Isherwood: Save Australia’s steel industry—‘protection all round’

Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) Secretary Paul Howes is betraying his union’s members in the steel industry by attacking China for protecting its economy, instead of fighting for Australia’s right to protect our own, charged Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood today.

“Australia must return to protectionism—it’s how we built our economy in the first place, especially during WWII and under ‘Black Jack’ McEwen in the 50s and 60s,” Mr Isherwood said.

“Because McEwen fought for ‘protection all round’, Australia enjoyed a high-wage, high-tech industrial economy, which employed over 40 per cent of the workforce in manufacturing and agriculture, and was capable of great feats such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and launching our own satellites into space—one of the first nations to do so.”

Mr Isherwood said that since Hawke and Keating ripped apart Australia’s protectionist economy in the 1980s, under orders from Macquarie Bank and its City of London masters, whole industries have been driven offshore, manufacturing and agricultural employment has dropped down to nearly 10 per cent, and foreign debt has skyrocketed to over $1.2 trillion.

“The politicians, union leaders like Howes, and media hacks like Andrew Bolt who attack protectionism are wolves in sheep’s clothing,” he declared.

“They shed crocodile tears over job losses, but it is they who demand the free trade policies that destroyed our manufacturing industries. The AWU has a particularly shady record in this area: as reported in The Latham Diaries, Mr Howes’ immediate predecessor as AWU National Secretary, Bill Shorten, in 2004 cynically played to AWU members by campaigning against the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement, but privately ordered then ALP leader Mark Latham to support it.

“By demanding China float its currency free from the U.S. dollar, Howes is basically saying that China should copy Australia and sabotage its own industries. That’s nuts! China is right to keep its currency stable—it’s we who were insane for floating our dollar in 1983.”

Mr Isherwood said that the state of the steel industry, which has announced 1750 job losses in the past week, indicated that Australia was suffering a severe economic breakdown crisis.

“Losing steel jobs is not the same as losing fast food jobs, or banking jobs, or casino jobs,” he said. “Steel, like food and energy, is a vital sector of the economy—it is essential to our ability as a nation to support ourselves.

“Look around you—what doesn’t use steel? Lose the steel industry, and Australia can kiss its butt goodbye!”

Go maglev

Mr Isherwood called for Australia to immediately start building a nationwide, magnetically-levitated high-speed transportation network as a way to both address Australia’s dire infrastructure deficit—estimated at $800 billion—and charge up the steel industry for a wave of infrastructure development.

He cited the March 2003 call by CEC Chairman Ann Lawler, then the candidate for the NSW state seat of Maitland, for a double-tracked maglev train between Sydney and Newcastle, which calculated steel requirements of 3,000 tonnes per kilometre for the guideway, and 175 tonnes per kilometre of special magnetic steel for the linear magnetic motors associated with the system.

“Australia needs high-speed trains between all the major cities, including across the Nullarbor,” he said.

“To truly transform the productivity of our economy, we must employ the most advanced technology, magnetic-levitation, which can reach speeds of over 500km/h, or thousands of kilometres per hour in a vacuum tube without air resistance.

“Funded by a national bank at low interest, supplied by local steel producers using domestic iron ore and coking coal, we can bring our industries up to speed to meet Australia’s immense infrastructure requirements.”

He concluded, “This is the type of vision that will solve this crisis, but it will only be realised if Australians have the courage to stop believing the same old lies and to fight, by joining the CEC.”