to the companies and the bourgeois parties, particularly the Democratic Party of Korea.

Strikes by unions belonging to the KCTU follow a predictable pattern: First, a so-called “general strike” is called, which is nothing of the sort. Strikes are limited to partial walkouts, lasting a couple of hours, or are limited to a small portion of union members and confined to a single company. The union bureaucrats make no genuine attempt to fight for unity among different sections of workers, even within the same industry. After workers have been allowed to let off steam, the union announces a sellout deal which it forces on workers.

The fact that Hyundai union branch leader An Hyeon-ho is described as a “hard-liner” does not change how the strike will be conducted, if it takes place at all. No layer of the union bureaucracy has opposed the regular sellouts imposed by any of the KCTU affiliates.

The KMWU Hyundai branch has already shown it is unwilling to take strike action by re-opening negotiations after the strike-authorization vote. It postures as a defender of workers while collaborating with the company on a deal that can be forced on its members.

Sri Lankan uprising forces resignation of president and prime minister

Deepal Jayasekera

Massive popular protests in Colombo on Saturday in which about a million workers, youth and rural poor participated have forced President Gotabhaya Rajapakse to announce that he will step down next Wednesday. Having initially refused to do so, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe late Saturday also declared that he would resign, following formation of an “all-party government.”

Protesters, some holding Sri Lankan flags, gather in a street leading to the presidents official residence in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Saturday, July 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Amitha Thennakoon)

The Saturday demonstrations for which people traveled to Colombo from areas all around the country marked three months since the beginning of protests at Galle Face Green in Colombo demanding the resignation of President Rajapakse and his government. In doing so, those that joined the mass protests on Saturday defied a curfew and police attacks.

The huge protest marks a turning point in economic, political and social crisis in Sri Lanka which is itself an acute expression of global crisis of capitalism that has intensified with the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

The forced resignation of Rajapakse and Wickremesinghe demonstrates the immense social power of the working class, which has played a central role in the now three-month old popular uprising against the government. However, their replacement by an all-party government will resolve none of the crucial issues confronting workers, youths and rural toilers. It will do nothing to end the unbearable living conditions produced by severe shortages and skyrocketing prices of essentials, including fuel, food, medicines and cooking gas or the hours-long daily power outages.

Although Rajapakse and Wickremesinghe may go, political and economic power will remain in the hands of the bourgeoisie. As long as bourgeois rule continues, the social crisis confronting working people and rural toilers will only worsen. The opposition parties—the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and Tamil National Alliance (TNA)—which are busy negotiating behind closed doors to form an “interim government,” are committed to implementing the severe austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Protesters look around at the president's official residence a day after it was stormed in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sunday, July 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

The class interests of workers and the rural masses are directly opposed to the IMF austerity agenda that will be ruthlessly implemented by any interim government. In a statement issued on Sunday, the IMF declared: “We hope for a resolution of the current situation that will allow for resumption of our dialogue on an IMF-supported program.”

In addition to the tough measures already imposed, the IMF is demanding increased taxes and the widening of the tax net, the wholesale slashing of public expenditure that will impact heavily on essential services such as education, health and price subsidies, and further privatisations that will inevitably mean savage cuts to jobs, wages and condition in the public sector.

US imperialism is also nervously following events in Sri Lanka, acutely aware that the popular uprising on the island could trigger similar protests in other parts of the globe, particularly in India, where working people face a similar social crisis. At the same time, it will seek to exploit the crisis to advance its position in Colombo as part of its broader efforts to prepare for war against China.

On the eve of Saturday protests, US Ambassador in Colombo, Julie Chung appealed for calm, tweeting: “Violence is not an answer. If you are going to protest, please do so peacefully. And reminding military & police to grant peaceful protesters the space and security to do so. Chaos and force will not fix the economy or bring the political stability that Sri Lankans need right now.”

However, the IMF’s austerity measures will only intensify the opposition of workers and rural toilers, and cannot be imposed democratically. The resignation of Rajapakse and Wickremesinghe and the formation of an all-party interim government is a desperate attempt by the ruling class to buy time. Such a government will attempt to wear down, divide and demoralise the opposition, paving the way for military-police repression and dictatorial forms of rule.

In ominous public comments on Saturday evening, Chief of Defence Staff and former Army Commander General Shavendra Silva told a special media briefing: “The people must provide necessary support for the armed forces and the police to maintain peace in the country.”

Sri Lankan workers needs to draw a sharp warning from the experiences of Egyptian revolution in 2011 when the decades-long dictatorial regime of Hosni Mubarak was ousted by the popular uprising of working people. However, the independent revolutionary intervention by the working class was blocked through the role of the pseudo-lefts such as the Revolutionary Socialists (RS), which politically subordinated the opposition to the bourgeois Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood government was incapable of resolving the underlying economic and social crisis. As its support waned, and in the absence of a socialist alternative, the military seized the initiative, carried out a brutal crackdown and installed the current military dictatorship of Mubarak’s former general Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. As in Sri Lanka, the US was closely involved with all these reactionary manoeuvres to stabilise bourgeois rule.

German parliament votes for NATO admission of Finland and Sweden to intensify war on Russia

Johannes Stern

Germany’s lower and upper chambers of parliament, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, voted by large majorities Friday to admit Sweden and Finland to NATO. Germany is thus one of the first countries to formally ratify the northward enlargement of the military alliance agreed upon at the NATO summit in Madrid.

With the admission of Finland and Sweden, NATO is creating a new front in the war against Russia in Scandinavia and throughout the Baltic Sea region. This further increases the risk of an all-out war against a nuclear-armed power, which could cost millions of lives and destroy the whole of Europe.

The day before the vote, the Finnish Parliament passed a law to massively fortify the more than 1,300-kilometre-long land border with Russia. The aim of the law is “to improve the operational capacity of border guards to respond to hybrid threats [from Russia],” said Anne Ihanus, a senior adviser at the Ministry of the Interior.

In doing so, NATO is also setting into motion a dangerous rearmament spiral in Northern Europe. Should “military contingents and military infrastructure be deployed in Finland and Sweden,” Russia would be forced to respond in kind, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned during the NATO summit.

Nevertheless, the war policy is supported by the entire ruling class. In addition to the governing Social Democrats (SPD), Free Democrats (FDEP) and Greens, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) also backed the admission of Finland and Sweden. Only the Left Party voted against it in the Bundestag, while making clear that it also supports NATO enlargement.

In his speech, the Left Party’s foreign policy spokesman, Gregor Gysi, praised Sweden and Finland. They have “done a lot in recent decades as militarily neutral states.” But then Russia “attacked Ukraine in violation of international law. That is why we must respect such a need for security.”

Gysi cynically added he actually wanted to recommend that the Left Party parliamentary group not reject the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO but instead abstain. “The price that Sweden, Finland and the whole of NATO ... have to pay to Turkey,” however, is “too high.” He therefore “advised his group to vote against.” But he knew “that other deputies are also critical of all this.”

This is as revealing as it is unambiguous. In fact, the Left Party supports NATO’s war with Russia. The party already made this clear at its recent party congress in Erfurt, where numerous speakers spoke in favour of arms deliveries to Ukraine and even offered Ukrainian organisations a platform, whose members are fighting directly against Russia and demanding more “German military aid for Ukraine.”

This is exactly what is happening now. In her speech, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) openly admitted that NATO’s northern enlargement was part of a comprehensive military offensive against Russia.

“The further strengthening of our deterrence and defense capabilities on the eastern border of NATO has been decided and is already being implemented,” she boasted. US President Joseph Biden “for the second time since taking office decided to increase America’s troop presence in Europe, thereby clearly reaffirming America’s commitment to Europe.” After 'decades of cuts and dismantling,” she said, “the defense spending of the allies is increasing again.” And Germany “made a very important contribution to the armed forces (Bundeswehr) with the special fund of €100 billion.”

Lambrecht pointed out that last week the 30 NATO member states “gave their alliance a new strategic concept” that “responds to the Russian threat” and also “looks at the risks and challenges of the future.” The accession of Finland and Sweden has to be seen “in this broad context.” she continued. She said that this is appropriate “for an alliance in transition, making itself fit to continue to be the decisive guarantor of security in the future.”

Lambrecht chose not to go into more concrete details about what NATO meant by “security” and “fit for the future”: the preparation for a nuclear Third World War.

NATO’s new Strategic Concept states: “We will individually and collectively provide the full range of forces ... needed for deterrence and defense, including high-intensity cross-dimension warfare against peer competitors possessing nuclear weapons.”

Germany is playing a central role in this madness. Immediately after the NATO summit, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) announced that the Bundeswehr will “permanently maintain an armoured division in the order of 15,000 soldiers for the defense of north-eastern Europe, over 60 aircraft and up to 20 naval units” to push ahead with the war. This is part of the NATO Response Force (NRF), which will be increased from 40,000 to over 300,000 soldiers.

In addition, “a combat brigade,” i.e., up to 5,000 soldiers, will be prepared “exclusively for the defence of alliance territory in Lithuania” and a “regional naval command for the Baltic Sea region” will be set up in order to “be able to assume leadership responsibility in the maritime sector.”

Germany’s ruling class sees the NATO offensive as an opportunity to put long held rearmament plans into action and to re-establish itself as the leading military power in Europe and internationally after it lost two world wars. The Federal Government is working specifically to increase the German-European weight within NATO and to organise the continent under Berlin’s military leadership.

“The European footprint in NATO” will be “even greater” with the accession of Finland and Sweden, said Lambrecht in the Bundestag. For the European Union, in which Germany is already setting the agenda politically and economically, “this is an important, a good decision.” A total of “23 out of 27 (EU) members belonged to the alliance,” and the chances of “intensive cooperation” would be “a whole lot greater as a result.”

The government does not say it openly, but it is clear that German imperialism is also preparing behind the scenes for a confrontation with the US in the struggle for control and looting of Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

The honorary chairman of the far-right AfD, Alexander Gauland, praised the Federal Government’s decision to support Sweden’s and Finland’s admission to NATO as “realpolitik in the best sense.” If accession leads to “the fact that the European weight will in future determine NATO policy more than the very different geostrategic interests of the USA, which are often contradictory to European wishes, this would have an additional positive effect.”

The AfD defense politician and retired colonel of the Bundeswehr Rüdiger Lucassen was even clearer in his speech.

“A European NATO is a necessity to free Europe from the vice of the great powers. Sweden and Finland can contribute to this. As a welcome gift, the Federal Government should finally let its many words be followed by deeds. The goal must be to build the Bundeswehr into Europe’s strongest army and to take the lead. Strategic autonomy is not given to you; you have to take it,” he declared.

It was not only the speeches of the AfD politicians that were reminiscent of the darkest times in German history. Eighty-one years after the German war of extermination against the Soviet Union, one speaker after another railed furiously against Russia. According to Alexander Graf Lambsdorff (FDP), Moscow’s foreign policy is “expansionist, revisionist and, indeed, violent.” Johann David Wadephul of the CDU accused the Kremlin of “formulating far-reaching imperial geographic claims.”

In fact, that is exactly what the foreign policy of the imperialist powers is all about. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is reactionary, but it is ultimately a desperate response by the capitalist Putin regime to the imperialist war policy of the NATO powers. They have been waging war almost continuously for 30 years and have destroyed entire countries—in addition to Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, countries in Europe itself.

German imperialism has played a central role in this from the outset. Thirty years ago, at the instigation of Germany and the United States, the recognition of the independence of Croatia and Slovenia initially triggered a terrible civil war in the former Yugoslavia. In 1999, the bombing of Serbia by NATO culminated in the violent secession of Kosovo. This imperialist offensive in the Balkans is also continuing. On Friday, the Bundestag extended the Bundeswehr’s operations in Kosovo and a return to the EU mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina.