Solidarity in the face of a neoliberal inferno

03 March 2020

In the wake of the Robodebt scandal the Coalition says it has no duty of care for the people it has unforgivably harmed instead of helping. The government’s disdain for ordinary people is not just a matter of meanness. It is a matter of class.

The Morrison government despises the working class. There is no other explanation for its behaviour. For all the ‘lifters and leaners’ or ‘workers and shirkers’ guff that we’ve seen over the years from this and past governments, the truth is that, according to the neoliberal worldview, whether you’re in paid work or on social security, you’re despised unless you belong to its own big money elite.

The Howard government, with WorkChoices, did all it could to make life harder for workers. As did the Abbott-Turnbull governments with their attacks on penalty rates and assorted forays into union bashing.

But the Morrison government, with its so called Ensuring Integrity bill, makes an art-form out of despising working people. In a feat of doublespeak that would make Orwell’s Big Brother regime envious, this government claims it needs to rein in unions precisely because it is on the side of workers and unions are not. It hates unions because it despises workers and unions improve the wages and conditions of workers.

The word despise is not an exaggeration. It comes from the Latin de specere, ‘to look down on’. This government looks down on workers. This is why it wants workers to see each other as the enemy instead of recognising and fighting against an agenda that seeks to divide them because it despises them.

If the government did not despise workers, how else could we explain why Attorney General Christian Porter is trying to undermine the rights of casual workers to sick leave? As things stand, Australia’s high rate of insecure and non-standard work is a symptom of the push by big business to further increase capital’s share of the pie at the expense of wages. When you are precariously employed, so the dismal theory goes, you are more likely to be grateful for what you’ve got instead of fighting for more, despite the Reserve Bank’s repeated warnings about the negative impact on the economy of wage stagnation.

'With so much contempt from the Coalition government, we need to resist the wedges it seeks to drive between us.'

Note the way the Attorney General has framed the issue of sick leave for casual

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Solidarity in the face of a neoliberal inferno

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