Steel and coal: time to get serious about emission cuts!

10 November 2009

MEDIA RELEASE - The Illawarra Socialist Alliance has called on the Australian government to get serious about reducing greenhouse emissions in the steel industry, convener Chris Williams said yesterday.

"The Quarterly Update of Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory to June 2009 shows that negative emission growth nationally in the 12 months to June 2009 was in part due to 'a temporary reduction in production capacity at the Port Kembla steelworks'. And when production picks up again? Given the urgent need to cut greenhouse emissions we need strategic planning to clean up and reduce our reliance on steel."

Williams said the Socialist Alliance is pushing for direct, government investment to create jobs in sustainable industries so alternatives to steel can be developed as quickly as possible.

"We don't have time to leave it to the market. It needs proper planning and must include job creation and investment in less carbon-intensive alternatives. This is vital to ensure the livelihoods of thousands of workers and their families. "Steel producers should be compelled to increase the recycling of steel which is much cleaner than blast-furnace steel. They should also have to source more of their energy needs from renewables.

"Mandatory targets must be set in these areas. BlueScope Steel should immediately restart plans to build the co-generation plant which could save one million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year. If Bluescope says that they require government assistance to get this done, then they must prove it by opening their books to public inspection.

"If they refuse to do this Bluescope should be placed under public ownership."

Williams added: "Steel will certainly be necessary in the transition to a low-carbon economy, but we can still reduce reliance on steel. Products should be redesigned to reduce the amount of steel necessary in their production, e.g. by light-weighting. Furthermore, the products that we design and use should be made to last -- the government should outlaw planned obsolescence. This is particularly important in the industries that place the most demand on steel production, like motor cars for example.

"Also, society needs to ask itself how necessary the things that we are making with steel really are. Wind turbines, electric trains and solar panels are socially useful, but what about bombs, warships and Joint Strike Fighters?"

Williams concluded: "But for the Socialist Alliance, a plan to create green jobs in heavy industrial regions like the Illawarra is essential. The greenhouse mafia, powerful lobby groups represented in the coal, steel and other industries whom even Kevin Rudd denounced last week, will fight moves to put the planet and people before their shareholder returns. Many workers and their communities are being told that they must choose between a safe climate future and their jobs, their livelihood.

"But the transition to a low-carbon economy isn't the main threat to jobs. The unquenchable thirst for profits is, and it threatens to destroy life on Earth as we know it. The climate movement needs to unite with working people and demand the government assist communities to move away from coal and steel towards new industries that will underpin sustainability. And working people need to be part of any plans to move to a low-carbon economy; they're in the best position to know how to retool and restructure industry for sustainability".

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Regional left groups statement on Tamil refugees

Respect human rights - free the refugees!
Reject Australia's 'Indonesian solution'!
Australia should welcome the asylum seekers!

A joint statement of:

Socialist Alliance, Australia; Socialist Party, Australia; Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM); Network of the Oppressed People (JERIT), Malaysia; CWI Malaysia; Confederation Congress of Indonesian Union Alliance (KASBI); Working Peoples Association (PRP), Indonesia; National Liberation Party of Unity (PAPERNAS); Indonesian National Front for Labor Struggle (FNPBI); Socialist Worker - New Zealand

All respect for elementary human rights and dignity has been thrown overboard as the governments of Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia refuse to accept the latest wave of Tamil asylum seekers fleeing war and oppression in Sri Lanka and instead treat them like criminals.

The Australian government is the only of these three governments to have signed the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees but it is refusing to carry out its obligations to asylum seekers under that convention.

For weeks, more than 250 Tamil-speaking people, including children, remain in dire conditions on a boat in Merak, Indonesia. Another 78 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers, including children, remain on the Australian customs ship Oceanic Viking off Tanjung Pinang, Indonesia. Both groups are refusing to leave their boats for fear that Indonesia will lock them up in detention centres with a reputation for brutality and/or send them back to an uncertain future in Sri Lanka. On November 1, it was reported that a boat of asylum seekers had sunk near the Cocos Islands, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, and 12 are missing feared drowned.

Meanwhile, 207 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers are being held at the Immigration Detention Centre at Kuala Lumpar International Airport, and 108 Sri Lankan refugees are being detained at Pekan Nanas Immigration Detention Centre in Johor, Malaysia. Malaysia is both a transit point and a country of permanent asylum for tens of thousands of refugees from countries such as Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd claims its policy is "humane" but "tough". It is neither. The Rudd Labor government of Australia is bribing the Indonesian government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to intercept the boats of asylum seekers on their way to Australia. This "Indonesian solution" out-sources Australia's obligation to asylum seekers to Indonesia just as its predecessor did to Nauru and PNG in the name of a "Pacific solution".

Many of those seeking asylum in Australia come from Sri Lanka where the Tamils have suffered from decades of brutal oppression at the hands of various Sinhala national chauvinist governments. The government of Mahinda Rajapaksa unleashed an all-out terror campaign this year, killing some 20,000 Tamil people in the month of May. Since the end of the military offensive, more than 300,000 Tamil people have been imprisoned in concentration-style camps and denied the right to return to their homes. It is estimated that 31,000 children are among those incarcerated, without proper access to shelter, food and medicine.

The Australian government, like many governments in the West and across Asia, supported the Rajapaksa regime throughout its final onslaught, preferring to maintain trade links - including selling arms - rather than stop the Tamil minority from being massacred.

We condemn the Australian, Indonesian and Malaysian governments for their lack of commitment to the humanitarian problems faced by the refugees and we demand:

• That the governments of our countries withdraw financial and diplomatic support from the Sri Lankan government until it closes the concentration camps, and allows the Tamils trapped in camps to go back to their homes without fear of persecution.
• That no refugee fleeing war and persecution should be forced to return to the country they fled.
• That Australia, as a wealthy and developed country which has exploited its poorer neighbours, should immediately develop a program to settle tens of thousands of asylum seekers and take a leading role in helping reduce the misery of the world’s millions of refugees, most of whom are trying to survive in desperate conditions in refugee camps in some of the world's poorest countries.
• That Australia allow the asylum seekers trapped in Indonesia to come to Australia to have their claims heard and we condemn the Indonesian government for being a puppet for the Australian government in preventing refugees from going to Australia. This cooperation between these two governments is a threat not only to the Tamil refugees but to human rights in the region.
• That Australia must immediately close the Christmas Island refugee prison, and allow those asylum seekers to live in freedom in Australia while their claims are processed.
• That the Indonesian, Malaysian and Australian governments respect the human rights of the refugees, give protection, humanitarian aid and accommodation to the refugees as long as they are in Indonesian territory and place no limitation for their rights to seek asylum.
• That the Malaysian and Indonesian governments sign the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, release the asylum seekers they have in detention and allow them full access to UNHCR and human rights groups.

We appeal to all democratic and progressive people in Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia, trade unions, human rights organisations and women’s rights organisations to understand the plight of the asylum seekers and to support our demands.

November 5, 2009

[If your organisation would like to add its name to this statement, please write to Socialist Alliance at national_office@socialist-alliance.org.]

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The Just Transition Tour

When: 21-26 November 2009
http://transitiontour.wordpress.com/ for full details

A five-day bus tour through coal communities around NSW to learn about coal, its contribution to climate change and its impacts on communities and environments. The tour is also about promoting the potential for a just transition to a renewable energy future that guarantees jobs and protects communities.

Map of route and Link to Google map of route

Sat 21st Nov Newcastle – Gloucester – Singleton – Jerrys Plains
Sun 22nd Nov Jerrys Plains – Muswellbrook – Bickham – Caroona
Mon 23rd Nov Caroona – Mudgee – Lithgow
Tues 24th Nov Lithgow – Canberra
Wed 25th Nov Canberra – Katoomba
Thurs 26th Nov Katoomba – Sydney – Lake Macquarie – Newcastle
[There are options for people who can't come for the whole tour]

Why:
Because climate scientists like NASA’s James Hansen have given the planet a five year window to make serious carbon cuts if we are going to avoid crossing dangerous climate tipping points.
Because coal is a massive contributor to Australian and global carbon emissions.
Because communities need green jobs and green industry alternatives to coal mining.
Because we need to work with coal communities to phase out coal for a safe climate.

Who:
Anyone and everyone is welcome! Students, parents, activists, workers, grandparents – anyone who is worried about climate change, and wants to find out more from communities on the ground about how we can work together to make a fair and fast transition to renewables in NSW.

The tour is being organised by an alliance of different groups and individuals in Newcastle. But you don’t have to be from Newcastle to help out or come along!

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Socialist Alliance conference to prepare for struggle

Lisa Macdonald, Sydney
4 November 2009

Watching the terrible plight of the Tamil asylum seekers aboard the Australian customs ship Oceanic Viking last week brought home the depressing continuity in policy and perspective between the previous John Howard Coalition government and Labor rule under PM Kevin Rudd. Australia's razor-wire enclosed refugee detention centres are once again filling up with desperate victims of war and oppression.

Howard's “Pacific solution” is now Rudd's “Indonesian solution”, and the supposed threat of “potential terrorists” among the refugees is once again being used to justify the brutal treatment of people from the Third World.

Since federal Labor was elected two years ago, it has never been clearer that Rudd is Tweedledum to Howard's Tweedledee. Whether it's Work Choices Lite, the continuation of the racist Northern Territory intervention into Aboriginal communities, the further privatisation of Telstra, or the ongoing military support for the United States' occupation of Afghanistan, the evidence is rapidly piling up that Rudd's Labor is little more than a mirror image of the hated Howard government.

In the face of global environmental, economic and social crises that threaten billions of lives, if not the very survival of humanity, the need to battle against, and build genuine alternatives, to governments such as Australia's is increasingly urgent.

The world can't wait, and the question of how to build sufficiently strong social movements, fighting trade unions and alternative political organisations that can stop the capitalist parties' neoliberal rampage, warmongering and greenwashing confronts us all.

Answering this question will be the focus of discussions at the Socialist Alliance's seventh national conference, to be held in Sydney over January 2-5, 2010.

“Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century: Towards Justice, Sustainability and People’s Power”, sponsored by Green Left Weekly, will kick off with a public meeting on the evening of January 2 called “Their crises: our solutions”. It will introduce some of the many issues and campaigns to be discussed over the following three days.

The conference program includes educational workshops, and sessions devoted to discussing and deciding the Socialist Alliance's policies and varied campaign activities in 2010.

Panels of speakers in plenary sessions over January 3-5 will introduce resolutions on: the political situation; socialist electoral strategy and tactics; building the climate action movement; rebuilding militant trade unions; justice for Indigenous people; refugee rights and internationalism; the Latin America revolutions and solidarity; getting Australia out of Afghanistan and Iraq; youth activity and women's and queer rights.

Specific campaign workshops on January 3 will discuss the climate change movement, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights campaigns, anti-war activity, the same-sex marriage rights campaign, and solidarity with the revolutions and anti-imperialist struggles occurring across Latin America.

Workshops on January 5 will discuss and plan activities in many aspects of party building, including GLW content and distribution, election campaigning, and publications and internet campaigning.

On January 4 and 5, educational workshops will focus on: the left-Indigenous alliance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander justice; understanding the financial and economic crisis; ecology and socialism; and Laborism and radical alternatives, explaining the history of the ALP, the role of the Wobblies, and communist organising experiences in Australian history.

The conference will also launch the 2010 GLW fighting fund at an indoor rally featuring multimedia presentations and a theatre performance. An international cultural performance night will be held on January 4.

The three days of political discussion, education and planning for action is open to everyone interested in joining together with others to fight for a better world, or simply in finding out more about socialist ideas and activities.

The detailed conference agenda and registration forms are available at www.socialist-alliance.org, or contact the Socialist Alliance at 02 9690 2508 or email national_office@socialist-alliance.org for more information.

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Time to revive the refugee rights movement

Margarita Windisch, Bea Bleile & Dick Nichols

At first, the flow of people fleeing horrors like the Sri Lankan government’s concentration camps for Tamils and Afghanistan’s killing fields didn’t test the capacity of the Christmas Island detention centre.

The Rudd Labor government could pretend the asylum-seeker situation was under control and the sickening days of the Tampa and the Coalition’s "dark victor" in the 2001 election just a bad memory.

But a small increase in the number of boats arriving has changed all that. The Oceanic Viking could turn into Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Tampa.

The government’s refusal to allow desperate Tamil asylum seekers to land on Australian soil, and the bribing of the Indonesian government to hold them in a country which hasn’t signed the UN Refugee Convention, Liberal dissident MP and refugee rights supporter Judi Moylan’s October 17 comment: "What Mr Rudd is doing in relation to Indonesia is a de facto Pacific solution."

Broadly progressive public opinion, revolted by Coalition prime minister John Howard’s "dog-whistling" of Australian racism and xenophobia in 2001, is now getting increasingly nervous about the Rudd government’s stance.

That’s why the PM and his MPs last week launched a full-scale attack on the Coalition in parliament. They did their utmost to exploit the main changes Labor had introduced to Howard government policy — removing temporary protection visas and (supposedly), ending the holding of children in detention, and respecting the UN Refugee Convention — to create the impression that there’s an unbridgeable policy gulf between the major parties.

Yet facts count for more than parliamentary rhetoric. The small increase in arrivals by boat (only 4% of all asylum seekers to Australia), combined with relentless Coalition pressing of Australian society’s racist and xenophobic nerve, forced Rudd to act like Howard and seek an "Indonesian solution" from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The alternative — to let the boats land, sharply lift Australia's refugee intake to reduce the "queue" of asylum-seekers, and tackle the racist fear-mongering and ignorance head-on — was always unthinkable for the Rudd government.

The result is Canberra’s continuing inhumane bipartisanship on refugees — the hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on Christmas Island, the intensive coastal patrols, the bribes to poorer nations to become dumping grounds for those "we" don’t want, and the menacing advertising campaigns warning desperate people not to try reaching Australian shores.

The alternative approach, advanced by refugee rights organisations like the Edmund Rice Centre, begins with simply telling the truth: refugees, in particular refugees arriving by boat, do not cause a problem in this country. Australia should immediately develop a program to settle tens of thousands of asylum seekers and take a lead role in helping reduce the misery of the world’s millions of refugees.

In 2008, 4750 people made a claim for asylum in Australia (0.57% of worldwide refugee claims compared to nearly 37,000 in Canada, 31,000 in Italy and 207,000 in South Africa).

At the end of 2007, there were 16 million refugees and 51 million displaced people in the world, yet in 2008-09 Australia offered a miserable 13,500 places to asylum seekers. That’s 0.6 of a refugee for every 1000 inhabitants. Sweden accepted 12 refugees per 1000 between 2001 and 2005.

The only way to force a change in Australian refugee policy is by rebuilding the refugee rights movement that was strong enough to force Howard to dilute aspects of his brutal policy.

There is good potential for this revival. Leading unionists like Dave Noonan from the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union, Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes and Geelong Trades Hall Council secretary Tim Gooden) have spoken out against a return to the dark days of 2001, and demanded that the refugees on the Oceanic Viking be allowed to land in Australia.

Probably as a result of their stance, on October 26 the Australian Council of Trade Unions issued a statement saying "Australian unions are extremely disappointed with the use of rhetoric to demonise asylum seekers who are fleeing dangerous situations in their home countries and have asked Australia for help and safety".

However, the statement avoids any criticism of the Rudd government’s policy, and poses no concrete alternative.

The Greens, too, could play an important role in rebuilding the refugee rights movement. On October 21, Greens human rights spokesperson Sarah Hansen-Young, reminded the government that asylum-seekers are not "illegal", as claimed by Rudd, but have rights under the UN refugee convention.

While welcoming the Indonesian decision to take the 78 refugees on the Oceanic Viking, Hanson-Young added that "the movement of asylum seekers around the world will continue, there will be more boats, and Australia has to accept that it will have to be part of the answer to this problem".

The way ahead is clear. Those who care for their fellow human beings must redouble efforts to build a refugee rights movement that can make Australia’s present inhumane policy completely untenable. That movement must also demand the government withdraw financial and diplomatic support from the Sri Lankan government until it closes its concentration camps in the Tamil areas, and pulls Australian troops out of Afghanistan.

The first step is to immediately close Christmas Island and let asylum seekers there come to the mainland and stay.

[Margarita Windisch, Bea Bleile and Dick Nichols are the Socialist Alliance national conveners.]

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First socialist elected to Fremantle Council

New councillor for Hilton Sam Wainwright thanks his supporters

Newly elected Hilton councillor Sam Wainwright summarised what he saw as the significance of his election to Fremantle Council, "It’s a victory for all those like me who believe that the council can and should play an active role in involving people in decision making, protecting the environment, campaigning for workers rights and making a place in the community for people who are too often left out, such as indigenous Australians or people with disabilities."

Wainwright is a Co-convenor of Socialist Alliance in Western Australia and activist in the Maritime Union of Australia. He said, "I think I’m the first socialist elected to public office in WA for a long time, if not ever. Most candidates for council try to appeal to the middle ground and keep their political affiliations quiet. I don’t believe in that approach. I think it’s better to be upfront about your beliefs. Throughout the campaign I emphasised that I was a staunch socialist, unionist and environmentalist."

He added, "I didn’t expect everyone to sign up to everything I stand for. But I did ask people to believe that I would be a hard working campaigner for their rights. I’m really grateful and humbled that so many people have shown their confidence in me and saw my background as a positive."

Wainwright thanked the diverse range of people that supported his campaign, "Active support came from all sorts of places: members of Socialist Alliance, the Greens and the ALP all pitched in; many unionists and community activists helped out; and last but not least, everyday residents who don’t wear a political label but want to see the sort of change that we talked about in the campaign. The election result belongs to these people and I know that the hard work now begins."

Commenting on the mayoral election Wainwright said, "With three different Greens members running for mayor I was worried that they would takes votes from each other and allow a more conservative candidate to win. However Brad Pettit’s win was emphatic and I extend my congratulations to him for his strong and vibrant campaign. There has been a real changing of the guard on the council and I expect there will be some passionate and intense debate about the future of Fremantle. I think this is a good thing and will be arguing my case like everyone else. At the same time I pledge to work constructively with the rest of council where we can find common ground on the way forward."

www.samforhilton.blogspot.com

For more comment:
Sam Wainwright
08 9331 6331 or 0412 751 508
samuel.wainwright@yahoo.com.au

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