Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, the chief barbarians of political capitalism, will battle it out on 7 September. On those areas they both think they can win popular support and votes, like asylum seekers, they will try to outbid each other in cruelty.

That helps to explain Rudd’s race to the bottom with his PNG and Nauru refugee ‘solutions’, expressions of Australian capitalism’s dominance in the region.

On other occasions Labor tries to hide its barbarism because to expose the reality of its actions might undermine support from its base.  The attack on payments to about 90,000 single parents, 90% of whom are women, is a case in point. Labor did this on the same day the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard made her famous ‘I will not be lectured to by this misogynist’ speech. The rhetoric hid the reality.

That is true too of the gender pay gap which is higher now under Labor than under Howard in 2004.

Similarly with cutting jobs and increasing workloads in the public service. Labor’s increase in the efficiency dividend as a one off last year from 1.25% to 4% saw public service numbers cut by more than 5000. Its announcement on Friday of an efficiency dividend of 2.25% over the next 3 years will ‘save’ $1.8 billion.

The CPSU, the do-nothing public sector union, reckons this will see 5000 jobs go.

The real figure is likely to be higher as 2 decades of efficiency dividends have reduced non-staff alternatives to increased funding cuts.

I know. It’s not fair to call the CPSU do-nothing. They have helpfully pointed out that with proposed job losses of 12000 in the public service the Liberals will be worse. So 5000 plus the previous 5000 equals how many CPSU? 10,000 public service jobs.

Much the same as the Liberals.

Why not fight both parties of neoliberalism, CPSU? And ACTU? Lead a fight against Labor’s neoliberalism. The way to fight Abbott is to fight Rudd.

The Australian economy is slowing as the crisis of profitability in much of the developed economies wends its way here via China. If it worsens both Labor or the Liberals in government will launch vicious attacks on jobs, wages and conditions to attempt to restore profitability.

The ALP’s links to the trade union bureaucracy mean it can get away with attacks on the working class that the Liberals can often only dream of.  Hawke and Keating cut real wages under the Accord by a level that Thatcher could only dream about. That in part is the beauty for the bosses of Labor in power. Not only that but Labor’s neoliberalism makes the ideas of the other faction of neoliberalism ,the liberals, more acceptable.

What Labor’s attacks on workers and others do is lay the groundwork for a resurgent conservatism to deepen and further Labor’s cuts.  Hawke and Keating led to Howard who led to Rudd/Gillard/Rudd and now, very possibly Abbott. The trend in both parties has been to shift further and further to the neoliberal right and to cruelty against easy targets like asylum seekers and indigenous Australians, ‘the other’ as a distraction from their attacks on workers and others.

But cruelty to the other can then easily morph into cruelty and attacks on the non-indigenous poor and the working class in Australia. If elected an Abbott government will take the logic of Rudd’s disgraceful attacks on refugees with attacks on dole bludgers, the undeserving poor and an end to the age of entitlement.  This latter is code both for an attack on welfare recipients and spending on public education, public hospitals and public transport.

Labor is the party of almost disguised neoliberalism, although the mask is slipping off more regularly of late.

Take industrial relations and controlling workers, the centre piece of neoliberalism.

The union movement is warning a Liberal Government will attempt to re-introduce WorkChoices. Yet Labor’s Fair Work keeps much of WorkChoices, including extreme restrictions on the ability to strike, the best mechanism workers have to defend themselves in the workplace.

Both Labor and the Liberals are the parties of war. Both are the parties of the racist Northern Territory intervention.  One is the party of climate change free market actioneers, do nothings and sceptics, the other of deniers, sceptics and free market actioneers.

The double helix of neoliberalism is no alternative.

Neither are the Greens. For example my union, the academics’ union, is endorsing the Greens because they oppose Labor’s $2.3 billion cuts to higher education.

Yet at the ANU, where I am studying, voting Green won’t change the Vice-Chancellor’s attempts to cut ten percent of administrative staff, replace older academics with younger, cheaper and more malleable ones, give us a pay increase of 1.5% per year (i.e. about 1% below the Consumer Price Index PI and 2.5% below pay increases at other Universities.)  This is also the University which is about to abolish tutorials in one major area to save money, enhance the students’ learning experience.

Only industrial action to shut the University down offers the potential to win a decent pay increase and defend jobs.

Similarly with asylum seekers.  Voting Green won’t save refugees. Massive demonstrations and increasing mass militancy has that potential. It is the same too with Equal Love. Indeed voting Green alone won’t actually address climate change either. Mass mobilisations on the other hand for action on climate change have that potential.

That is why it is good that the Greens have taken the first steps to joining the demonstrations in defence of refugees, although we haven’t yet seen them attempt to mobilise the 8 or 9 percent who will vote for them.  And whether there protest enthusiasm lasts past the election is another question.

The key is what workers do to defend jobs and increase wages.  And increase in economic militancy can produce an increase in the spread and depth of political militancy.

As the demonstrations of tens of thousands across Australia in defence of refugees show, the alternative right now to the Labor Party is struggle. It is the minority who want to fight back against cruelty and neoliberalism that we on the Left have to join with and relate to in the battle for a better world.

John Passant

Neoliberalism & The Cruel Election