By\u00a0Mike Head<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s two-day \u201cretreat\u201d and summit involving Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the leaders of the country\u2019s six states and two territories turned into a veritable love-fest between Abbott\u2019s Liberal-National Coalition and the Labor Party, which holds office in four of the states and territories.<\/p>\n
Each of the participants at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) gathering, which concluded in Sydney yesterday, heaped praise on each other, describing the meeting as \u201cvery positive\u201d and \u201cvery constructive.\u201d<\/p>\n
All the Labor premiers\u2019 oppositional posturing against the Abbott government\u2019s devastating $80 billion cut over 10 years to state and territory health and education funding, unveiled in last year\u2019s federal budget, was abandoned. Instead, there was unanimity on finding ways to enforce the measures, as well as deeper cuts to social spending and living standards that will be driven by the rapidly deteriorating state of the global and Australian economy.<\/p>\n
Mike Baird, the Liberal premier of New South Wales, the most populous state, said he was \u201cvery pleased\u201d with the \u201cvery constructive, very positive\u201d discussions. Daniel Andrews, Victoria\u2019s Labor premier, said the leaders had a \u201cvery, very constructive discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jay Weatherill, South Australia\u2019s Labor premier, was explicit about the basis for the united political front. He said the meeting was the most significant such gathering in his 13 years in politics, because the assembled leaders \u201clevelled with the people of Australia that the services that they want are not able to be funded with the money that we raise.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, there was agreement all round on the need to slash health and education spending, and to raise taxes, notably the regressive Goods and Services Tax (GST), in order to impose the burden of the global slump and falling government revenues onto the working class.<\/p>\n
Abbott, who barely survived a leadership challenge within his own party just five months ago, and whose opinion poll ratings remain at record lows, was particularly appreciative of the support he received from his Labor and Liberal colleagues. He hailed Weatherill\u2019s refusal to rule out Baird\u2019s call, issued on the eve of the COAG summit, for the GST rate to be increased from 10 to 15 percent, thus driving up the prices of household essentials. \u201cCongratulations to Premier Baird and Premier Weatherill for being prepared to enter into this process with decency and good faith,\u201d Abbott declared.<\/p>\n
The COAG meeting was held under the lengthening shadow of the collapse in world commodity prices. This is having a severe impact on the Australian economy, which depends heavily on mining exports, especially to the dramatically slowing Chinese market.<\/p>\n
According to estimates in today\u2019s Australian<\/em>, the ongoing fall in profits, jobs, wages and government revenues will produce federal budget deficits over the next decade totalling at least $170 billion more than forecast in the May budget delivered by the Abbott government. These projections followed Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens\u2019 warning on Wednesday that Australia\u2019s growth rate may have permanently fallen. In its May budget, the government predicted that growth would surge from the current 2.3 percent to the so-called long-term trend rate of 3.25 percent next year, and then rocket ahead to 3.5 percent for the next five years in a row.<\/p>\n Stevens\u2019 intervention makes a mockery of Treasurer Joe Hockey\u2019s pledge to eke out a budget surplus by 2019\u201420. According to the Australian\u2019s<\/em> calculations, the budget deficit will continue to rise, and by 2024\u201425, public debt will be at least $360 billion, rather than the projected $200 billion.<\/p>\n Even these estimates assume that the Abbott government will be able to push through all its major outstanding austerity measures from the last two budgets, including cuts to higher education and family benefits. Despite a recent series of deals with Labor and the Greens to implement other deeply unpopular pension, fuel and other imposts, key cuts remain stalled in the Senate out of fear of the inevitable electoral backlash.<\/p>\n At the leaders\u2019 summit there was agreement, not only to keep a 15 percent increase in the GST on the table, but to start expanding the tax\u2019s base by extending it to cover most on-line purchases, and possibly all transactions worth more than $20.<\/p>\n The prime minister and state premiers also made an in-principle agreement to drive down health spending by including hospital treatments within the Medicare insurance system, subject to a ramped-up application of the previous federal Labor government\u2019s \u201cefficient price-fixing\u201d mechanism. This \u201cactivity-based funding\u201d regime, introduced by Kevin Rudd\u2019s government, forces hospitals to continuously cut the costs of their medical procedures, inevitably at the expense of patient care.<\/p>\n Likewise, the leaders agreed to consider handing over all vocational education and training to the federal government, a move designed to accelerate the outsourcing of the tertiary education sector to cost-cutting and profiteering corporate providers. That process was begun, and became a centrepiece, of former Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard\u2019s \u201ceducation revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n Abbott said the deals were just the first steps toward what he has described as a shake-up of the Australian federation\u2013the full extent of which is yet to be unveiled. It was \u201cthe start of a process,\u201d he stressed, cautioning against \u201cspringing tax changes on an unsuspecting public.\u201d<\/p>\n Abbott\u2019s comments betrayed a wider nervousness about the increasingly evident public disgust for the Labor and Coalition parties and the political establishment as a whole. He spoke about avoiding \u201cscare campaigns\u201d in order to \u201cbuild the kind of trust and confidence that we need to see more of in our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless the unity at the COAG summit was most sharply expressed in the greatest bipartisan \u201cscare campaign\u201d of all\u2013drumming up fears of terrorism as a means of justifying war abroad and police-state measures at home. One of the main items on the COAG agenda was the adoption of a new terrorism alert register and \u201ccounter-terrorism strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n Against a backdrop of 10 Australian flags\u2013a new record\u2013the leaders announced that the existing terrorism threat levels, which escalate from low to medium, high and then extreme, will be replaced by the more alarming categories of not expected, possible, probable, expected and certain.<\/p>\n A five-point \u201cstrategy\u201d was adopted, the two key elements being: \u201cShaping the global environment, including through Australia\u2019s military contribution to the coalition against Islamic State\u201d and \u201cDisrupting terrorist activity within Australia through the joint efforts of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, the Labor and Liberal leaders underscored their unconditional commitment to the escalating US-led war in the Middle East, and Washington\u2019s preparations for open conflict with China, in order to \u201cshape the global environment.\u201d They also reiterated their complete backing for, and involvement in, the regime of mass surveillance and vast police powers that is being constantly fortified by additional \u201ccounter-terrorism\u201d legislation.<\/p>\n Up to now, the initial targets of these measures have been mostly Islamic fundamentalists accused of supporting or advocating opposition to the brutal military interventions in the Middle East. As the economic situation deteriorates, however, and the gutting of social spending and living standards intensifies, this state apparatus will be increasingly directed at suppressing social unrest and political opposition to the government and the entire parliamentary setup.<\/p>\n The corporate and media elite is continuing to demand that the government implement far deeper austerity measures, accusing Abbott and federal Labor leader Bill Shorten of lacking the political courage to pursue them. Today\u2019s Australian<\/em> editorial cautiously welcomed the COAG outcomes, but then insisted: \u201cThe bottom line: much more work is needed to foster higher growth. Reform is stalled, policy formulation has been compromised and our political leaders have been sidetracked from the growth road.\u201d<\/p>\n This week\u2019s display of unity is another bid by Labor\u2019s leaders to demonstrate that they, no less than the Coalition, can be counted upon to police this offensive.<\/p>\n Via WSWS<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license. By\u00a0Mike Head This week\u2019s two-day \u201cretreat\u201d and summit involving Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the leaders of the country\u2019s six states and two territories turned into a veritable love-fest between Abbott\u2019s Liberal-National Coalition and the Labor Party, which holds office in four of the states and territories. Each of the participants at the Council […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-167812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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