06-04-2025: The Australian Labor Party (ALP) federal government handed down a budget in late March, in the run up to the federal election called for May 3. The centrepiece of the budget is a five dollar a week tax cut – to supposedly be delivered in 15 months’ time.[1] Needless to say, this risible tax cut for average wage earners – which would barely cover the cost of a cup of coffee – may not even eventuate. This budget was originally not even intended to be delivered, and the election has been called with barely five weeks of campaign time, which is the absolute legal minimum. These five weeks include the Easter holidays and the Anzac Day public holiday, in what appears to be a deliberate attempt to minimise public participation. The public is understandably underwhelmed, and the barely visible changes to the disastrous status quo appear to be mocking and patronising both the processes of a budget and a federal election where people allegedly elect their representatives.
Cost of living crisis
The opposition Liberal/National Party Coalition (LNP) is hardly promising anything better. If they are to be believed, they will deliver 25 cents a litre discount on all sales of petrol and diesel – but only for 12 months. This may take $25 off the cost of a tank of fuel, when many people are paying between $70 to $100 to fill up. If enacted, this will scarcely make a dent in the outrageous cost of living crisis that is hitting the working class and those on lower incomes the hardest. There has been a terrible collapse in living standards in the last five years, since the nonsensical “Covid” lockdowns began. On current trends, living standards are not projected to return to pre-2020 levels until at least 2030.[2] Everything is expensive, and many are being driven to the wall just to pay for basics such as rent, housing and food. Homelessness is at the highest level it has ever been, while the Prime Minister pockets a 4.3 million dollar mansion on the New South Wales central coast. Opposition leader Peter Dutton has owned no less than 26 properties in a 30 million dollar portfolio. Meanwhile, the median rent for a modest residence is over $600 per week, which is way out of reach for many.
Whichever side of Labor and Liberal clown show “wins” the election, the majority of Australians will continue to suffer. Both Labor and Liberal are committed to implementing a ban on social media for under 16-year-olds.[3] This means there will be an age verification for everyone using social media, which may well be linked to a digital ID. This will continue the trend towards censorship on the internet. Both Labor and Liberal combined to put in place electoral laws which will make it extremely difficult for independents and minor parties to win a seat in parliament. The “stitch up” electoral changes appear to be designed to force Australian voters back into the major parties, when the clear trend in recent decades has been away from them.[4] Both Labor and Liberal are set on driving people over the edge, while continuing to push the world towards World War III. The whole of northern Australia is becoming a virtual US military base. The US and Australian governments have spent $2 billion constructing 11 giant jet fuel storage tanks in Darwin.[5] This is clearly fuel for long range bombers and fighters.
Endless war
Australia’s elite politicians are effectively putting on a sham election, barely pretending to care about millions struggling to make ends meet. Education and health care are continually stripped of government funding, and the costs are simply passed on to the masses who already pay around 25% of their income in tax. Meanwhile, both Labor and Liberal are committed to spending a ridiculous $368 billion on the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States of America) military alliance. Ostensibly a plan to buy nuclear powered submarines by 2040 (!), AUKUS is nonetheless an ultra-reactionary scheme for war against the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC is Australia’s largest trading partner in imports and exports, and Australia’s economy would virtually collapse without this lifeline. Yet the Australian ruling class is willing to risk this along with the incalculable risk of a nuclear war in a desperate attempt to resurrect a flatlining capitalism. Manufacturing in Australia has long since declined and is now largely reduced to some steel and aluminum products.
The Labor and Liberal parties are lockstep with US imperialism as it continues to wage a proxy war on Russia via Ukraine. The ALP government has sent Australian assembled Bushmaster military personnel vehicles to the NATO armed Nazi battalions in Ukraine, only for them to be destroyed by Russian artillery weeks later. Every provocation against Russia risks nuclear war, yet Canberra does not relent. Canberra has barely lifted a finger of opposition to Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine and has backed the US and the European Union (EU) in their eventual overthrow of Syria, and ongoing threats of a regime change war against Iran. US imperialism, despite faux “ceasefire” moves in Ukraine, is accelerating its abominable plans to encircle Russia, China and Iran – the strongest pillars of the non-imperialist BRICS bloc, which now has 10 members and 8 partner nations.
The Australian continent is continually being slammed by the devastating effects of climate disasters, fuelled by runaway greenhouse gas emissions. Flood after flood is hitting the tropical and sub-tropical areas, such as Queensland and northern New South Wales, as warming oceans evaporate into rain bearing clouds which are then dumped on land. The temperate areas in Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria are scorched with heatwaves, which frequently ignite into bushfires. The need to end coal and gas burning is urgent, but the major parties will not think of touching the profits of the mining corporations. In fact, they continue to give billions of tonnes of gas to mining giants while charging them only a fraction of their income in royalties, or often none at all.
In both combatting a collapsing climate and the collapse of living standards for working people, the PRC is demonstrating the clear benefits of a nationalised and planned economy, backed by state owned infrastructure. Australia and the West cannot compete, and it is not even a contest. Socialism – very imperfectly represented by the PRC – is the only way out for a capitalism which is historically obsolete. To take the first steps, Australia is in desperate need of a revolution which raises the working class to power. A workers’ republic would then begin to use the enormous profits of the banks, energy and mining corporations for the benefit of the beaten down, not the ultra-rich. Rather than another staged election, what is required is a workers’ party which fights for a workers’ government.
Workers League
E: workersleague@protonmail.com
[1] www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-tax-cuts-20250325-p5lmfj.html (02-04-2025)
[2] www.yourlifechoices.com.au/finance/living-standards-in-australia-hit-historic-low-the-long-road-to-recovery/ (02-04-2025)
[3] www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj.q2724.full (02-04-2025)
[4] www.australiainstitute.org.au/post/stich-up-labor-and-coalition-deal-on-electoral-reform/ (02-04-2025)
[5] www.thetimes.com.au/world/20957-as-australia-s-military-ties-with-the-us-deepen-the-top-end-becomes-even-more-vital-to-our-security (02-04-2025)
Image: http://www.simonkneebone.com
Red Fire 