RALLY: STOP THE SELL-OFF OF PUBLIC HOUSING

STOP THE SELL-OFF OF PUBLIC HOUSING

SMASH THE ATTACKS ON SERVICES WORKING CLASS PEOPLE NEED THE MOST

MASSIVELY INCREASE PUBLIC HOUSING: JUST LIKE WHAT CHINA IS DOING

RALLY

12PM SATURDAY 28 June

Corner of Rawson St and Northumberland Rd, Auburn
(Near the Northern Exit of Auburn Railway Station)

Initial List of Speakers:
Wendy Campbell, Secretary of Public Housing Union (Illawara)
Michael Walsh, President of Public Housing Union (Illawara)
Samuel Kim, Trotskyist Platform activist
Eric (“Midge”) Earley, Vice-President of Public Housing Union (Illawara)

For information call 0417 204 611

Governments of all stripes are waging a war on public housing. From Millers Point and the Rocks in inner city Sydney to Auburn, Bonyrigg and Claymore in western and south-western Sydney and to Bellambi, Woonona and Wollongong in the Illawara, the authorities are selling off or demolishing public housing. They also refuse to do any repairs in order to wear down public tenants and force them into leaving “voluntarily.” These are cruel attacks on working class tenants. In Millers Point, many of the tenants facing eviction are retired wharfies, seamen and ship painters or families of such workers. In the Illawara, among those threatened with eviction are people who have toiled in the mines, steel works and related industries of the area and have suffered many a work injury during their decades of hard labour. Now the state authorities are “rewarding” them by trying to sell off the homes they have lived in for decades.

Associated with this drive to privatise public housing, right-wing politicians and the media demonise public housing tenants with the same vicious zeal with which they scapegoat refugees and “ethnic” communities. Their aim in both cases is the same – to divide working class people and isolate one section of the masses from the rest of working class people. However, the truth is that public housing is in the interests of all working class people whether they be public housing tenants or not. When public housing is sold off those on the waiting list have to wait even longer to get placed – if they get a placement at all! Furthermore, less public housing means higher rents and more shortages of affordable accommodation in the private rental market too – as greedy landlords know that when tenants don’t have a low rent public alternative available, they can get away with jacking up rents and bullying tenants. Even workers with a mortgage need a public housing option to be there. For what will happen if they end up being one of the hundreds of thousands retrenched from their jobs by profit-obsessed corporate bosses?

Governments claim that they must sell off some public housing to get the money to fund the actual public housing program itself. Yet, the truth is that governments are letting their corporate mates siphon off huge chunks of the housing budget by allowing these big business owners to charge the state exorbitant prices for construction and maintenance contracts. Moreover, the reason there aren’t more funds available for public housing is because, thanks to the state authorities, so much of this country’s wealth is hoarded by billionaire tycoons like Gina Rinehart, James Packer, Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer. Indeed, governments are cutting back on public housing precisely in order to extract resources away from working class people and thus ensure that the rich stay rich. It is the very same reason why they are also slashing the other programs that working class people need the most – from the last ALP government savagely cutting payments to low-income single parents to the Abbott regime making people pay to see a doctor while driving young unemployed workers to starvation by cutting them off dole for six months a year. Meanwhile, the Liberal government is gunning after our trade unions because it wants to destroy this potential centre of resistance to their cuts to social programs and to the wholesale layoffs of workers that are being so arrogantly and cruelly decreed by filthy rich corporate bosses.

To justify their assaults on the social services that working people need, the ruling class is claiming that programs like public housing are “not relevant” in today’s world. Yet, in the world’s most populous country and its fastest growing economy, China, they are actually on a spectacular campaign to move towards an ever greater stock of public housing. Over the last few years, more public housing dwellings have been built in China than private ones as part of the Peoples Republic of China’s plan to build 36 million public housing units during the 2011-2015 Five Year Plan. In Australia, only one in twenty five people in urban areas have access to public housing. In China, the proportion is nearly four times that figure and rapidly increasing all the time.

This proves that it is possible to have a system that actually supports public housing. However, here in capitalist Australia where governments are contemptuous of the needs of working class people, the only way we are going to stop the sell-off of public housing and the attacks on public healthcare and education is by uniting the working class in mass struggle. Ruling class politicians are leading an assault on working class people. It’s time to unleash working class power to smash these attacks and fight for a massive expansion of public housing.