Despite Labor’s boasts, there is nothing fair about its budget. The $250 tax offset for workers is a joke. It won’t be offered until 2028 and within inflation heading to 5 per cent, real wages are falling even further behind.
The changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing might raise more tax income, but they won’t significantly change housing affordability. Labor could be expanding public housing to ensure there were houses for everyone, but it prefers to leave housing in the hands of profit-hungry developers.
The NDIS will be cut, but the increase in military spending is astounding. The money that could help close the gap on Indigenous disadvantage is being squandered on missiles to prepare for war on China.
Gas corporations will keep raking in billions in windfall profits but Labor’s concern to run Australian capitalism will only mean more cost of living pain for workers and the poor.
Jim Chalmers’ budget speech tried to pretend that Australian has nothing to do with Trump’s war on Iran, but Australia is not a neutral bystander. Labor is providing material support and intelligence via Pine Gap and North West Cape for Trump’s war.
Labor is also spending $5.3 million this year to keep the CFMEU under government Administration, but predictably our union leaders have welcomed Labor’s budget as a “budget of fairness for workers and young people”. That has to be turned around. Any pay increase less than 5 per cent will be a further cut in real wages.
It is going to take a fight to stop Labor’s cuts to the NDIS. Hundreds of disabled people and supporters turned out for the day of protest against the cuts on 9 May. We will need more demonstrations raising the demand for “welfare not warfare”.
Thousands of people will be protesting to end the genocide and Free Palestine on Nakba Day in May. We need to connect the fight for Palestine to the fight against military spending and Australia’s ties with US imperialism.
In July activists will converge on Pine Gap, the US spy base near Alice Springs. That convergence, combined with protests in the capital cities, will be an opportunity to connect with Indigenous demands for land, expose Labor’s complicity with genocide in Gaza and demand an end to ties with US imperialism.
One Nation win: A warning
One Nation’s win in the Farrer by-election, its first win in the House of Representatives, is a warning that rage at the cost of living can be pulled to right and feed racism.
As in the South Australian election, One Nation’s surge in Farrer came at the expense of the Liberals, with their vote collapsing to just 12.4 per cent. Election analyst Antony Green says “there are another two dozen seats” that One Nation can win in rural and regional areas.
Labor is trying to present itself as a defence against the far-right politics of One Nation and the Coalition. But Albanese has no answers to the housing or the cost of living crisis and is actively fuelling the racism.
Both Albanese and Liberal leader Angus Taylor have parroted the lies that immigration is to blame for the housing crisis. Albanese boasts that he has cut immigration by 40 per cent.
The Liberals are openly echoing One Nation, with Taylor demanding migrants who “reject our core values” and people from “bad countries” are kept out.
Taylor has denounced the 1300 Palestinian refugees from Gaza that made it to Australia as “a clear risk to our country”.
Albanese has fed the demonisation of Muslims with his bluster against the returning former ISIS brides and their children. Labor’s Trump-like deportation and visa-ban laws further fuel the anti-refugee and anti-migrant racism.
Far from being any defence against One Nation, this racism from the top is legitimising Pauline Hanson’s bigotry.
To effectively fight One Nation, we need to take on Labor’s racist arguments. The movement for Palestine has an important role to play in standing up to the racism that presents Muslims and Arabs as some kind of threat.
We also need to say loud and clear that it is the bosses and the rich who are responsible for the cost of living crisis, not migrants
That means building struggles for higher wages, to fund services and oppose cutbacks.
In March, 40,000 striking teachers in Victoria rallied to demand an end to overwork and for higher pay. Workers at eight councils in Melbourne held a one-day strike in early May, demanding an initial 10 per cent pay rise this year.
Queensland rail workers have imposed industrial bans that have forced the cancellation of hundreds of train services. University staff at UTS and University of Tasmania have recently taken strike action for real wage increases.
To fan the flames of resistance, we more socialists in every struggle, to link the struggles for wages and against Labor’s cuts to the struggle against the whole capitalist system of racism and war.
