Opposition parties feign support for New Zealand mine disaster families

Tom Peters

A protest organised by family members of the 29 men who died in the 2010 Pike River Coal mine catastrophe has gained widespread public support throughout New Zealand. Since November, the families have picketed the access road to the mine to oppose the plan by Solid Energy, a government-owned company, to permanently seal the mine entrance.

The families are demanding that the government re-enter the drift tunnel to try to recover bodies and gather evidence on what caused the underground explosion. No one has been held accountable for the tragedy after the government regulators dropped charges of health and safety breaches against Pike River Coal CEO Peter Whittall. This sordid deal was justified on the pretext that there was no physical evidence, even though a 2012 Royal Commission found that the disaster was entirely preventable.

Sonya Rockhouse, who lost her son Ben in the explosion, told the WSWS the company had “put profit before safety,” adding: “The whole thing, everything we’ve been through, has all been about money.”

Jo Ufer, whose son Josh died, wrote in a Fairfax Media column on January 13: “Pike River Coal’s owners have taken tens of millions of dollars in insurance money and the New Zealand government has spent its time trying to brush the whole thing under the carpet.”

Following the outpouring of public support for the families’ stand, the Labour Party, the Greens and the right-wing nationalist New Zealand First have criticised the National Party government’s refusal to consider re-entering the mine.

The opposition parties’ statements are a cynical attempt to divert attention from their own role in creating the deregulated, pro-business environment that led to the disaster six years ago.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters declared in December that he would not form a coalition government with the National Party or the Labour Party unless they promised to reenter the mine. Labour leader Andrew Little responded on January 15, telling the New Zealand Herald , “the difference between me and Winston Peters is I wasn’t sitting in a Cabinet in the 1990s that undermined our health and safety regulations in mine regulations, specifically.” During the 1990s Peters was a member of the National Party government.

A notice posted on the Labour Party’s Facebook page on January 18 declared that its leader Little “supported the Pike River families from Day 1—and still does.”

In fact, the 1999–2008 Labour Party government, which was backed by the Greens, continued to dismantle the Labour Department’s specialist mines inspectorate and allowed mine owners to self-regulate. In November 2012, Labour MP Damien O’Connor admitted he was warned in the 1990s by a mining expert that deregulation “would result in a massive mine disaster.” He said he felt “guilty” that he had not pushed to improve safety.

Asked whether the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) had advised Labour to change the law, O’Connor avoided answering directly. Instead, he blamed “coal miners themselves” for not “demanding of their own union that things should change.” In reality, the union bureaucracy collaborated with mining companies to suppress workers’ safety concerns.

From 2000 to 2011, Little was national secretary of EPMU, which had 71 members at Pike River Coal (out of 180 staff plus contractors).

Fairfax Media reported on January 18 that the Labour Party leader dismissed “claims that as head of the miners’ union at the time of the explosion he could have done more to ensure health and safety at the mine.” Little said: “Our union and its members led a walk-out on health and safety grounds just weeks before the fatal explosion. .. I absolutely stand by our track record on improving health and safety both at Pike River and in mining generally.”

The walk-out, the only industrial action ever taken at the mine, was initiated by a group of miners. One miner, Brent Forrester, called a union representative and said workers were concerned about the lack of emergency equipment. The official agreed that the workers should walk off the job. That advice was the full extent of the EPMU’s involvement.

The EPMU knew about other safety breaches, including the lack of an adequate emergency exit in the mine and problems with methane gas accumulation. Yet it never organised a strike and did not publicly criticise Pike River Coal. The walk-out was only revealed more than two weeks after the explosion by Forrester, in an interview with TVNZ on December 5, 2010. (see video)

Following the disaster, Little defended the company’s safety record. He told the New Zealand Herald on November 21, 2010, that the company had an “active health and safety committee” and that there was “nothing unusual about Pike River or this mine that we’ve been particularly concerned about.” (see video) He repeated his comments to Radio NZ the following day, saying the company had taken “great care” with safety.

These statements were false. The EPMU was well aware of the dangerous conditions at the mine but chose to take no action to halt Pike River’s operations.

Sonya Rockhouse told the WSWS that the families had been made many empty promises in the past. She would “wait and see” what the opposition parties did. Prior to the 2011 election, then-Prime Minister John Key also promised to recover the bodies, only to renege afterward. Rockhouse noted that Labour and the Greens had made no promise to re-enter the mine if they form the next government, but have instead called for an independent review.

None of the parties has made any commitment to reinstate charges against former Pike River directors and CEO Whittall. Rockhouse and Anna Osborne, who lost her husband in the mine, are seeking a judicial review of the decision to drop the charges.

Rockhouse believed that Solid Energy wanted to seal the mine before the election. She said: “They need to be very careful because we are gaining momentum every single day. We’re not going away.”

Rockhouse criticised the EPMU, now called E Tu, for not supporting the Pike River families’ picket. Osborne also told the WSWS the union had been “conspicuous by its absence.”

E Tu has members at Solid Energy but has made no attempt to organise an industrial campaign against the company’s plan to seal the mine. The company’s staff members have continued to cross the families’ picket line to visit the site. The union has accepted hundreds of job cuts at Solid Energy, devastating the West Coast region, as part of the government’s plan to privatise the company.

New legislation gives private sector further access to higher education in Britain

Alice Summers & Thomas Scripps

The Conservative government’s Higher Education and Research Bill is reaching its final stages in the House of Lords. The Bill, introduced in the House of Commons by Conservative government Education Minister Justine Greening last May—and set to pass into law within the next few months—represents a massive attack on university education.

According to the Department of Education, the Bill’s purpose is to drive up standards, increase choice for students and protect academic freedom.

The reality is the opposite.

The “choice” referred to is in fact a euphemism for the introduction of measures designed to lower the requirements that educational institutions must satisfy in order to attain university status. The aim is to further open up the higher education “market” to “alternative providers”—that is, private institutions. This is touted by the government as the means of increasing competition between universities and thereby improving student choice and educational standards.

Far from driving up the quality of university tuition, this proposal will hasten the privatisation of education via a competitive “educational market,” changing the relationship between universities and students into that of supplier and consumer. Institutions will come to focus on their business interests, rather than on research and educational excellence.

Two newly outlined central bodies, the “Office for Students” and “UK Research and Innovate” (UKRI), have been established with the purpose of allowing the government to directly intervene in Higher Education for their own political purposes.

Opposition among education staff to the measures is substantial. In a YouGov poll of lecturers and professors at universities nationwide, 81 percent of those surveyed believed the government’s plans to give private providers easier access to degree-awarding powers will have a negative impact.

A report from the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), a higher education think tank, raised concerns over how alternative providers—given easier access to university status under government proposals—will be able to use their institutions for profit.

According to Robin Middlehurst, an author of the HEPI report, “Better protection of the public purse is overdue, especially given the growth in the number of for-profit providers... Experience in the USA and Australia shows overly generous rules for alternative providers are a magnet for questionable business practices. The end results can include stranded students, a bill for taxpayers and regulatory intervention.”

Indeed, as the US example shows, competition between for-profit institutions does nothing to improve educational standards for students. According to a study by the US Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, competition between universities merely encourages the institutions to spend more on aesthetic measures to attract students, and comparatively less on instruction, lowering educational standards.

In 2009, for example, for-profit colleges in the US spent 22.7 percent of their revenue on marketing, advertising, recruiting, and admissions staffing; 19.4 percent of revenue went to the institution’s owner as profit; and a mere 17.2 percent of all revenue was spent on instruction.

The government’s bill is forecast to triple the number of private and alternative providers in the UK who receive public funding over the next 10 years, according to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. They will increase from the 110 who are currently eligible for government student support, to 311.

Connected with this attack on public provision of higher education is the proposed introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). This will rank universities by “quality,” with the highest-ranking institutions being permitted to raise their tuition fees in line with inflation from the academic year 2017-2018. Many universities have already begun imposing the increase—from £9,000 to £9,250—from the beginning of this academic year.

Divorcing the link between university teaching and research, under the TEF the “quality” of a university will be established through a student satisfaction survey, the National Student Survey (NSS), student retention statistics, and graduate earnings data—rather than through the quality of research output and teaching standards.

Many academics have strongly criticised these measures, arguing that the proposed metrics do not measure educational quality at all, and that TEF will only further increase social inequality by pushing poorer students out of many universities. The inevitable outcome will be a consolidation of an already solidly tiered higher education system, with the best universities accessible only to the rich and the poorest left to attend underfunded institutions,—which, on account of their poorer status—will not attract new funds and end up as “sink schools.”

The Labour Party, National Union of Students (NUS) and University and College Union (UCU) have put up only token opposition to the Bill.

Neither have the unions organised any serious any resistance. Since the enforcing of mass austerity began in the UK following the global financial crash of 2008, the higher education unions have collaborated in unprecedented cuts and the accelerated privatisation in the sector. The UCU and other academic unions—despite professing opposition to attacks on further and higher education—have a record of capitulation to cuts and job losses spanning more than a decade.

Commenting on the government’s plans, Sean Wallis, a National Executive member of the University and College Union (UCU) condemned the TEF, stating, “These measures are nothing to do with education quality. Indeed, the easiest way to make students ‘satisfied’ is to promise them a first class degree! Using graduate earnings as a ‘proxy for quality’ punishes universities for offering places to poorer students, who are less likely to get well-paid graduate jobs than well-connected, wealthier students....This is an absurd, socially regressive attack on young people—as well as on the universities.”

Concealed by such comments is the fact that the UCU offered no serious resistance to the Bill. Aside from organising a token demonstration last November—at which UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt called on Theresa May to “show some humanity”—both the UCU and National Union of Students (NUS) called only for a boycott of the NSS.

Faced with a massive programme of privatisation and the further erosion of equal access to higher education, the extent of the opposition of the UCU and NUS was a call on their members to decline to fill out a survey!

As the Bill made its passage through parliament, the NUS and Labour Party took part in “constructive engagement” with it, according to Labour Students. The Labour group said the NUS were “suggesting amendments and, rightfully and at the insistence of Labour MPs” decided “to give evidence to the Bill Committee.” Labour tabled a number of amendments to the Bill, centering on establishing a “students’ bill of rights,” with Labour Students commenting, “In a fast-changing Higher Education sector, students now more than ever need better protections, more information and fairness, as these amendments proposed.” None of this challenges in any way the fundamental nature of the attacks the Bill proposes.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats allied in the House of Lords and passed an amendment during its committee hearing stage. The amendment merely stated that universities “must provide an extensive range of high-quality academic subjects delivered by excellent teaching,” as well as make “a contribution to society…” Wilf Stevenson, Labour’s shadow higher education minister, played down the objectives of the latest bill, claiming that the main problem was that it “fails to understand the purposes of higher education.” On this basis he declared, “The Bill before us does not define a university and we think it would be improved if it does so.”

Due to the discrediting of the NUS, UCU and their ilk, supposedly more radical, “left” organisations like the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC), backed by various pseudo-left outfits, have become increasingly prominent.

Students must draw the lessons of previous betrayals in assessing the claims of such groups to be an alternative to attacks on education. In 2011, one year after the NCAFC’s founding, the World Socialist Web Site made the following assessment: “A self-described “network of student and education worker activists” with close ties to the Unison and RMT trade unions. The middle class “left” groups that lead the NCAFC insist the only way forward for students is to persuade the National Union of Students and the trade unions to fight tuition increases.”

Events since then, including the government’s ability to prepare further attacks through its latest bill, with virtually no opposition from these organisations, vindicates this analysis.

Average household debt in UK reaches more than £13,000

Thomas Scripps

Total unsecured debt in the UK reached an all-time high of £349 billion in the three months to the end of September 2016, according to research by the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

Unsecured debt includes credit card debt, payday loans and student loans, but not mortgages. Based on figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the findings suggest an average household debt of £12,887 - that is a 27.4 percent share of average household income.

Even excluding student loans, which have grown rapidly over the past few years, the total for unsecured debt stands at £192 billion, according to the Bank of England - the highest point since December 2008. This figure has been climbing at a yearly rate of 10 percent for the past six months. Last November, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, warned that credit card lending was at a record level and that unsecured debt was rising at its fastest rate in 11 years.

Figures produced earlier in January in the Family Finances report of UK multinational insurance company, Aviva, revealed that household debt has soared by two-fifths in just six months. Average debt now stands at £13,520--a surge of £4,000 from £9,520 last summer. This is the highest level recorded by the quarterly published survey for two and-a-half years.

This rapid increase falls into a broader pattern of growing indebtedness among the population. As the World Socialist Web Site reported last year, UK household debt (including mortgages), which ballooned in the late 1990s and 2000s and then plateaued following the 2008 crisis, has been increasing again over the past six years. In November 2016, total debt reached a record high of £1.5 trillion; an average of £30,000 per household or 113 percent of average income.

These figures sharply reflect both the social catastrophe experienced by millions of workers in the UK and the depth of the economic crisis in which the British and world economy remains mired.

Since the financial crash of 2008, families in the UK have suffered a sharp decline in wages, comparable only to Greece, and tens of billions of pounds in cuts to public spending and welfare. The ongoing restructuring of the labour market towards precarious, low-paid employment has contributed to and exacerbated this decline.

As a result, increasing numbers of people are being forced to take on greater and greater debts in an attempt to avert a collapse in their standard of living. Debt counselors report that many debtors are now using credit cards to pay for essential living costs, rather than luxury items.

The response to the debt crisis from the Bank of England reveals the criminal deception at the heart of those running the financial system. Andy Haldane, the Bank’s chief economist said, "Interest rates are still very low, and are expected to remain so for the foreseeable future, so there are fewer concerns on debt servicing than there were in the past... There are reasons not to be too alarmed about it ticking up, but it is absolutely something we will watch carefully.”

Interest rates remain at very low levels due to the continued policy of quantitative easing (QE)--the pumping of vast sums of money into the economy to stimulate investment and consumer spending by lowering the cost of borrowing. The fact that the real economy remains stagnant, however, is proof of the ultimately reactionary character of QE. Far from boosting “economic recovery,” QE in the UK, as everywhere else, has only provided additional funds for the parasitic and outright criminal speculation that sparked the financial crisis in the first place.

Moreover, if interest rates are increased in the future, then widespread indebtedness will throw millions into an even more perilous situation.

The extremely fragile state of personal finances means that millions of people face a catastrophic future. Joanna Elson, chief executive at the Money Advice Trust commented, “If the economy does indeed suffer in 2017, this borrowing could become more difficult to repay--and some households risk finding themselves exposed to sudden changes in financial circumstances."

This year is expected to be a turbulent one for the British economy, as the impact of last June’s referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) continues to play out. Last year the Financial Times explained, “The sharp fall in sterling since the vote to leave the EU [European Union] is expected to push up inflation, bringing a renewed squeeze on real wages in the absence of meaningful pay increases.”

Many young people from low-income backgrounds are particularly vulnerable to indebtedness. Between 2015 and 2016, those aged 18-25 went from comprising 10 percent of all over-indebted lower-income working households, to 20 percent.

This owes a great deal to the combined skyrocketing costs of housing and plummeting conditions of employment faced by younger people. Writing on the subject in the Financial Times a year ago, economics correspondent Chris Giles explained, “a generational divide is emerging with younger people finding they generally have to borrow more and on extended terms to afford to house themselves like their parents.”

According to the Council for Mortgage Lenders, mortgages taken out in 2015 were worth £175,500, up from £126,000 10 years earlier.

Students must consign themselves to a lifetime of debt and insecure living for the “privilege” of receiving higher education.

As the disparity between total unsecured debt and unsecured debt--excluding student loans—shows, the financial burden incurred for attending university is now immense. Graduates are expected to leave university with an average debt of £44,000. This is before the planned rise in tuition fees for a large number of universities. Consequently, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that an astonishing 70 percent of graduates will never fully repay their loans, instead making payments for 30 years until the loan is written off.

The intersection of the housing and student debt crises will have grave consequences. Sebastian Burnside, an economist at Natwest, explained, “Affordability checks done by mortgage lenders look at the borrower’s free income, after deducting loan repayments.”

TUC research produced last year revealed that a decade-long austerity programme aimed at slashing wages had pushed millions to rely on credit to cover essential costs.

Speaking earlier this month, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady commented, “Employment may have risen, but wages are still worth less today than nine years ago. The government is relying on debt-fueled consumer spending to support the economy, with investment and trade in the doldrums since the financial crisis.”

O’Grady’s comments deliberately conceal the role played by the unions in facilitating a disastrous situation in which millions are drowning in debt. In their efforts to create a “competitive” economy, successive governments have relied on the services of the trade union bureaucracy in sabotaging strikes and implementing cuts to pay and working conditions.

Overall, the pile up of debt among the population--particularly among graduates and young people, is a damning indictment of capitalism. Working people, with little to no prospect of an improvement in their living standards in the next period, are nonetheless forced to take out loans against an uncertain future, in an effort to provide for themselves and their families today.

Sigmar Gabriel resigns as Social Democratic Party leader and chancellor candidate

Ulrich Rippert 

The announcement by Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel on Wednesday, that he will not take part in the next Bundestag election as the party’s chancellor candidate and would also step down from his post as SPD chairman, has triggered feverish political debate and speculation in German political circles.

For months, the SPD chairman and minister of economic affairs had left his decision open, but in recent weeks it was regarded as certain that he would lead the SPD into this year’s autumn election as the party candidate for the chancellorship. That is why there was widespread surprise when he announced his resignation to the SPD parliamentary group and instead proposed former EU parliamentary president Martin Schulz as the SPD’s candidate to challenge the sitting chancellor, Angela Merkel. Gabriel also suggested that Schulz should lead the party.

In special programmes the media reported on this “major resignation” and speculated about possible personal reasons such as more time for the family or political frustration due to bad poll results.

However, on closer inspection, it is clear that the move is more of a political regrouping than a resignation and is directly related to the assumption of the American presidency by Donald Trump and his “America First” nationalism. The SPD is reorganising in order to take up the role of reshaping Europe in the interests of German imperialism.

Yesterday, the WSWS wrote: “The coming to power of Donald Trump has led to fierce reactions in Berlin.” Gabriel’s decision is bound up with such reactions. Already in November, he had asked Schulz to switch from the European Union (EU) to federal policy. Schulz has been systematically built up and celebrated by the media as a “great European”—a man who strengthened the powers of the EU parliament and stood up for European unification.

In fact, Schulz’s strength consisted largely in working closely with the conservative EU commissioner, Jean-Claude Juncker. The EU Parliament, under his leadership, was able to debate endlessly and controversially, but in the background, Schulz and Juncker, whose social-democratic and conservative factions hold 54 percent of the votes combined, prepared all decisions in detail and agreed upon majorities.

Merkel has also paid tribute to Schulz describing him as her favourite social democrat. To what extent Schulz as candidate for chancellor would favour a continuation of the current “Grand Coalition”—SPD and conservative parties (Union)—remains to be seen and depends not least on the election result.

Last autumn, Gabriel proposed Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) as new federal president and successor to Joachim Gauck. Merkel agreed, and it is certain that Steinmeier will move into Bellevue Castle on February 12.

Now, Gabriel has proposed himself as successor to Steinmeier as foreign minister. Gabriel remains vice-chancellor and moves from the Economics Ministry to the Foreign Office. If the SPD remains in the government after the election with an SPD chancellor or vice-chancellor and a social democratic federal president, Gabriel could lead the campaign to expand Germany’s supremacy in Europe.

Immediately prior to the announcement of his plans, Gabriel had given extensive interviews to a number of papers. Following the latest threats made by Trump, Gabriel demanded more European self-assurance. One such interview appeared yesterday under the heading “Now is the time to strengthen Europe” in the business paper Handelsblatt .

Handelsblatt reports that the vice-chancellor wants a “radical change of course” in the EU. In the face of the “turnabout in the United States and Brexit”, Gabriel is seeking to re-launch the EU: “We need not more Europe, but rather a different Europe.” If not all states wanted to advance at the same pace, then it was time to consider a “two-speed Europe.”

A two-speed Europe “would also greatly reduce tensions within Europe and strengthen core Europe tremendously,” Handelsblatt summarises Gabriel’s point of view, which was responding to the growing criticism of Europe by Great Britain and other countries. “The EU, which is working on detailed questions”, has reached its limits. Europe should not “continue the agonising process of constantly seeking the lowest common denominator”, but must permit alternatives. For Gabriel, this includes a closely interlinked foreign and security policy as well as a common economic and financial policy.

On Monday, the French presidential candidate of the Republicans, François Fillon, spoke in Berlin in favour of a revival of the EU and proposed a closer alliance with Russia. Gabriel sees Germany as a key player in the reorganisation of the Western world. However, he reported doubts about the suitability of the chancellor for this task. The Union (the SPD’s federal coalition partner, the CDU and CSU) was not prepared for the major challenges that faced Germany and Europe.

One day before, the co-editor of Handelsblatt , Gabor Steingart, wrote: “The hour for foreign policy reorientation has struck.”

Gabriel agrees. Germany and Europe should not be intimidated by Trump’s “highly nationalist tones”, but must “ruthlessly” define and defend its own interests, he told the Bild newspaper last weekend. Germany is “a strong country” and Europe “a strong continent that has to hold together”. If the United States “starts a trade war with China and all of Asia, then we are a fair partner,” he added. Germany and Europe would need a new strategy towards China and Asia. There are new opportunities, even if China is not an easy partner.

It would not be the first time the SPD has taken over control in order to realise the interests of German imperialism in times of major upheaval. In 1969, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), which had hitherto been on the right of the political spectrum, formed a coalition with the SPD, and made Willy Brandt chancellor after Brandt’s own orientation to the East had met with strong opposition from the conservative CDU and CSU. In the midst of the biggest post-war international economic crisis, Brandt’s “Ostpolitik” promised to open up new energy sources and markets for German exports.

And then again, in 1998, the government of Gerhard Schröder (SPD) replaced CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl after 16 years in office, thereby paving the way for the first post-war military operations of the Bundeswehr and the passing of the notorious anti-social Hartz laws.

US and India sharing intelligence on Chinese submarine and ship movements

Keith Jones

India and the US are exchanging intelligence on Chinese submarine and ship movements in the Indian Ocean, the head of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, told a press conference in New Delhi last week.

“There is sharing of information regarding Chinese maritime movement in the Indian Ocean,” Harris said, following an address to an Indian government-sponsored security conference.

The Pentagon, continued the admiral, is working “closely with India and with improving India’s capability to do that kind of surveillance.”

The head of the US Pacific Command then referred to the Malabar exercise, a yearly Indo-US naval exercise, which was recently expanded to include Japan as a permanent third partner. “Malabar … helps us hone our ability to track what China is doing in the Indian Ocean. Chinese submarines are clearly an issue and we know they are operating through the region.”

Under Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, India has aligned itself ever more closely with Washington’s diplomatic and military-strategic offensive against China. It has parroted US claims that China is an “aggressor” in the South China Sea; enhanced strategic ties with America’s principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia; and opened Indian military bases for routine use by US warplanes and battleships.

Harris’ remarks would appear, however, to be the first public admission by either the US or India that their navies are sharing intelligence on Chinese deployments in the Indian Ocean.

With Washington’s support, India is rapidly building a blue-water navy to stake its claim to a leading role in the Indian Ocean, which is home to the world’s busiest shipping lanes, including those that bear Mideast oil and other resources to China and carry Chinese goods to markets in much of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.

Harris made mention of the Indian Ocean intelligence sharing following a bellicose address to the second annual Raisina Dialogue in which he celebrated the burgeoning Indo-US military-security partnership and emphasized the Pentagon’s wish for it become ever-more comprehensive.

Admiral Harris told the inaugural Raisina Conference, held in March 2016, that he looked forward to the day when Indian and American warships would jointly patrol the Indian and Pacific Oceans, including the South China Sea.

At last week’s conference he said that India and the US must work together to “shape” “the new normal” in the “Indo-Asia-Pacific” region so as to prevent it being shaped “by a revanchist Russia and an increasingly assertive China.”

He then likened Indo-US military-security cooperation to the sharpening of a war axe.

Harris claimed that Abraham Lincoln’s adage “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe” encapsulates the current purpose and posture of the Indo-US partnership.

“The tasks before us,” he declared, “are to shape the New Normal and uphold the rules-based international order [that is, US imperialist hegemony in the Indo-Pacific] … These are huge tasks, but not insurmountable ones. Our approach, by taking the time to work together—to sharpen our tools—is, in my opinion, the right approach.”

To make sure his meaning was not lost on his audience, Harris said the US military is ready to confront its adversaries “where we must,” adding that he would like “to sharpen our proverbial axe faster,” and make it “razor sharp,” “because we never know when events will force us to use it.”

At his press conference Harris said he has met Trump’s security team and is confident the new administration will continue the bipartisan policy toward India that the US political elite has pursued since the final years of the Clinton administration. This policy aims to build up India as a strategic counterweight to China and has crystalized, in this decade, into a drive to transform India into a frontline state in the US effort to thwart China’s “rise,” if necessary through war.

Toward this end, Washington has whetted the Indian bourgeoisie’s great power ambitions. Successive US administrations have declared India a “global strategic partner” and showered New Delhi with strategic favours. Last year, Washington named India a “Major Defense Partner,” so as to give it access to the most advanced weapons and weapons systems—those the US will sell only to its closest treaty allies.

Although Pakistan does not fall under Harris’ jurisdiction under the Pentagon’s command structure, he expressed concern at his press conference about the strengthening of China’s longstanding military-security ties with Pakistan. Needless to say, he did not mention that these enhanced ties are very much a response to the Indo-US alliance.

“The relationship between China and Pakistan is of concern,” said Harris. Indeed, he urged India to be “concerned about increasing Chinese influence” across South Asia. “If you believe that there is only finite influence, then whatever influence China has means that influence India does not have.”

New Delhi is already immersed in fractious strategic competition with China throughout South Asia and among the Indian Ocean islands states, from Nepal and Bangladesh to Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and the Maldives.

Nevertheless, Harris’ injunction to India to beware of Chinese influence in Pakistan will be music to the ears of the Modi government. It has been pursuing a hardline policy against Pakistan that brought South Asia’s nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of all-out war in October-November 2016.

While India and Pakistan are no longer exchanging daily artillery barrages across the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, their 2003 truce has manifestly collapsed and the Modi government’s threat to mount further cross-border military raids into Pakistan has left the region on tenterhooks.

Prime Minister Modi and his ministers continue to insist they will not resume any form of dialogue with Islamabad until Pakistan demonstrably heels to India’s demand it stop all logistical support to the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir.

Modi reiterated this stance in his speech to the Raisina Dialogue. When it came to China, however, his tone was quite different from that of the US Admiral Harris. India’s prime minister claimed that “the development of India and China” represents “an unprecedented opportunity, for our two countries and for the whole world.” He then cautioned that both “countries need to show sensitivity and respect for each other's core concerns and interests.”

Modi has frequently combined conciliatory rhetoric vis-a-vis China, with provocative actions.

In recent weeks, India has tested an intermediate and an intercontinental ballistic missile, respectively the Agni IV and Agni V—weapons developed with the express purpose of ensuring that all China’s major population centers could be targeted for nuclear annihilation in the event of a Sino-Indian war.

And just days after assuming his command, India’s new army chief, General Bipin Rawat boasted about the Indian military’s readiness to fight a “two-front” war against Pakistan and China simultaneously.

Oligarch investor seeks leadership of Canada’s Conservatives

Carl Bronski

Just days after proposing that the federal government become more of a “profit-center” by selling Senate seats, multi-millionaire investor, reality television star, and inveterate blow-hard Kevin O’Leary announced he is a candidate to lead Canada’s Conservative Party.

O’Leary joins thirteen other candidates vying to lead Canada’s Official Opposition. But much of the media has already anointed him the “front runner” in the Conservative leadership race, which will climax at a party convention in May.

The post of Conservative leader has been vacant since Stephen Harper resigned within hours of his decade-old Conservative government losing the October 2015 federal election to the Justin Trudeau-led Liberals.

O’Leary, who has no political experience, is claiming strong support for his candidacy, based largely on name recognition from his numerous television appearances as a business commentator and his leading role in two “reality” based shows that extol the virtues of entrepreneurship—the Canadian version of “Dragon’s Den” and its American spin-off, “Shark Tank.” His candidacy is supported by long-time right-wing party stalwarts, such as former Ontario Premier Mike Harris, Senator Marjorie LeBreton, and former Harper confidante Mike Coates.

O’Leary has long been associated with the unbridled cultivation of wealth and the celebration of social inequality as keystones of a well-functioning capitalist economy. In 2014, in his capacity as business expert on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) financial news program, he infamously hailed a then-recent Oxfam report that showed the richest 85 people in the world owned as much as the poorest 3.5 billion.

“This is fantastic news,” he pontificated. “Of course I applaud it. What could be wrong with this? It inspires everybody to get some motivation to look up to the 1 percent and say ‘I want to become one of those people, I’m going to fight hard to get to the top’.”

O’Leary, who has made the accruing of obscene wealth a veritable fetish, no doubt would have been tickled by the most recent Oxfam report on social inequality. It shows that the gulf between the richest oligarchs and the rest of the global population continues to grow. Based on new and better data, Oxfam found that today eight multi-billionaires control more wealth than half the world’s population. The same report cited figures showing that in Canada, two men—David Thomson of Thomson-Reuters and Galen Weston of the giant Loblaw grocery empire—own more than the poorest 30 percent of Canadians.

It is not difficult to find other aggressively anti-democratic statements from O’Leary. In 2011, on the same CBC financial news program, he railed against a threatened strike by Air Canada employees. “Here’s the right thing to do,” said O’Leary. “Elect me as prime minister for 15 minutes. I will make unions illegal. Anybody who remains a union member will be thrown in jail.”

In the ballyhoo about O’Leary’s entry into the leadership race, much has been made of the similarities between him and US President Donald Trump. Both men harbour profoundly anti-democratic views and advocate class war policies aimed at further redistributing wealth to the capitalist elite, including the slashing of taxes on big business and the rich, the gutting of social spending, and shredding of environmental and labour regulations.

O’Leary has complained bitterly about election financing laws that prevent him from mimicking Trump and using his personal fortune, estimated at more than $400 million, to fund his leadership bid.

The corporate media has afforded O’Leary overwhelmingly positive coverage. For months, it has promoted his campaign with story after story speculating about his possible candidacy and, more recently, his impending entry into the Conservative leadership race.

There have been some notes of caution expressed in ruling circles, however, particularly over O’Leary’s flaunting of his wealth and political inexperience and his inability to speak French. Several of his Conservative rivals have also attacked him for comments he made last year criticizing the Harper government’s promotion of Canada as a “warrior nation.”

Since its creation in 2004, out of the merger of the right-wing populist Canadian Alliance and what remained of a shattered Progressive Conservative Party, the “new” Conservative Party has been used by Canada’s ruling elite to shift politics dramatically to the right.

During the decade of Conservative rule that began in February 2006, Harper vastly expanded Canadian imperialist involvement in US-led wars and military-strategic offensives, including against Russia and China. Canada’s leading role in the Afghan counter-insurgency war was used to acclimatize the population to the shedding of blood, putting paid to the myth of Canada as a “peacekeeper,” and to promote a virulently reactionary, pro-monarchy, and militarist Canadian nationalism.

On the domestic front, Harper and his Conservatives imposed sweeping social spending cuts and attacked democratic rights. This included whipping up anti-immigrant chauvinism and Islamophobia under the guise of the so-called “war on terror” and granting the national security apparatus police-state powers. The Harper government also moved to criminalize worker resistance, virtually banning strikes in key sectors like the railways, air travel and the postal service.

It therefore comes as no surprise that O’Leary is far from the only Conservative leadership candidate advancing Trump-style, ultra-right policies.

Kellie Leitch, Harper’s former Minister of Labour, has deliberately patterned her campaign after Trump’s right-wing populism, denouncing the “liberal elites” and pinning the problems faced by workers on immigrants who threaten “Canadian values.” She has vehemently defended her 2015 election campaign appearance, along with then the Immigration Minister and fellow leadership candidate Chris Alexander, to call for an anti-immigrant “barbaric cultural practices” snitch-line.

Leitch is only the most vitriolic of several leading candidates who have taken up the anti-immigrant cudgel as their political calling-card. Quebec-based candidate Stephen Blaney and former Veterans’ Affairs Minister Erin O’Toole have called for restricting immigration, with Blaney also urging restrictions be placed on Muslim women wearing religious face-coverings.

Former Small Business Minister Maxime Bernier, who is running to be Canada’s “first libertarian prime minister,” advocates the privatization of health care and the post office, massive social spending cuts, the elimination of all capital gains taxes, and the effective gutting of all regulatory restrictions on the unbridled pursuit of profit.

Such has been the stampede to the right that Lisa Raitt, herself a former Harper Labour Minister who regularly invoked or threatened strike-breaking legislation, can now posture as leader of the party’s so-called “moderate” faction.

Wall Street’s Trump euphoria propels Dow above 20,000

Barry Grey

On Wednesday, Wall Street celebrated the installation of an administration staffed by CEOs and pledged to remove all obstacles to corporate profit-making by pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average above the 20,000 level for the first time in history. US stock indexes have been soaring since the November 8 election of Donald Trump, with the Dow rising 9 percent in just 11 weeks.

The blue chip index gained 155 points to close at 20,068 on Wednesday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq indexes also recorded strong gains and ended the day in record territory.

Trump hailed the record-breaking close with a tweet: “Great!#Dow20K.” His senior economic adviser, the former hedge fund boss Anthony Scaramucci, congratulated Trump for the market surge, tweeting, “Stock market performance in 6 weeks following President Trump’s victory is best among all elections since 1900#ThankYouTrump.”

The record close came one day after Trump issued orders aimed at removing all obstacles to the completion of the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, demonstrating his contempt for environmental concerns and the sentiments of Native American tribes and their supporters, who have been protesting for months against the Dakota project’s threat to the Standing Rock Reservation’s water supply and traditional lands.

This boon to the energy and materials corporations and their Wall Street backers coincided with meetings between Trump and corporate CEOS on Monday and Tuesday at which the billionaire real estate mogul-turned president reiterated his pledge to gut health and safety and environmental regulations and slash corporate taxes.

In remarks just prior to meeting Tuesday with the CEOs of the US-based auto companies, Trump promised to shift the business climate “from truly inhospitable to extremely hospitable.” He called current business regulations “out of control.” Administration officials broadly hinted that Trump would meet one of the auto bosses’ key demands by rolling back fuel efficiency standards. On Monday, Trump told a meeting of a dozen CEOs that his advisers thought “we can cut regulations 75 percent, maybe more.”

Other actions Trump has taken in the five days since his inauguration include a freeze on all pending regulations and a hiring freeze for all federal agencies.

While there have been certain improvements in the economic situation in the US and internationally in recent months, including signs of stronger growth in Europe and an upsurge in fourth quarter US corporate profits, these changes do not explain the extraordinarily rapid rise in the American markets.

The surge began the day after Trump’s November 8 election victory, as the markets, initially shaken by the unexpected defeat of their favored candidate, Democrat Hillary Clinton, turned sharply upward, buoyed by Trump’s promises of massive tax cuts for corporations and the rich, the wholesale lifting of business regulations, a massive expansion of military spending, and the prospect of a full-scale attack on social programs.

As Trump began to name one billionaire or multi-millionaire after another to his cabinet, along with ex-generals and far-right opponents of public education, Medicare and Social Security, housing assistance, environmental protections, the minimum wage and occupational health and safety, the upward spiral on Wall Street accelerated. It is barely two months since the Dow first hit 19,000.

The rise stalled for several weeks while the financial elite waited to see if Trump really intended to carry out the social counterrevolution to which he had alluded during the campaign. The markets soared once again after Trump’s installation and initial pro-corporate moves.

Trump is the embodiment of the American financial aristocracy, in all its brutish and violent backwardness and criminality. What the markets are celebrating is a government that in an unprecedented manner openly functions as the instrument of this oligarchy.

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal if anything understated the greed-driven euphoria in corporate and financial circles in an article headlined “CEOs Savor New Washington Status.”

“For CEOs,” the Journal wrote, “the moves have sent a message that their stock is rising in Washington, with some betting that they will have a bigger say in running the country…

“Along with [former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex] Tillerson at State, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross [Commerce], former Windquest Group chairwoman Betsy DeVos [Education], Andy Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurant Holdings [Labor] and former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon [Small Business Administration] have been tapped to play big roles in his administration.”

The Journal could have added, among others, longtime Goldman Sachs lawyer Jay Clayton the head the main Wall Street regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The presence of three former Goldman Sachs executives in top positions in the Trump administration, in addition to Clayton, helps explain the frenzied runup in the share prices of major banks. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase together account for some 20 percent of the rise in the Dow since November 22.

Trump’s plan to “make America great again” is a drive to wipe out every social gain won by the working class in the course of more than a century of struggle and return to a supposed “golden age” when the corporations could plunder and pollute the country to their heart's content.

The fraud of Trump’s “concern” for the American worker is exposed by the reality of the forces that are actually benefitting from his policies.

One of the Goldman alumni chosen by Trump for top posts in his administration is Gary Cohn, the bank’s former president and chief operating officer. In return for his leaving the bank and assuming the post of director of Trump’s National Economic Council, Goldman is handing Cohn more than $285 million in bonuses, stock holdings and other investments, according to Bloomberg News.

The Wall Street Journal, in an article published Tuesday titled “Bankers Cash In on Post-Election Stock Rally,” reported that executives of major Wall Street banks have sold almost $100 million worth of stock since the election, more than in that same period in any year for the past decade.

In addition to the share sales, bank officials have sold another $350 million worth of stock to cover the cost of exercising stock options.

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, according to the newspaper, sold 200,000 Morgan Stanley shares three days after the election, and has since sold another 385,000 shares, altogether realizing a profit of at least $8.4 million.

Six Goldman Sachs executives, as well as board member and ex-finance chief David Vinar, exercised 983,000 options, representing $200 million worth of shares.

The advent of Trump has already boosted the fortunes of Wall Street bankers by millions of dollars, and this is only a small preview of the colossal plundering of the American and world economy that is to come.

All the more politically criminal are the efforts of the Democrats, including supposed “left” figures such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, to lend credibility to Trump’s claims to be fighting for American workers by backing the new president’s xenophobic “America First” policies of economic nationalism and trade war.

Trump launches war against immigrant workers

Bill Van Auken

The two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on Wednesday at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) constitute an assault not only against immigrants, but against the working class as a whole.

The main order called for beginning construction of “the wall” on the Mexican border that was endlessly promoted by Trump in the course of his presidential campaign, and for an escalation of the criminalization of undocumented immigrants.

These measures are aimed at whipping up xenophobia and anti-immigrant chauvinism in order to carry out a wholesale assault on the democratic rights and social conditions of the entire working class, together with an accelerated transfer of wealth to the corporations and financial oligarchy in the name of “America First.”

Delivered to an audience of uniformed Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, Trump’s speech justifying the further militarization of the US-Mexican border and a redoubled crackdown on immigrant workers had a distinctively fascistic flavor.

Depicting an “out of control” border, Trump addressed himself directly to the border and immigration agencies, declaring that for “too long your officers and agents haven’t been allowed to do their jobs.” That, he said, would now change: “From here on out, I'm asking all of you to enforce the laws of the United States of America. They will be enforced and enforced strongly.”

Trump’s tone echoed that of his spokesman, Sean Spicer, who told White House reporters just before Trump’s appearance at DHS that the administration was going to “return power and responsibility” to the Border Patrol and ICE to enable them to “unapologetically enforce the law, no ifs, ands or buts.”

The administration is telling these agencies, notorious for their brutality and lawlessness in dealing with immigrants, that now the gloves are truly off. Moreover, Trump’s executive orders call for these militarized police forces to be substantially enlarged. The Border Patrol, already the largest police agency in the country, is to get another 5,000 members, while the number of ICE officers is to be tripled, with the addition of another 10,000, creating the foundations for the “special deportation task force” that Trump promised during his election campaign.

Heading these agencies is Trump’s newly confirmed secretary of homeland security, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, who formerly headed the US Southern Command, which oversees all of the Pentagon’s operations in Latin America. Kelly’s appointment signals a further militarization of both the border and the hunting down of undocumented immigrant workers in the US itself.

Part of the change in immigration policy advanced by the new president is an end to the practice described by immigration agents as “catch and release,” in which some undocumented immigrants are released from detention while awaiting a court hearing. The ending of such conditional releases will require a vast expansion of the immigration prison system, which already holds some 40,000 people on any given day.

The executive order calls for DHS to set up new detention camps, which will likely be filled with families and unaccompanied children fleeing violence in Central America, who make up the bulk of those now crossing the border.

To justify this massive escalation of repression on the border, under conditions in which the actual number of border crossings has fallen to its lowest level in 40 years, and more Mexican immigrants are leaving the country than coming in, Trump sought to amplify his racist campaign rhetoric depicting immigrants in general, and Mexicans in particular, as criminals.

To this end, the extreme anti-immigrant group The Remembrance Project was invited to the DHS to participate in the presentation of the new executive orders. This organization, which is linked to white nationalist and other ultra-right groups, is dedicated to exploiting the small number of American citizens allegedly killed by undocumented immigrants as a means of demonizing all foreign-born workers.

Trump asked relatives of such alleged victims to stand and be applauded by the assembled immigration and border agents. His executive order mandates the creation of a special office dedicated to “supporting victims of illegal immigrant crime” in order to promote this fascistic propaganda narrative.

Trump’s second executive order calls for the US government to retaliate against so-called “sanctuary cities” by cutting off federal grant money. The aim is to coerce local governments into ordering their police departments to join in the crackdown against immigrants.

The cost of the centerpiece of Trump’s policy, the wall that is supposed to be erected between the US and Mexico, is estimated at anywhere between $10 billion and $25 billion. The executive order calls for redirecting existing funds to begin building the barrier, while Trump has reiterated his insistence that Mexico will be forced to pay for it.

Trump’s measure ordering the erection of a “large physical barrier on the southern border” is based upon the 2006 Secure Fence Act, passed with the support of Trump’s Democratic presidential opponent, then-Senator Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, the Obama administration deported some 3 million immigrants, more than all previous US presidents combined.

The executive orders mandating the border wall and escalating the anti-immigrant crackdown were announced on the same day that Mexico’s foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, together with the country’s finance minister arrived in Washington for White House talks aimed at preparing a state visit by President Enrique Peña Nieto next week. This timing, combined with Trump’s continued demand that Mexico pay for the wall, has provoked widespread outrage in Mexico and demands that Peña Nieto call off his trip.

The imposition of a new barrier along the border, together with Trump’s protectionist threats and demands that US manufacturers stop production in Mexico, will serve only to deepen the economic crisis on both sides of the border, while further inflaming the social unrest that has erupted in response to the recent hike in Mexican gasoline prices.

Further reactionary immigration orders are expected this week, including a refashioning of Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the country that would effectively bar legal entry to people from a number of so-called “terrorism prone” countries, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Somalia.

The redoubled crackdown on immigrants is part of a far broader drive to strengthen the dictatorial powers of the state. Even as he was preparing to unveil his anti-immigrant executive orders, Trump expressed to ABC News his support for the resumption of water boarding and other methods of torture in order to “fight fire with fire.” Drafts of other executive orders have reportedly been circulating calling for the reopening of the CIA’s “black sites” as well as a review of the Army Field Manual’s limits on torture methods.

The police state methods that are being unleashed against immigrant workers will ultimately be turned against the working class as a whole. The defense of democratic rights and social conditions can be carried forward only by uniting immigrant and native-born workers within the United States and joining the struggles of US and Mexican workers across the border that divides them against their common enemy, the capitalist system.

Workers in the US and throughout the world must come forward in defense of immigrants and refugees, upholding the right of workers everywhere to live and work in the country of their choice, with full legal and political rights.

Australian government defies public outcry on welfare debt assault

Margaret Rees

Confronted by mounting public hostility to its crackdown on supposed “welfare fraud,” the Australian government is nevertheless stepping-up its assault on recipients, declaring that its measures will be extended from unemployed workers to sole parents and aged and disability pensioners by July.

Public sector workers inside Centrelink, the welfare office, have made a series of increasingly damaging leaks, exposing official instructions to send recipients threatening “debt” letters demanding repayment of alleged over-payments despite knowing that the accusations are false. These workers have taken a courageous stand, defying government threats that could see them punished, sacked or prosecuted for divulging internal communications.

Since last July, the government’s “Online Compliance Intervention” has already dispatched 232,000 letters to welfare recipients, primarily on Newstart or Youth Allowance unemployment benefits. At least another 900,000 letters will follow.

The letters place the onus on recipients to disprove “discrepancies” or “overpayments” said to arise from computer-generated data-matching of Centrelink records with Australian Tax Office (ATO) tax returns. Welfare recipients are forced to start paying back the disputed amounts, even if they have lodged an appeal against the claim.

According to the government’s budget estimates, more than three million aged pensioners, single parents and disability support pensioners will be targeted next. Over four years, the government is seeking to claw back $1.1 billion from aged pensioners, $400 million from disability pensioners and $700 million from sole parent support payments.

By terrorising welfare dependents, the Liberal-National Coalition government is seeking to meet the demands of the financial elite to slash social spending and at the same time lower corporate taxes. Altogether, the aim is to extract $4 billion in budget “savings” from some of the poorest members of society.

The latest damning leak, an eight-page letter released last Thursday, said the compliance teams were being ordered not to fix errors generated by the system, even when they could see the debts were wrongly alleged.

“Within the organisation it is well known that there are errors in the program and compliance officers are directed to ignore incorrect debts without being permitted to correct them,” the letter said.

“I’m writing because I along with so many of my co-workers have tried to stop the wrong that is being done to thousands of our customers on a daily basis and I can no longer live with what we are doing… I am risking my job sending this information in the desperate hope that exposing such an … unjust system might just make a difference.”

Income that is exempt from Centrelink assessment, such as meal, laundry and uniform allowances, is being included. Paid parental leave is also being wrongly counted. The system is also generating debts based on welfare payments that were never made, and duplicating income where a termination or leave payment was made.

An earlier anonymous leak said the system was particularly harsh on those who received a sickness allowance—a benefit paid to those unable to work temporarily due to serious illness.

“The ATO matched data will show that they worked the entire financial year and will apportion the gross payments over that financial year without taking into account their time off. This means the system raises a debt for the entire sickness allowance they received. For many that is a debt of over $1,000.

“Although we may have documented evidence of their medical issues on the system, we are not allowed to look into the system to find any of that evidence. Instead customers must obtain all their pay information for that financial year.”

Some recipients had to search for pay slips issued by defunct employers from six years ago.

In an internal memo that was also quickly leaked, the Department of Human Services last week threatened whistleblowers with disciplinary action or criminal prosecution. Sections of the Crimes Act make it a serious crime for a public servant to leak information, or a journalist or third party to receive it.

Trying to deflect the mounting outcry, Human Services Minister Alan Tudge last week promised cosmetic “improvements.” Admitting that some welfare recipients had not even received letters before being confronted by debt collectors, Tudge said the letters would now be sent by registered mail, and addresses would be checked against the electoral roll.

At the same time, Tudge insisted that the government had to act because “welfare constitutes a third of the budget now.” He renewed his previous threats to see welfare recipients jailed, stating: “If you deliberately seek to get more money than you’re entitled to, then yes, that is a fraud.”

Centrelink workers said the automated system discriminates against those in casual jobs. The compliance process fails to take into account precarious patterns of employment—into which growing numbers of workers have been forced.

Last September, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that in four years, the number of casualised workers has risen by 110,000. In the late 1970s, only 15 percent of jobs were part-time. Now the figure stands at 31.9 percent.

In one Centrelink Ballarat case, a recent university graduate who had worked casually full-time for a single month, had that amount averaged as a yearly income and was then deemed to have been overpaid $6,000.

A single mother received a $24,000 debt notice just before Christmas because the automated system mistakenly recorded her as having two jobs and undeclared income. She told the media: “They want to get money back from us low-income Australians instead of the Murdochs. A lot of people won’t have the means to question it and are just going to go and pay, or freak out and get very stressed.”

This did not begin under the current ruling Coalition. A Labor government initiated the framework for it in 1991, introducing stricter work-seeking tests for the unemployed, as well as data-matching processes that had been trialled in Sweden during the 1980s.

Since then, every government, Labor and Liberal-National alike, has witch-hunted so-called “welfare fraud.” In 2008, the Rudd Labor government’s first budget included $138 million for data matching and surveillance measures and claimed that improved compliance would net $600 million over four years.

In 2011, the Gillard Labor government introduced the full automation of welfare debt recovery. Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten, who is now Labor Party leader, said: “The new matching data link is expected to increase the number of former customers identified for this process by an additional 65,000, above current detection levels, over four years.”

Labor is now cynically calling for the temporary suspension of the automated process, yet it is also counting on the $4 billion in budget “savings” for its proposed austerity measures, designed to curry favour with the corporate elite. Labor supported the government’s abolition of a six-year statute of limitations on welfare “debts” and last September helped the government pass an omnibus savings bill, cutting $6.3 billion from social spending over four years.

Likewise, the trade union covering public sector workers, the Community and Public Sector Union, is feigning concern for its members who are being instructed to enforce the government’s assault. But it has proposed no action or campaign to halt the offensive and is promoting illusions that a Labor government would be less draconian.