Australian prime minister hails opening of highly automated grocery warehouse

Paul Bartizan & Martin Scott

Late last month, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended the opening of one of the largest and most highly automated grocery warehouses in Australia, at Redbank near Ipswich in the state of Queensland.

Albanese hailed the “extraordinary centre,” claiming it would create 320 “permanent jobs, secure jobs here in Queensland.” The reality is that the facility is part of a $1 billion investment in job-cutting technology by Coles, the second-largest supermarket chain in Australia.

Anthony Albanese and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palasczuk at the opening of Coles’ Redbank warehouse [Photo: @AlboMP]

Once Redbank and a second automated distribution centre (ADC), to be opened next year in Kemps Creek, New South Wales (NSW), are both operational, Coles will close five existing warehouses in the two states, slashing thousands of jobs.

This capital expenditure is, in effect, already paid for, through Coles’ “Smarter Selling” cost-cutting initiative, which is on track to save the company $1 billion over the four years ending this June. As well as cuts on the logistics side, this has involved slashing retail jobs, including through the stepped-up rollout of self-service checkouts.

The Redbank ADC will supply 219 Coles supermarkets across Queensland and northern NSW. It will automatically process four million cases (32 million individual products) per week, twice the capacity of other Coles warehouses. Only 10 percent of products will be touched by human hands, from delivery into the warehouse by suppliers through to automatic loading onto trucks for distribution to supermarkets.

The 34-metre high, 66,000 square metre ADC uses German company Witron Logistik + Informatik equipment. The Redbank facility is the largest of the 93 ADCs around the world using this technology.

Albanese declared that the warehouse was “a great example of investment in new technology and investment in Australia … in order to boost productivity, boost efficiency, lower costs, therefore lower prices and make a difference for people going forward.”

The prime minister’s claim that lower costs for Coles will reduce prices for customers is a lie. Coles is seeking to increase its profitability and gain a competitive advantage over its rivals, Woolworths, Aldi and Metcash.

This is clearly expressed in the financial reports of the major supermarkets. Ongoing cost-slashing measures have not been used to cut shelf prices, but to increase profit margins. This process has been accelerated by increased demand during COVID-19 lockdowns in the early stages of the pandemic, shortages of fresh produce due to floods and surging inflation.

In the second half of last year, as the price of groceries and other basic essentials soared, Coles increased its gross margin by 0.43 percentage points to 26.5 percent and recorded a 10.6 percent rise in before-tax earnings to $991 million.

Woolworths, the other half of Australia’s supermarket duopoly, recorded a 0.48 percentage point gross margin increase to 30.7 percent and $1.439 billion half-yearly earnings before tax, 18.2 percent higher than in 2021.

Like Coles, Woolworths is looking to slash labour costs through the increased use of automation, with a target of $135 million in annual savings.

The company is currently building two sophisticated new distribution centres in Moorebank, southwest Sydney, replacing three warehouses in Minchinbury and Yennora in Sydney, as well as Mulgrave in Victoria. The new facilities will be staffed by around 650 workers, less than half the number employed in the closing centres.

Similar developments are taking place throughout the logistics sector.

Amazon’s 200,000 square metre Kemps Creek distribution centre, opened in April 2022, currently dispatches 100,000 parcels per day but has capacity for many times that amount, despite employing just 1,000 people. This is possible because of the facility’s autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), which transport products from the four-storey warehouse, containing 20 million different lines, to workers for packing.

Major investment is also underway in the transport of goods. Four massive intermodal hubs are being built along the east coast of Australia to reduce freight costs. The $4 billion Moorebank Intermodal Terminal will automate the transfer of shipping containers between trucks and trains.

Darren Searle, CEO of LOGOS, which owns the Moorebank site, explained, “You can get a box from a ship onto a train, delivered to Moorebank into a distribution centre. And then you can get it delivered from the distribution centre to the interstate terminal and delivered interstate and it doesn’t touch a set of hands.”

Albanese’s endorsement of the move by Coles to slash its labour budget is entirely in line with the Labor government’s broader pro-business agenda. When Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers declare that wage growth must be linked to productivity increases, they mean that the only way workers will see even a minimal increase in real pay is through the destruction of jobs and conditions.

Standing alongside Albanese, Coles CEO Steven Cain said, “The jobs that are in here are much more likely to be tech-based as opposed to manual-based, … There’s probably a similar number of people on site to a [standard distribution centre]. However, it’s doing twice as much.”

In other words, productivity has doubled, cutting the overall workforce required in half. Coles warehouses at Heathwood and Forest Lake in Queensland, as well as Eastern Creek, Goulburn and Smeaton Grange in New South Wales will be closed, destroying around 2,000 jobs.

Albanese’s public celebration of the new Redbank facility demonstrates Labor’s support for similar profit-driven, job-slashing, restructuring operations to be carried out across all industry sectors.

Coles’ Smeaton Grange warehouse was the site of a bitter dispute in 2020–2021, in which management locked out the entire workforce for more than three months. Aware that the facility was slated to close within a few years, workers demanded improved redundancy pay as well as a wage increase.

Any struggle by workers against the closure of the plant itself was blocked by the United Workers Union leadership, which insisted from the outset that the destruction of hundreds of jobs was inevitable.

Even the UWU’s meagre claim to be fighting for “fair redundancies” was a lie. The union starved workers out with no strike pay and kept them cut off from the rest of the working class. This brought the workers, who were determined to fight, into conflict with the UWU bureaucracy, repeatedly voting down the virtually unchanged union-management offers, even after the union declared the dispute over.

Eventually, the UWU was able to push through a sell-out deal, but the incipient rebellion of workers against the bureaucracy was taken as a warning by the union, management and the political establishment. The ruling class fears that, as the deepening cost-of-living crisis drives growing numbers of workers to take industrial action, the union apparatus will be unable to keep them under control and prevent the emergence of a broader struggle.

This is the role that unions have played for decades, as an industrial police force of management and governments, shutting down workers’ demands for action and delivering “orderly closures” of workplaces or even entire industries, with no fight to defend jobs. The unions defend the capitalist system, under which every technological development is used to erode workers’ jobs, wages and conditions.

NATO powers move to send long-range missiles to Ukraine

Andre Damon

The UK's Storm Shadow long-range missile. [Photo by Rept0n1x / CC BY-SA 3.0]

On Tuesday, a UK defense official confirmed to the Washington Post that Britain is preparing to send long-range missiles to Ukraine capable of striking Crimea.

The British official who spoke to the Post explained that this action would set the stage for other NATO members to provide long-range missiles of their own.

“It’s a position the United Kingdom can uniquely do… We know that if we give something it makes it slightly easier for others,” he said. “There is definitely a different risk tolerance among different countries. We’re often in an earlier place.”

The Post noted that “Pentagon officials expressed no concern when asked about the prospect of Britain sending long-range missiles to Ukraine.”

This announcement is meant to clear the way for the provision of the long-range ATACMS missile by the United States, as well as the announcement, long in preparation, that the United States would send F-16 fighter jets.

The move by the key US ally marks another action that NATO officials had previously unconditionally ruled out.

In May, US President Joe Biden categorically declared, “We are not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that strike into Russia.”

The Post made clear, however, that the UK’s weapons systems would be used to attack Crimea. “The distance between Ukrainian-held territory and Sevastopol, Crimea’s largest city and the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, is within the range” of the storm shadow long-range missile.

The announcement by the UK follows a pattern set with the decision earlier this year by the NATO powers to send over 200 main battle tanks to Ukraine. In March 2022, Biden ruled out sending tanks to Ukraine:

The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment, and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews, just understand—and don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say—that’s called ‘World War III.’

In June, French President Emmanuel Macron declared, “We are not entering the war… Thus, it has been agreed not to supply certain weapons—including attack aircraft or tanks.”

After the UK announced that they would send challenger tanks, Macron declared on Twitter, “France will provide light combat tanks” to Ukraine. Just days later, both Germany and the United States announced that they would send their own main battle tanks, the Leopard 2 and the Abrams, to Ukraine.

The United States has moved systematically toward directly endorsing and facilitating attacks on the Crimean peninsula.

In May, Biden announced that the US would send the HIMARS long-range missile launcher, without providing the ATACMS munition capable of striking hundreds of miles deep.

In January, the US announced that it would send the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) to Ukraine, doubling the range of the munitions that had up to that point been provided for the HIMARS.

In February, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland openly endorsed Ukrainian strikes inside Crimea. “Those are legitimate targets,” Nuland said. “Ukraine is hitting them. We are supporting that.”

In February, the New York Times reported, “[T]he Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation.” The Times added, “The Biden administration is considering what would be one of its boldest moves yet, helping Ukraine to attack the peninsula.”

As it is becoming clear that the upcoming “spring offensive” will lead to only limited military gains, the US and NATO powers are moving rapidly to abandon all remaining restraints on their direct involvement in the war.

Last week, two drones exploded over the official residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin. After the drone strike, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken refused to rule out any effort to assassinate the Russian president, declaring, “We leave it to Ukraine to decide how it’s going to defend itself.”

These statements speak to the enormous recklessness and desperation gripping the US political establishment. This mood was spelled out even more explicitly by pro-war historian Timothy Snyder in what was perhaps the most open call for a NATO war with Russia to date.

In a guest opinion piece in the Times titled “We Forget Nuclear Powers Have Lost Wars,” Snyder concludes, “When Russians talk about nuclear war, the safest response is to ensure their very conventional defeat.” (Without explanation, the headline was changed to “Putin Is Fighting, and Losing, His Last War.”)

Snyder complains that “Americans’ fear of escalation delayed the supply of weapons that could have allowed Ukraine to win last year. One after the other, the weapons systems deemed escalatory have now been delivered, with no negative consequences.”

Demanding the “defeat” of Russia, Snyder makes the following extraordinary statement: “Russia has 11 time zones of space for retreating soldiers and plenty of practice in propaganda refashionings.”

In calling for the “defeat” of nuclear-armed Russia, Snyder declares, “No option is without hazards.” The statement is redolent of the assertion by General “Buck” Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove that “I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed” in the event of a thermonuclear war.

The same day as this rant appeared, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he made clear that the central aim of NATO in the conflict is recapturing the territories Ukraine lost in 2014, principally the Crimean peninsula.

Stoltenberg declared, “The war in Ukraine has fundamentally changed NATO, but then you have to remember the war didn’t start in 2022. The war started in 2014. And since then, NATO has implemented the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War.”

Stoltenberg continued, “For the first time in our history, we have combat-ready troops in the eastern part of the alliance, the battle groups in Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic countries, actually the whole eight battle groups from the Baltic Sea down to the Black Sea. Higher readiness of our forces. And increased defense spending. Until 2014, NATO allies were reducing defense budgets. Since 2014, all allies across Europe and Canada have significantly increased their defense spending. And we have modernized our command structure, we have more exercises, we have established new military domains like cyber. So in totality, this is a huge transformation of NATO that started in 2014.”

He added, “No other major power has 30 friends and allies as the United States has in NATO. Neither Russia nor China has anything similar. And together, NATO allies represent 50 percent of the world’s military might and 50 percent of the world’s economic might.”

This passage blows apart the narrative by the NATO powers that the conflict was an “unprovoked war.” Instead, it makes clear that the NATO powers provoked and escalated the conflict with the aim of reversing the territorial losses they incurred that year.

FedEx Freight to close 29 locations in fourth round of layoffs

Patrick Smith

On May 2, FedEx announced it would continue its cost-cutting measures by enacting a fourth round of layoffs. The Hill reported that company planned to close twenty-nine locations. When the Memphis, Tennessee newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, asked the company where the closures would take place, a FedEx spokesperson said they did not have “that information to share at this time.”

FedEx Manager of Global Public Affairs and Advocacy Isabel Rollison said the closures would be in effect by August 13, and the company will consolidate its operations into other FedEx locations. Rollins also said FedEx Freight will lay off more workers starting May 28. “Eligible employees will be offered permanent transfer opportunities to other markets with hiring needs.” There were no transfer criteria, and the company didn’t say how many employees they would lay off. 

Rollison cynically added, “FedEx Freight will also maintain health benefits for furloughed employees.” However, she didn’t say how the “furloughed employees” would pay their living expenses, including soaring food, rent, and gas prices. She also failed to indicate how these workers would pay the ever-increasing insurance premiums, co-pays, and deductibles.

A FedEx driver delivers a cart of packages, Thursday, May 6, 2021, in New York. [AP Photo/Mark Lennihan]

The company stated, “We continuously review our network to ensure we have the right design to address changing market dynamics. Through that process, we identified opportunities to consolidate operations in several locations to improve customer service levels and efficiencies with fewer touchpoints while lowering our service cost. Our top priority is to help affected team members find other open positions where possible.”

FedEx Freight announced its first round of layoffs in November of last year, with a second round starting in January. The company then enacted a third round in March. FedEx did not specify the number of workers impacted by layoffs on the prior three occasions.

A month ago, FedEx announced a plan to consolidate FedEx Express, FedEx Ground, FedEx Services, and other FedEx operating companies into what will be called the Federal Express Corporation. According to Reuters, combining these segments is part of an overall plan to save the company $4 billion by the end of 2025.

A direct competitor to United Parcel Service, FedEx's operations are “less efficient,” according to Chief Executive Officer Raj Subramaniam, who said, “We will be leaner, more agile, and better positioned to execute our mission to help customers compete and win with the world’s smartest logistics network.”

Subramaniam, who makes $5,154,870 annually, said FedEx would use a “hybrid” employee and contractor delivery model similar to Amazon and UPS. Of course, these measures would enable the company to avoid paying benefits to contracted workers. The CEO made sure to mention that the company will remain non-union.

According to ZipRecruiter, the average FedEx employee makes just over $45,000 a year. The most significant section of employees, about 23 percent of jobs, earn between $24,500 and $31,999 annually, and 12 percent only make between $17,000 and $24,499 annually. In comparison, founder and Chairman Fredrick Wallace Smith’s estimated net worth is $4.6 billion.

UPS is also planning cuts and has already started by laying off “22.4” workers, a hybrid position created in 2018. These workers share responsibility between working in the warehouse and driving. UPS and the Teamsters are in the process of negotiating a contract for more than 340,000 UPS workers, which expires on July 31. Approximately two-thirds of these employees are part-time and can only survive if they’re living with a parent or roommate.

In late February, 6,000 FedEx pilots began the process of voting to authorize a strike. On April 18, they started voting, and it will conclude on May 17. The union that represents them, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), has been conducting mediated negotiations under terms of the Railway Labor Act (RLA) since October 2022. However, the talks have dragged on since May 2021. The RLA forces negotiations through delays and cooling-off periods with the goal being to prevent strike action. The corporatist ALPA has largely integrated itself with the state apparatus in order to suppress strikes and capitulate to the company.

Financial storms building up on several major fronts

Nick Beams

A confluence of factors is interacting to create the conditions for a major deepening of the crisis in the US financial system, threatening the entire global order, as officials and regulators increasingly come to resemble the fabled Dutch boy rushing to plug a hole in the dyke with his finger to prevent it collapsing.

The significant sources of a potential collapse include: the ongoing problems of US middle-sized banks, despite three rescue operations over the past two months; tightening liquidity conditions in the $22 trillion US Treasury market, the basis of the US and global financial system; the threat of a default by the US government if the debt ceiling is not lifted by Congress; and the increasing signs that the role of the dollar as the global currency is being eroded.

The bank rescue operations, after three of the four largest failures in US financial history, have been met with assurances from the administration, regulators, and the Federal Reserve that the banking system is sound and resilient. But they could not really say anything else because to present an accounting of the real state of affairs would undoubtedly trigger a crisis.

The failure of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature and First Republic is significant both regarding size and the speed at which it occurred.

The total assets of the three, after adjustment for inflation, exceeded that of the combined assets of the 25 banks that collapsed in the financial crisis of 2008. And it occurred with a speed never seen before.

In its latest Financial Stability report, issued earlier this week, the Fed said the runs on SVB and Signature “were of unprecedented speed” compared with previous runs. When Washington Mutual collapsed in 2008—the biggest-ever bank failure in monetary terms—depositors pulled out $17 billion in the course of eight business days.

In the case of SVB, $40 billion was pulled out in a single day with a further $100 billion lined up to be withdrawn the following day had the bank not been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Attempts have been made to portray the failed banks as “outliers.” This assertion immediately collapses on even a cursory examination of the situation. Out of the roughly 4700 banks in the US, SVB was the sixteenth largest.

While they were hit because of specific problems in their business models, there was an underlying cause. This was the wrenching shift in the financial system as the Fed moved from ultra-easy money, virtually for free, to an interest rate hike of 5 percentage points in a year.

The interest rate increase meant that the market value of the assets they held—Treasury bonds in the case of SVB and mortgages to the ultra-wealthy in the case of First Republic—fell sharply.

The universal situation, of which the three bank failures were a particular expression, has been highlighted by Amit Seru, a professor of finance at Stanford University, one of a group of economists who have been probing the crisis.

Writing in the New York Times last week, he noted that “the US banking system’s market value of assets is around $2 trillion lower than suggested by their book value.”

Attention has focused so far on the issue of uninsured depositors, those holding more than $250,000. But Seru pointed to another factor that could spark a panic: commercial real estate, which forms a considerable portion of the assets of middle-sized banks.

Commercial real estate loans, which amount to $2.7 trillion in the US, make up a quarter of an average bank’s assets, with many of them coming due in the next few years in conditions of higher interest rates increasing the risk of defaults.

Commercial real estate is being hit by two forces: the decline in property values due to higher interest rates and the fall in office space occupancy because of the increase in working from home due to the COVID pandemic.

Seru noted that “signs of distress are already visible” with the stock market value of real estate holding companies falling by 55 percent since the start of the pandemic, translating into a 33 percent reduction of the value of office buildings held by these companies.

If the default rate on commercial real estate reached even the lower end of that seen after the 2008 crisis, this would result in losses of up to $160 billion that could have “significant implications” for hundreds of smaller and middle-sized regional banks, already weakened by higher interest rates.

The Treasury bond market is another potential source of crisis as it was in March 2020. At the start of the pandemic, it froze; government debt, supposedly the safest financial asset in the world, could not be sold for several days and the Fed was forced to intervene, rapidly injecting $4 trillion to backstop all areas of the financial system.

A full analysis of the causes of the freeze has never been presented in the three years since then, despite ongoing investigations by financial authorities, much less measures to prevent a recurrence.

In fact, the problem of Treasury market liquidity has been hovering over the system ever since.

In a comment published in the Financial Times (FT), Lori Heinel, chief global investment office at the financial firm State Street, warned that “a potential liquidity crisis is looming over financial markets.”

She identified three factors. First, the shift in the macro environment from quantitative easing stimulus to monetary policy tightening by central banks.

Second, uncertainty over monetary policy which is generating interest volatility.

The third factor is significant changes in the operations of the Treasury market which affect liquidity, that is, the ability of traders to make large deals without setting off big movements.

According to JPMorgan, the Treasury market has grown fivefold in the past 15 years, but the number of primary dealers facilitating trades has “stalled” and “the market depth in US Treasuries declined almost 60 percent in 2022 to levels only seen in times of a crisis.”

Past cycles, she wrote, were no guide to liquidity dynamics in present conditions, marked by sudden shocks such as the Ukraine war and the March banking crisis.

The standoff in Congress over the lifting of the debt ceiling, a product of the civil war within the US political establishment, is another potential trigger for a crisis in the financial system.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has told Congress that Treasury could run out of money as early as June 1. Financial analyst Mohamed El-Erian told the FT that while the expectation was that a last-minute deal would be done if that did not eventuate, “we should expect another layer of financial volatility in a system that has already lost many of its anchors.”

Speaking at a press conference last week, Fed chair Jerome Powell said failure to lift the ceiling would take the US economy into “unchartered territory” and “no one should assume that the Fed can protect the economy and the financial system and our reputation from the damage that such an event might inflict.”

The debt ceiling standoff is feeding into broader concerns about the role of the US dollar as the world’s global currency. Ever since President Nixon withdraw the gold backing in 1971, the dollar has been a fiat currency. It no longer rests on gold, as the material embodiment of value, but on confidence in American economy and its political system.

The dollar’s global role has given the US government the ability to do what no other country can do. It can run massive balance of trade and payments deficits, rack up record budget deficits as it boosts military spending, and provide seemingly endless support for corporations and the banks both through direct government handouts and cheap money from the Fed.

But the long-term historic decline of the US, coupled with the eruption of ever more serious financial crises, is calling into question the dollar’s global role.

The increasing use of financial sanctions in what it known as “dollar weaponization,” as it took with the freezing of the dollar assets of the Russian central bank at the start of the Ukraine war, sent a shiver through the financial system and raised questions about its global role.

Yellen acknowledged in a CNN interview last month that “there is a risk when we use financial sanctions that are linked to the role of the dollar over time it could undermines the hegemony of the dollar.”

There is no global alternative to the dollar at present but there is a growing striving to break free of its grip as seen by the increase in trade deals between China and a number of other countries carrying out transactions in their own currencies.

In an FT comment last month, Ruchir Sharma, chair of Rockefeller International, noted that the price of gold had risen by 20 percent in the past six months. The major buyers were “central banks, which are sharply reducing their dollar holdings and seeking a safe alternative.”

Central banks mostly from the “developing world,” including Russia, India, and China, are buying more tons of gold than at any time since data started to be collected in 1950.

He also noted, as others have, that in the March banking crisis the dollar went down while gold rose. Generally, when there is a financial storm, the dollar rises because it is regarded as a “safe haven,” but not on this occasion. Gold is currently trading at near its record price of $2089 an ounce which it reached in August 2020.

The different aspects of the mounting financial crisis are not conjunctural or episodic events that will pass, leading to a return to “normal.”

They presage enormous economic shocks in which the ruling classes around the world will seek to make the working class pay for the historic crisis of the profit system, stepping up the violent measures already being carried out.

Italian Government Bachelors, Masters & PhD Scholarships 2023/2024

Application Deadline: 9th June 2023 at 2pm

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Scholarships can be awarded only for study/ research projects at institutions within the Italian public education and research system.

Fields of Study: Courses for which grants are available:

•        Master’s Degree (Laurea Magistrale 2° ciclo)
•        Courses of Higher Education in Arts, Music, and Dance (AFAM)
•        PhD programmes
•        Research under academic supervision (Progetti in co-tutela)
•        Italian Language and Culture Courses

About Scholarship: The Italian Government awards scholarships for studying in Italy both to foreign citizens and Italian citizens resident abroad (IRE). The aim of these scholarships is fostering international cultural cooperation, spreading the Italian language, culture and science knowledge and promoting the economic and technological sectors of Italy all around the world.

Type: Masters, PhD, Research

Eligibility:

1. Academic qualifications: Applications must only be submitted by foreign students not residing in Italy and by Italian citizens living abroad (IRE)* holding an appropriate academic qualification required to enroll to the Italian University/Institute. https://studyinitaly.esteri.it/en/Recognition-of-qualification.
2. Age requirements: 
   • Applicants for Master’s Degree/Higher Education in Arts, Music, and Dance (AFAM) Programmes/ Italian Language and Culture Courses should not be over 28 years old by the deadline of this call, with the sole exception of renewals.
   • Applicants for PhD Programmes  should not be over 30 years old by the deadline of this call, with the sole exception of renewals.
   • Applicants for Research Projects under academic supervision should not be over 40 years old by the deadline of this call.
3. Language proficiency 
   • Applicants must provide a certificate of their proficiency in Italian language. The minimum level required is B2 within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR): (https://www.linguaitaliana.esteri.it/data/lingua/corsi/pdf/tabella_certificazioni.pdf).
   • Proof of proficiency in Italian is not required for courses entirely taught in English.
   • In this case applicants must provide a language certificate of their proficiency in English Language. The minimum level required is B2 within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
   • For Italian language and culture courses, applicants must provide a certificate of their proficiency in Italian language. The minimum level required is A2 within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR):

Number of Scholarships: not specified

Value of Scholarship:

• Normally, the scholarship holders are exempt from the payment of the university tuition fees, in accordance with existing regulations. However the Universities, as part of their autonomy, may not allow such exemption. Candidates are therefore recommended to contact the chosen Institution in order to be informed on eventual taxes or tuition fees.
• For the sole period of the scholarships granted by the Italian Government, the scholarship-holders are covered by an insurance policy against illness and/or accident. Air tickets are not granted, except for Chilean citizens.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year

How to Apply: 

• Click here to access the registration form
• Before applying, please read carefully the Call for Procedure

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details

Australian Defence Strategic Review warns of military recruitment crisis

Eric Ludlow

The redacted and declassified version of the Australian Labor government’s Defence Strategic Review (DSR), released on April 24, raised an alarm over the Australian military’s “significant workforce challenges” with “recruitment and retention.” Without elaborating or providing any details, it stated: “This is an acute issue for Defence and is reflective of broader national challenges.”

National Defence Review: Defence Strategic Review

Though vague and muted, this language points to growing concerns in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government and ruling circles as a whole about the difficulties they face in executing their plans to mobilise the entire population for war, and to recruit thousands of youth into the armed forces to fight and die in the interests of US and Australian capitalism.

The DSR signaled the biggest military buildup and shift in Australian military policy since World War II. From a post-Vietnam War official focus on defending the continent, it called for “impactful projection” across the Indo-Pacific region, placing the country at the forefront of US war preparations against China, which Washington regards as an existential threat to US global dominance.

The DSR openly targeted China and declared there was “the prospect of major conflict in the region that directly threatens our national interest.” It promoted US allegations of Chinese “aggression” when in reality, it is the US and its closest allies, such as Australia, that are increasingly taking punitive economic measures against China, militarily encircling it and provoking a conflict over Taiwan, which has been internationally recognised for the past 50 years as part of China.

Clearly produced with the closest collaboration of the US Biden administration, the DSR is part of an escalation of militarisation by all the imperialist powers. Last year, Japan and Germany doubled their military budgets amid the escalating US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the preparations for war against China.

The report demanded a “whole-of-nation” approach, which means subordinating every aspect of society to the war effort. But the military confronts what Defence Minister Richard Marles declared last November to be a “personnel crisis.”

A Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide recently heard that, in the 12 months to May 2022, the Australian army lost 13 percent of its workforce (up from 10.9 percent the previous year), while the navy lost 9.3 percent (up from 6.8 percent), and the Royal Australian Air Force lost 8.7 percent (up from 6.9 percent).

The DSR detailed no answers to this crisis, but stated: “Policy, process, risk appetite and approaches to recruitment must change to increase the speed of recruitment from application to enlistment and recruitment. Recruitment time must be achieved in days, not months.”

This means dramatically speeding up recruitment time frames and lowering the standards for recruits, particularly in terms of mental health and tolerance for battlefield violence and trauma (“risk appetite”).

Already in January, Veterans Affairs and Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh said the recruitment process would be cut from about 300 days on average to no more than 100 days, and possibly shorter. He stated: “[W]e do not want to be losing people who find other opportunities while we are taking them through that recruitment process.”

The former Liberal-National Coalition government under Scott Morrison declared in March 2022 that the permanent Australian Defence Force (ADF) workforce would be increased by 30 percent to almost 80,000 personnel by 2040.

As opposition leader at the time, Albanese supported the expansion, and declared that a Labor government would be better placed to implement it. Such an increase in the ADF’s permanent workforce would require more than doubling the previous rate of recruitment, which saw ADF numbers increase by a little over 3,000 (about 5 percent) in the 10 years to 2021–22.

One aspect of the army’s inability to recruit and retain is the psychological distress to which military service leads. The royal commission into military-related suicides was established in July 2021 in response to an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report which found that 1,273 suicides had occurred between 2001 and 2019 among military personnel who had served at least one day since 1985. Of those, 211 were serving and 1,062 were veterans.

This is no doubt linked to the dehumanising and brutal conditions in which army personnel are made to serve. That includes participating in war crimes. According to the 2020 Brereton Report, the military is alleged to have engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2016, including murder, torture and abuse.

Australian soldiers in training. [Photo: Defence Australia Facebook]

ADF Chief General Angus Campbell told the royal commission that the ADF had begun considering candidates with higher psychological risk profiles. “Given current economic circumstances and the low employment rate… the ADF’s risk appetite in recruiting has increased,” he testified.

Psychologist Dr Mary Frost told the Guardian in February that the results have been “catastrophic.” Recruits referred by the ADF came to her, sometimes after no more than 20 weeks of training, “sometimes suicidal, and desperately wanting out.”

Many young people are looking to alternative means of getting an education and carving out a life for themselves. Rural and regional centres have historically been a source of much of the ADF’s recruitment. But youth in these areas are often moving into urban centres looking for employment or education opportunities.

The DSR also called for the reintroduction of the Ready Reserve Scheme. The scheme was first introduced in October 1991 by Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Its purpose was to have a reserve of fully-trained military recruits enter the civilian workforce or higher education, ready on short notice to deploy on military operations. The scheme was abolished in 1996 by the Coalition government of Prime Minister John Howard.

As well as possible employment and education prospects, the fall in recruits and retention reflects broad anti-war sentiment, particularly among youth, who do not want to be sacrificed in imperialist wars abroad.

This is an international phenomenon. In the year to October 2022, the UK Armed Forces dropped 3.3 percent, with a 29.8 percent reduction in applications to join the British military. New Zealand fell 12 percent short of its 2021 defence recruitment target. Canadian Brigadier-General Krista Brodie said last September that one in ten of the country’s 100,000 defence force positions were unfilled.

The German, Canadian and US defence forces are engaged in desperate efforts to recruit young people. The National Guard in the US state of Georgia is using mobile phone location data to target high school students with recruitment advertisements and military propaganda.

Last November, Universities Australia, representing the university managements, urged the Albanese government to establish “internships” to funnel students—including international students from “strategic allies”—into the Australian military.

Sections of the ruling elite are openly discussing reinstating conscription. Last November, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott called for the introduction of mandatory national service for youth finishing high school.

A “Red Alert” series published in the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald in March declared that, in order to prepare for an imminent war against China, Australian society must break the “taboos” of conscription and nuclear weapons.

While pledging $368 billion in March for the purchase of nuclear-powered submarines as part of the aggressive AUKUS military alliance with the US and the UK, Albanese’s government is deepening the decades-long assault on workers’ wages, and health, education and social services, amid the greatest cost-of-living crisis in generations.

Record waiting times in Australian hospitals

John Mackay

The 16th Australian Medical Association (AMA) annual Public Hospital Report Card shows a hospital system in crisis. Overcrowding and under-resourcing is resulting in extended waiting times for both emergency medical services and “elective” surgeries.

NSW nurses protesting during a one-day strike on March 31, 2022. [Photo: WSWS]

AMA president Professor Steve Robson said essential indicators of hospital performance were at their lowest ever. “The numbers paint a grim picture for the future of our public hospitals and with them our patients if no action is taken,” he stated in a media release.

Robson said wait times for essential surgeries had blown out in the past financial year. “It’s wrong to think of these as elective surgeries, they are essential and only 63 percent of patients referred for semi-urgent planned surgery are being treated within the recommended [90] days. That’s more than one in three patients waiting longer than the clinically indicated time for essential surgeries, often in terrible pain and unable to work.”

The report stated that emergency departments had experienced their toughest year since the AMA began tracking performance. For patients who attended an emergency department and were assessed as “urgent,” only 58 percent were seen within the recommended 30 minutes. One in three patients had to stay longer than four hours in the emergency department because beds were not available in the hospital to admit them.

The public hospital system was experiencing increasing pressures on services well before the COVID-19 pandemic. In a video summary to launch the report card, Dr Sarah Whitelaw said, “while we know the pandemic has impacted the ability of hospitals to respond, the impact on emergency departments in public hospitals has been worsening for a decade.”

The number of public hospital beds available for people aged over 65, a demographic most in need of health care due to advancing age, has dropped by more than half over 30 years, from 32.5 beds per 1,000 people in this age bracket to only 14.7 per 1,000.

Federal and state governments, both Labor and Liberal-National, have under-funded the public health system over these decades. They have driven down expenditure for essential services, such as health and education, in order to cut corporate taxation and make Australia more attractive to investors.

Disregard for the needs of public health and its subordination to profit were most nakedly seen with the “let it rip” scrapping of evidence-based measures to limit the spread of COVID-19. As reported in the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) last month, COVID is Australia’s third leading cause of death, following ischemic heart disease and dementia.

There were 20,200 more deaths in 2022 than if the pandemic had not happened, with a total excess mortality of 12 percent. Most excess deaths occurred in people older than 65 years, whom big business largely regards as expendable, no longer able to work, and a burden on the health and welfare budgets.

Robson commented: “In just over 10 years, Australia is expected to have more than 1 million people who will be over 85 years of age and we know older patients are more likely to require an admission to a public hospital. We should be planning for this. But we will remain on the path to failure if we keep doing the same thing over, and over, and over again.”

The report highlighted a “hidden waiting list” where some patients wait years to get on an official waiting list to see a specialist. The report estimated that around 100,000 fewer people were added to the essential surgery list in 2021–22, showing this hidden waiting list.

The report came just a week after the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) analysed public specialist outpatient waiting times in four states: Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. New South Wales, the Northern Territory and the Australia Capital Territory did not make their data public.

The ABC found some patients are waiting longer than six years to see specialists for an “initial appointment,” warning that people could die waiting for care.

The ABC said people needing a consultation with a brain surgeon are waiting longer than two years for urgent appointments, while the recommended time frame is 30 days. In Victoria, it can be more than eight years to see ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeons, and longer than seven years to see immunologists and dermatologists.

In Tasmania, it can take longer than six years to see a neurosurgeon. In parts of South Australia, specialists such as gastroenterologists and ophthalmologists can take as long as five years to be seen. In some major South Australian hospitals, maximum wait times for routine and non-urgent care range from 3 to 5 years in ophthalmology, ENT, gastroenterology and orthopaedics.

Professor Graeme Stewart, from the Westmead Institute for Medical Research in Sydney, described the ABC figures as “unconscionable.” He said: “The word heartbreaking comes up after 50 years as a doctor to think that we’ve got to this stage.

“If they’re not dying while they’re waiting, the delay may alter the outcome to be the difference between life and death,” he told the ABC. “This is not what Australians were told their health system was going to be.”

If nothing changed, more people would fall through the cracks. “It will progressively get worse,” Stewart said. “But it’s bad enough as it is. It doesn’t have to get worse for people to take notice that we have to act now.”

In early 2020, the Morrison Liberal-National government announced a 50-50 shared health funding deal with the states and territories in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of 2022, the Albanese Labor government ended this equal funding partnership, despite the AMA’s Robson warning that the “log-jammed” hospital system was at “breaking point” and no longer had any capacity to “surge and meet increased demand.”

The Daniel Andrews Labor government in Victoria now plans to cut up to 10 percent of civil servants in the state’s health department. Rural Doctors Association of Victoria president Dr Dan Wilson said: “To cut 10 percent… I’d be greatly concerned about the feasibility of the Victorian state health department programs continuing in their current versions… You pull some of those jobs away… and some sections of the community—often marginalised groups—get put on the backburner.”

All the unions covering nurses and healthcare workers have allowed the crisis in the public healthcare system to worsen by continually stifling workers’ opposition, preventing unified industrial action and channeling anger back behind the election of cost-cutting, pro-business Labor governments.