Mua Election Campaign
By Maritime Union of Australia
The MUA is dove-tailing its shipping and environment campaign
in with the upcoming federal election.
The MUA is dove-tailing its shipping and environment campaign
in with the upcoming federal election.
Polling in key marginal seats has shown that environment is going
to be one of the key issues swinging voters. And with the recent
success of the Slick/surfing events in Queensland and WA (see
p28) shipping campaign co-ordinator Sean Chaffer has asked branches
to sponsor local events, involve local surfing and sporting identities,
get together with Greenpeace and local community groups as well
as stage re-enactments of the oily surfer protest.
This is to highlight the failure of the Howard Government to protect
our coastline from rustbuckets, by deregulating the domestic shipping
industry via backdoor use of single voyage permits.
It is also to ensure a Beazley Government keeps its promise to
protect Australian shipping and our coast. The campaign will include
lobbying for adoption of the Morris Report recommendations.
Next stop Wollongong, September 29 where Jennie George is standing
for Parliament.
Meanwhile the Government has also been winding back many of its
failed initiatives and unpopular policies, at the same time shamelessly
buying key votes back from disaffected groups like pensioners
and small business.
And the PM has announced that his party will make industrial relations
(read union bashing) a centrepiece of his reelection strategy.
This is despite a recent NSW Labour Council survey showing that
most Australians would prefer to be a member of a union if they
could.
At his Press Club address on August 1 Howard said Australians
would be offered a clear choice between the two fundamentally
different philosophies. Claiming his party championed the virtues
of self reliance and independence, the PM accused the Labor Party
of being behest to the union movement.
"A major political battle ground of coming months will be industrial
relations," he said. "Our differences are profound. A Beazley
Labor government will hand back control of industrial relations
to the organised trade union movement,"
"Do the million or more Australian small businesses really want
a federal Labor government added to five state Labor governments
with all the massive increase in trade union power and union interference
in their businesses ...?" he asked.
And what of the new Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott?
In a report published in the Melbourne Age on July 26 ("Why workers
are saying no to unions: who wants to be organised in the way
dogs herd sheep") the minister has rote learned and regurgitated
the old lines used by his predecessor in the prelude to the mass
sackings of Patrick members: "It seems the use of industrial muscle
to defend workers earning up to $100,000 a year for a 27 hour
week..." Abbott whined. "Yeh, bullshit to you too Abbott!" said Paddy Crumlin.
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