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Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release  10th of October 2012

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au
 

Isherwood: Greece is coming to Australia!

CEC leader Craig Isherwood said today that the recent warnings of Australia’s economy heading into the same crisis as Greece are correct—but the reality is worse than people know.

Former CBA boss and Future Fund chairman David Murray told ABC radio on Oct. 4 that Australia’s debt burden is putting the nation at risk of the same crisis as Greece. His warning followed Economist Professor Ross Garnaut’s prediction to a Sep. 18 conference, that Australians must brace themselves for falling living standards as the mining boom ends.

“Australia is drowning in debt,” Isherwood said, “because City of London banks and their Labor and Liberal accomplices, starting with Hawke and Keating, hijacked the economy and destroyed the productive manufacturing and agricultural industries that created our national wealth.

“The government is lying like crazy when it claims its debt is small: 25 years of privatisation and outsourcing shifted a huge chunk of government debt onto private companies, but the repayments on that debt still come out of the hides of the Australian people.

“Importing more and more of the goods we used to make for ourselves, and borrowing from overseas to pay for them, has given us a permanent current account deficit, which has driven Australia’s gross foreign debt to $1.4 trillion [$1,400 billion], 100 per cent of GDP.

“The government crows that we are far better off than the rest of the world, but it is the rest of the world we have to borrow from, to pay for our imports.”

Isherwood said Ross Garnaut and the other “free trade maniacs” who destroyed Australia’s industrial base are now preparing to whack Australians with the same brutal cost-cutting austerity that is destroying the people of Greece, where:

  • Youth unemployment in Greece is 55.4%; overall unemployment has climbed in 12 months from 17.2% to 24.4%, and the poverty rate is 28%—austerity isn’t working.
  • Many parents are being forced to surrender their children to aid agencies because they can no longer care for them, and numbers of homeless children living on the streets are now dying.
  • The only public paediatric cardiac surgery unit has been closed, so children whose families cannot afford insurance have no access to the only remaining unit at the private Onassis Hospital. Many children have already died, and a spate of lawsuits has erupted. Neonatal screening for 40 major disorders and diseases for newborn babies has been drastically cut back because of budget cuts.
  • The Greek Institute for Children’s Health, the country’s key institute in this area of medicine, has seen its budget cut drastically. One highly skilled employee has seen her salary cut from EU1,400 to EU900 euros and even this reduced salary is never paid on time. “If the institute’s funding does not come through, or if it is closed down, national neonatal testing will stop. We will see children dying from disorders that we know how to detect, and know how to treat”, she said. Other organisations that deal with children’s health problems, such as autism, have had their funding cut back drastically.
  • On Sep. 20 Dimitris Varnavas, the head of the national union representing hospital doctors, accused Greek Health Minister Andreas Lykourentzos of executing the IMF’s cost-cutting orders by closing clinics, charging that the government’s goal was to demolish the public health system and close down half of the country’s 132 state hospitals. The minister claimed his cuts would not result in any layoffs, but no one believes him, and it doesn’t matter anyway, since most hospital staff are simply not being paid, some having gone payless for as long as half a year.
  • Prostitution has increased by more than 1000% in Greece, in part due to cuts in aid for single mothers.
  • Greek trade unions federations held a general strike 27 September, shutting down the country and bringing up to 100,000 people into Syntagma Square, or Constitution Square, in front of the parliament. Participating in the strike were municipal employees and civil servants, staff in state-run public utilities, teachers, doctors, and hospital staff, as well as merchants, lawyers, civil engineers, and bank employees. The tax office, Customs, and Finance Ministry staff launched a three-day strike on the same day. Obviously fearing that the demonstration could swell to hundreds of thousands, as they have in the past, security forces deployed hooded provocateurs to clash with the 3,000 police deployed at the parliament. Using tear gas and violence against the young and old, men and woman alike, the police broke up the demonstrations and cleared the entire square.

“Austerity isn’t a financial solution—it’s genocide!” Isherwood continued. “Its perpetrators should be charged with crimes against humanity.

“The only solution is to rebuild productive industries that create real wealth. Australia must return to protectionism and start producing for ourselves again.

“Only the CEC has the plan for this. As we call for in our resolution ‘The Future of Australia: Develop or Die’, we must dump all of the post-1983 economic ‘reforms’—free trade, financial deregulation, floating dollar, national competition policy, etc.—that have so destroyed our industries.

He concluded, “The conditions in Greece show us what is at stake, so join the CEC’s fight to stop Australia from going the same way.”

Click here to buy the CEC’s book, What Australia Must Do to Survive the Depression.

Click here for a free DVD explaining the cause of the economic crisis.

Click here to join the CEC as a member.

Click here to refer others to receive regular email updates from the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia.



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