Paul’s Canberra calendar, late August 2019

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Comrades, here are political / activist events in or near Canberra (updated 19th August 2019).

#StopAdani Canberra:

Meetings, 5:45 pm every Monday. Organising to stop the proposed massive Adani coal mine in central Queensland. Conservation Council office, Ground Floor, Lena Karmel Lodge, 14/26 Barry Drive (opp. Watson St), Acton. Contact stopadanicbr@gmail.com.

Our politicians need to see, hear and feel community pressure everywhere they go. Join us to take action, in your community:
▪Join your local group:
▪Follow on Facebook:
▪Let your Federal MP know what you think.

GHD, don’t help Adani wreck our climate! 12:30 – 1:30 pm, Fri., 23rd August 2019, 16 Marcus Clarke St, Civic; and the following week, same time / place. Australian engineering company GHD is reported to be contracting to provide services to Adani. A strange choice for a company that prides itself on its environmental reputation. Please join our peaceful lunchtime gathering outside GHD’s Canberra office, asking the company for a public statement that it will not work on Adani’s “carbon bomb” coal mine. This will be our 5th week of peaceful events outside the office, part of the nationwide call to GHD to step away from Adani. Organised by #StopAdani Canberra and 350.org Canberra.

#BlockadeAdani Organising Space. Adani is on the move; we need to stop them! They are looking to build a train line to meet existing tracks which service their Abbot Point coal terminal. If this line gets built it will be very hard to stop this catastrophic project. We need you to join us up here on the blockade. Information on carpooling, convoying, and cheap tickets can be shared here. For updates, go to frontlineaction.org and take the pledge. ❤ Frontline Action on Coal (FLAC) Camp: (07) 47634032; flaccoal@protonmail.com. Continue reading →

School Strike 4 Climate on 20 September

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Canberrans old and young are organising to support the School Strike 4 Climate, on
Friday, 20 September in Glebe Park, Canberra, 12 noon till 2 p.m.

Students will be leaving school to attend; working people plan to walk out of their offices and work-sites to join them, hoping by force of numbers to get the message through to this government that all is not well. We demand action on this climate emergency. We urgently need a speedy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Not in town that day? Don’t worry, people across the country will be doing the same thing that Friday at noon.  (You can find out where at https://globalclimatestrike.net.)

This past July has just been the hottest month in the world’s recorded history. The global climate strike draws attention to the United Nations climate summit, to be held in New York three days later on the 23rd.

Vintage Reds will be there in our VR T shirts at Glebe Park: please join us, and help the students get their voices heard.

“We have always lived through hot summers. But this is not the summer of our youth. This is not your grandfather’s summer.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres

A little war?

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Christina Stead, A Little Tea, A Little Chat (1948)

In this prescient novel the characters feel eerily familiar, despite the book being written over seventy years ago. In particular, the analysis of the sexual politics between the older powerful men and the young women feels horribly contemporary. We are taken to the heart of a class of floating racketeers and crooks as they wait like vultures for America to enter World War 2. As the main character Robert Grant explains …’going to be fifty years of capitalism here, want to go and see a new world coming out of the old world. A chance to construct a new world and  remake your life-how do you like that? Let’s go to a cabaret’. When active war in the Pacific begins, so do black market days. Among other shady deals, Grant acquires properties at rock bottom prices from desperate sellers fleeing for their lives; a manor house in England, a farm in Bordeaux and another in Normandy, properties in Germany and Dublin, a brown stone in New York and a house in Rome.          (Photo: National Library of Australia)

Set in New York in the mid-1940s, the ultra-wealthy Grant is at the apex of his own group of hangers on, desperate women and employees. Nominally a cotton dealer, he chisels, blackmails and deceives daily, but in sentimental fits of delusion, he sees himself as a good man and a victim. He believes that he is a socialist, although ‘must a socialist turn out his pockets and say, “rob me”? No sir. Must socialist mean nitwit?’ As a megalomaniac, he is obsessed with having a play written about his search for the perfect woman, to be called The Girl I Want.

To Grant, life itself is a war as he outwits those around him to get his percentage. His attitude towards women parallels his attitude to business. He says ‘the debts of society are scaled so high, only men can pay. Ha-ha!’

After using and abusing a string of younger women who to him have only their sex appeal to barter with, Grant meets his match, a woman called Barbara, who he refers to as the Blondine. He believes that she – promiscuous, dishonest and petty – is his soul mate. She is just like him and she will complete him. Grant’s explains his relationship with Barbara as ‘like a war map, with front lines and strategic retreats and lines of communications and hidden depots, spies and forces’.

The two conduct a passionate but calculated affair with both sides playing hard and dirty. Grant however loses interest and breaks it off when he has her submission. She retaliates by leaving and marrying another man, before leaving that man and conducting a string of affairs. Grant then pursues her around the country and has her spied on. He spends a fortune to win her back. Eventually, he becomes entangled in the Blondine’s divorce as a co-respondent. Barbara defiantly explains that she lives on the same terms as Grant.

Stead develops this world mostly by letting the characters speak for themselves as they rush through their days. Grant stamps his feet, yells and bullies his way round New York, with pauses to sweet talk and seduce the women who circle his honeypot. He is as mysterious as Jay Gatsby but highly animated and at the front of the action. In a Trumpian moment, Grant claims that he doesn’t need to analyse anything, he knows it already.

It is chilling to see the effects of the actions of the wealthy, game playing and immoral characters on their underlings. People commit suicide, some are completely ruined. Grant is prepared to allow his old favourite Laura to die in order to secure a property title. Miss Robins, Grant’s long-suffering secretary who does most of his work, says to Grant’s son, Gilbert, ‘It is time you knew your father; you don’t know how he made your money or how he wastes it. It’s a shame how he wastes what we work so hard to make.’

Christina Stead, an Australian writer who was living in New York at the time of writing, is still well known for her early novels The Man who Loved Children and For Love Alone, both partly set in Australia. She deserves more attention for her incisive, politically charged later work. The forensic observation in this novel is astounding as is the quality of the writing.

Does Grant get his just deserts in the end? Stead tell us that people like Grant usually don’t get what they deserve. However, thanks to Barbara, he almost does.

Pam Blakeley
August 2019

NB  If you are looking for books or other texts that are rare or out of print, try the non-profit Internet Archive, www.archive.org. This is a collection of millions of free books, movies, software, music and more.

Paul’s Canberra events calendar, August 2019

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We recommend Paul Oboohov’s calendar, with forthcoming events for the remainder of August. Paul is a long-time activist in Canberra and a Vintage Reds member. (Updated 4 August)

Canberra: Uni Student Walkout for Climate Action!
Noon – 1pm, Friday, 9th August 2019. Kambri Precinct, 154 University Ave, ANU. On August 9 students across the country will be walking out in protest demanding real action on climate change. Our demands: – Stop Adani! – No new coal or gas – 100% renewables – Sustainable Jobs. Organised by Uni Students for Climate Justice, ANUSA – ANU Students’ Association, NUS National Union of Students, PARSA – ANU Postgraduate and Research Students’ Association, and StopAdani Canberra.

Continue reading →

Women of Steel – the Jobs for Women campaign in Wollongong

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At our July Vintage Reds meeting, Robynne Murphy spoke briefly about a new film in the making, WOMEN OF STEEL. A 10-minute excerpt of the film received a tremendous response at this year’s May Day toast in Wollongong. Now the filmmakers are seeking support for the completion of WOMEN OF STEEL, the inside story of the Jobs for Women Campaign (1980-94) which relentlessly took on BHP — from direct action at the Port Kembla steelworks to the High Court of Australia. Some may recall that the campaign resulted in a landmark victory for anti-discrimination. It drew together activist/working class/migrant women, supportive unions and their members, women’s organisations and other allies, and lawyers navigating NSW Labor’s new legal reforms. It took 14 years but the women refused to give up and the campaign remains an inspiring story today. The patrons of this documentary include former MP Jennie George, Ann Curthoys (Historian, Professor Emerita ANU) and the ACTU’s Sally McManus.

The director, Robynne Murphy returned to filmmaking after leading the campaign and 30 years as a steelworker. She has already raised over $100,000 from trade unions and individuals to get WOMEN OF STEEL to a “rough cut” stage. Recently she has been joined by Martha Ansara, veteran filmmaker (Life Member, Australian Directors Guild — Hall of Fame, Australia Cinematographers Society), to raise a final $60,000 for the finishing costs, including music and payment for the essential archival footage. The composer Jan Preston (for the ABC series, Bastard Boys – about the 1998 MUA waterfront dispute), has also come on board. Phil Crawford from Beyond Empathy is the editor.

The team is now reaching out to everyone who might be interested in helping: donations are coming in from “unemployed seafarer”— $20 — all the way to retired politician — $10,000. (From each according to their ability, as they say…)

Tax-deductible donations for the film’s completion are invited via the Documentary Australia Foundation: https://documentaryaustralia.com.au/project/jobs-for-women-film-project. No amount is too small — or too big, of course!

The WOMEN OF STEEL promo can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/344035067.

For further information you can visit the website: www.jobsforwomenfilm.com or email: jobsforwomenfilm@gmail.com. Or click on the flyer (then click again!)
Photo credit: www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au

Support for whistle-blower David McBride

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Canberrans were up early on a cold morning last week to support David McBride who had an appearance at the ACT Supreme Court.

McBride faced charges dating back to 2017 for providing classified documents to ABC journalists, who used them to run “The Afghan Files”, a series of stories alleging war crimes committed by Australian soldiers.

There has been alarm at raids by Australian Federal police on the ABC, along with reports that the AFP had requested a journalist’s travel records from Qantas, and an earlier AFP request for two journalists’ fingerprints. Concern about an erosion of Australian press freedom was expressed most recently at the Global Conference on Press Freedom in London.

Vintage Reds were among supporters who taped over their mouths to protest against the government’s heavy-handed attacks on press freedom. UnionsACT’s Alex White spoke at another gathering for David McBride at a court appearance earlier in the month.

 

Alf Clint

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from Bill Thompson

Alf Clint was known to my father for years, both having lived and worked in the Balmain, Glebe and Leichhardt suburbs of Sydney. Alf would stop by from time to time when in Sydney and have a meal with the family. He provided me with a reference when I applied to join the Australian Army.

Photo: Brisbane Courier-Mail, 3 Nov. 1954

The Rev. William Alfred Clint was a great union and ALP supporter who took a special interest in indigenous welfare. He retained union and ALP membership all his adult life. His achievements included getting up the nose of the Bjelke-Peterson Government and establishing Tranby College in Glebe in Sydney to foster learning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Alf championed business co-operatives as an appropriate model for indigenous enterprises. Amongst the older indigenous people Alf was revered, but sadly would be known by few today, though he has an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Bill was appointed by the Municipal Officers Association (now Australian Services Union) as an organiser for Nth Queensland in 1985; with responsibilities in local government, city, shire & Aboriginal & Islander Community councils & the port authorities; in an area from a line above inland Birdsville & Bowen on the coast, north to the Torres Strait.

 

 

 

Why we need unions

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Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Hard Times, first published in 1854, takes the reader into a harsh, polluted and highly efficient society. It is a northern industrial mill town in England given the name of Coketown. The industrialists are unregulated as employers and in their impact on the environment. The leading industrialist in Coketown, Josiah Bounderby, is also the town magistrate, so any troublemakers are automatically dealt harsh punishment.

Hard Times has been noted since the time of publication as a realistic and bleak portrayal of social and industrial conditions before and during the introduction of organised labour and the union movement. The workers in the textile mills, known as The Hands, are as tightly programmed as robots from birth. We see the schooling at the Model School, based on rote learning and hard discipline, conditioning young people to accept their fate as machines who will soon toil from before light to 9pm at night, with one hour off for lunch. This will provide just enough money to rent a small room to live in and necessities. Even having children means dire poverty, with the extra mouths to feed. There seems to be no escape.

The Hands labour like slaves in Coketown. The town ‘of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled’ is so polluted by industry that the town has a black canal in it, and a river that runs purple with ill-smelling dye, and the buildings rattle in time with the piston of the steam-engines.

Dickens reveals the ideological underpinnings which keep the factories going, and the tragedy and spiritual sickness at the heart of it. The factory owners firmly believe that The Hands are lazy, grasping and wicked. Any suggestion that more could be done to prevent pollution, industrial accidents or child labour are met by the owners with cries of ‘ruination’ and threats of throwing their property into the Atlantic Ocean, for how could the economy get along without them.

The plot also includes an arranged marriage, a bank robbery, an untimely death down an abandoned mine shaft and the doings of a group of circus folk and the return of the heroic old circus dog Merrylegs. The Hands begin to organise themselves.

This is a complex and thrilling story with wonderful characters.

Pam Blakeley
July 2019

UnionsACT move on wage-theft crisis

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UnionsACT are trialling a Young Workers Centre to help fight rampant wage-theft by dodgy employers. Young workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation in this area. Broken workplace laws and under-funded regulators provide little protection.

The Young Workers Centre is a free service to support any young worker who has questions or concerns about their rights and safety at work.

Employers are required to abide by labour laws which include:

  • Payment of minimum wage and/or penalty rates;
  • Payment of superannuation;
  • Work health and safety standards;
  • Payment for all hours worked, including overtime;
  • Providing proper records including payslips.

For information, and for support if someone you know is being ripped off, go to: www.youngworkerscbr.org.au.

The Centre is calling for donations to help in its establishment.

Averting Climate Catastrophe

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Vintage Reds who are gnashing their teeth over the government’s inaction on the global climate emergency will be interested in the views from an evening’s event at the ANU on 9 July 2019, “Averting Climate Catastrophe: Extinction Rebellion, Business and People Power”.

The event was run by the ANU Climate Change Institute. See their Twitter account for posts from the evening.

Extinction Rebellion is a global non-violent civil disobedience movement which came to rapid prominence late last year when its supporters shut down central London, blockading 5 bridges over the river Thames. Media attention to climate change soared. After ten days of civil disobedience in London in April this year, a climate emergency motion was passed by the UK Parliament.

In 2018 the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that we have only 12 years, at current global greenhouse gas emissions rates, before our chances of limiting global warming to 1.5C are seriously at risk. Beyond 1.5C the consequences for us all are extremely disturbing. We have a very brief window to achieve a rapid decarbonisation of the global economy.

We need to move fast. But how might such a fundamental shift – from business as usual to transformative change – be achieved?

Neil Gunningham, from ANU’s School of Regulation & Global Governance (REGNET), examined Extinction Rebellion’s strategy, its emphasis on non-violent civil disobedience and its impact, before asking: what, beyond grassroots politics, would a transformational movement built around climate change involve? Pressure must be brought to bear on recalcitrant governments from many quarters: not just from grassroots activist groups but from business, financial markets, scientists, unions, school children, and faith groups.

As groups like Extinction Rebellion gain momentum, and join with others, a tipping point may be reached, generating rapid changes across the economic and social system. If so, then bottom up action driven by civil society, in a coalition with its allies, may yet be the catalyst for rapid, radical and constructive action by nation states.

Carolyn Hendriks, from the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, discussed other forms of community engagement, especially those comprising people who are frustrated and distrustful of democratic government. She mentioned Lock the Gates, Knitting Nannas, and some very successful renewable energy cooperatives, all local groups which draw on ordinary people’s practical wisdom and show what’s possible at the small end of community resistance to business as usual. Whatever groups such as Extinction Rebellion can achieve, there will then be a need for decision making groups and citizens’ assemblies in the transition to a sustainable world.

Lachlan James, a a “venture capitalist” and visiting fellow at REGNET, provided perspectives from the business sector. His most cheering quote came from the Harvard Business Review, “Firms have become too big to let the planet fail”. Sustainable investment is going mainstream; there are huge amounts of capital chasing a shortage of sustainable investment opportunities.

It is clear that the union movement’s Just Transition plan, to secure workers’ jobs and livelihoods, must be part of the coalition of activist groups which will take us all through to a zero carbon future.

In an almost full house at the Coombs Theatre, ANU, it was noticeable how many grey heads there were, even though it is not us but our children and our friends’ children who will be paying the price for our inaction. It is a critical time for retired activists to add our support and be involved.

Photos: Knitting Nannas, GloucesterAdvocate.com.au; @ANU_Climate on Twitter.