MORE FUNDS FOR PUBLIC HOUSING, PUBLIC HOSPITALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS!
GRAB THE WEALTH FROM THE GREEDY MINING BOSSES!
RALLY TO CHALLENGE THE TYRANNY OF THE TYCOONS.
Endorsers: EAST (housing and community activist group), Justice Action, Social Justice Network, Trotskyist Platform (rally initiator), Supporters of The Iranian People’s Fadaee Guerrillas, Justice for Children (Australia), Million Mothers March
In Australia many working class people struggle to pay rent while some have been on public housing waiting lists for over 15 years. Well over 100,000 people are homeless. Waiting times at public hospitals are unacceptably high and public schools are underfunded.
Yet while the masses struggle to get basic services there are a few who have amassed fortunes by exploiting other people’s labour. Prominent among these are the big owners of the mining corporations. They have acquired billions by hoarding for themselves the natural wealth of this country. They plunder the fruit of mineworkers’ toil but then terminate these workers’ jobs by the thousands whenever that would help them maximize profits. Among these filthy rich tycoons is the multi-billionaire boss of Fortescue, Andrew Forrest, and Clive Palmer, the owner of three private jets, two helicopters, several houses and many luxury yachts.
The policies of successive governments have assisted these billionaires to get even richer while allowing public services to get run down. Even when the Rudd government proposed a Super Profits Tax on mine profits, much of the revenue gained was to go to company tax cuts, i.e. largely into the pockets of other corporate bosses like bankers, developers and factory owners. Yet the fact that a tiny amount of the revenue from the Tax would have ended up benefiting working class people was too much for the mining tycoons. They mobilised their massive wealth to fund an advertising campaign against the tax and used their connections to ensure a media blitz against it. In the end they not only scuttled the Tax but helped to change the government! After Rudd’s ousting the first thing the new Gillard government did was to suck up to the big mine owners and weaken the, already dilute, Super Profits Tax. The post-election ALP-led coalition is continuing down the same vein.
It is time to put a stop to the tyranny of the tycoons! It is time to ensure that basic services for the majority of the population are met. It is time to demand that the wealth plundered by the mining magnates is taken back and used for people's needs, used for public housing, public hospitals and public schools.