Maritime diary

The Road to Sedition

By National Secretary Paddy Crumlin

This government has attacked the heart of our community, working men and women, by putting in place legislation designed to exploit, diminish and belittle them in the workplace so that their spirit will be insufficient to face up to the monolithic corporate power and influence that now dominate economic life and whose interests the government has so disgracefully sold out to.

Well, I'm well down it in the new legislation's view anyway, so I might as well keep on walking. John Howard and his government are lying rats who are ransacking the wonderful Australian heritage of a fair go and a lively and supportive national character that has historically tended to put people in need before our own immediate interests. And been proud of it. Australians have fought wars, particularly WWII, against institutionalised immorality, thuggery, racism and intolerance of people and democratic principles. We have been nurtured on a broad sense of our rights to free speech and individual and collective community and workplace rights. We generally have an innate sense of justice and equity. We are not a selfish people. It's been a great country, envied by the rest of the world not just for our climate and natural beauty, but for the strong democratic and progressive political values that underscore our natural assets.

The Howard Government has set out to systematically corrupt these values. They have sought and succeeded in dividing the country and setting Australian against Australian. They criminally conspired to sack working men and women at Patrick Stevedoring. They have fought every effort to publicly reveal their corrupt machinations by blocking all attempts to have their dirty deeds aired. However, they can't hide. The High Court found they were involved up to their neck when they ruled in our favour and injuncted Patrick from continuing to lock out our members.

The Howard Government has lied, distorted, misled and perverted every report on the latest wave of refugees coming to our country, mostly men, women and children on the run from tyranny and bloody mayhem. They appealed to the basest instincts in human nature, encouraging fear and racism. They won an election on that. Well done. They then locked up those refugees, including women and children, in concentration camps, along with Australian citizens too mentally ill to defend themselves. They exported Australians from overseas backgrounds on the basis of illness or behaviour - those people unable to protect themselves against the Howard system of discrimination, exploitation and social engineering.

This government has attacked the heart of our community, working men and women, by putting in place legislation designed to exploit, diminish and belittle them in the workplace so that their spirit will be insufficient to face up to the monolithic corporate power and influence that now dominate economic life and whose interests the government has so disgracefully sold out to. At the same time they have presided over the most disgusting accumulation of wealth in the nation's history, with the top 20 CEO's last year receiving nearly $600 million in total salary and earnings. They put on the Reserve Bank board a tax avoider who in any other country probably would have been walking the boards of a prison cell to pace out a few years.

It is a government made up of lying, cheating and conniving agents of greed and immorality dressed up as beacons of national protection and security -- their disguise to build a fortress of fear. At the same time these hypocrites have actively and clandestinely fought for the destruction of Australian shipping by introducing guest labour on FOC vessels into our domestic industry. Ironically they have made our country, our region and our world more dangerous because their war in Iraq was based on the despicable falsehood of weapons of mass destruction. Instead they have created a fertile breeding ground for terrorism.

Corporate Bastardry

Their new industrial laws have been drafted by the same law firms that have fought workers being reinstated for unfair dismissal, oversaw and advised on the corporate bastardry that saw Patrick workers put into companies without assets, that have been behind the Hardie asbestos grand exit and every other bit of bullying perpetrated on behalf of corporate Australia in the last 10 years. The new legislation just makes sure that the defences the workers and their unions were successful with in the past will now be overruled by new laws. What was once illegal for employers to do to break down workers rights is now legal.

If sedition means speaking out and working against this level of moral, political, individual and national perversion and corruption by a government, then they know where to find me. I think the last country I heard of seriously using sedition laws was Burma. You keep great company Mr Howard.

And what about the $60 million of our taxes spent selling us on the Workchoices legislation? I suppose Howard has gotten pretty cocky because he convinced Australians that a new horde of invaders were imminent in their leaking boats and only he could stop them. Howard then manoeuvred the punter into falsely believing these ratbags/terrorists/scumbags throw their kids in the drink for their own selfish survival. He used the threat from the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to spoil a day at the beach for most Australians. The threat turned out to be the equivalent of a 44 gallon drum of kerosene and a tinpot despot giving plenty of cheek. Now he expects Australian workers to trust the boss not to shaft them. That won't take a hard sell, that will take a miracle.

Drug Barons & Dictators

Burma's a great place by all reports. If you have a view other than the Government's, you disappear if you are a battler, go to gaol if you're a leader with a public profile, or get locked up in your home for years if you're the leader of the opposition. The secretary of the outlawed Seafarers Union was recently murdered there, a world wide trend against trade union leaders in developing countries.

During the Vietnam war the CIA actively encouraged the growing of opium and production of heroin as an economic bastion against socialism in the region. It is well documented that they used the same tactics in Afghanistan and have always seen this trade as the lesser of two great evils; the first being the vision of socialism for a world where everyone has a share and no one seriously goes without - enough to make any neo-conservative stay awake at night. It was decided by the Americans to create a trade in this type of illegal wealth creation and they used that to bring "friendly' governments to power to secure "freedom". Like in Burma and Afghanistan.

Another little fact about Burma, they're very, very close to Singapore. A few years ago a small group of Burmese seafarers off an FOC vessel were transiting in Singapore after blowing the whistle on the double book keeping and criminal exploitation on their vessel. They obviously weren't going home, yet the Singaporean Government detained them at the airport until a specially chartered aircraft arrived from Burma, they were put aboard and you work the rest out. Their complaint to the ITF was they were earning about US$40 a week.

Nice place. Burma produces massive amounts of heroin to prop up their dictatorship and Singapore is their great mate, trading partner and business ally. The matter of Burma's enormous heroin trade doesn't seem to interfere too much with the relationship. One poor kid becomes a cog in the whole rotten deal and gets hung by the neck. I reckon if there was any justice at all in the deal, then about one thousand or more should have gone before him. But there's not, and the young bloke's gone and the PM had a lovely day at the cricket with his wife. Isn't life grand.

Most reasonable and civilised people are against capital punishment. Firstly, because death is a bit of an impediment to rehabilitation. Also, there's the little issue of whether or not true justice is ever served with most believing that violence tends to perpetuate violence. Certain countries that practice the death penalty also see their rate of violent crime and murder continue to increase. Others say there is the possibility, given the nature of our justice system, that the innocent get an unjust sentence that's a bit hard to appeal against. The innocent usually are also the poor who haven't the resources to mount much of a case in their defence.

Many Christians are offended by it, considering what happened to Jesus. There's a bit of a question about what is an indictable offence warranting that particular penalty. I think it was sedition on that occasion in Jerusalem. The MUA has strenuously opposed capital punishment as a penalty and will continue to agitate forcefully against nations who believe that developing humanity includes murdering it.

Time for Renewal

The Christmas and New Year season is very special, not only for Christians but for people of all religious and political persuasions, agnostics and atheists. It is a time for renewal and concentrating and nurturing values that take us forward rather than backwards.

For the Union's part, we believe in collective, democratic and responsible political and industrial activity that makes maritime workers and our family's lives safer and more decent. At a difficult time for Australian working men and women with great challenges ahead of us, I'd like to wish all members, staff and officials a season of renewal, peace and love for you and your family and friends.