Australia’s economy is collapsing at an accelerating rate, and desperately needs strong government intervention to save it, but instead of promoting the common good of the people, the Rudd Government’s actions increasingly reveal a proto-fascist, Thatcherite agenda.

The economic crisis in Australia is part of the U.S.-centred global economic meltdown, with the shockwaves hitting average Australians:

• A wave of job losses across Australia is throwing thousands of families into crisis, and the lost jobs are in productive, industrial areas of the economy. For example, in Victoria alone, since June, 600 jobs have been lost at Goodyear’s South Pacific Tyres, 531 at Holden, 400 at Don Smallgoods (250 at Don’s Perth operation), 350 at Ford (with another 1000 slated to go), 350 at Boeing (over 500 to be lost in the next 18 months), 130 at Carter Holt Harvey’s sawmill, 80 at Kenworth Trucks, 80 at PBR brake manufacturers, 60 at SPC, and 40 at Unidrive. The automotive industry job losses will have a devastating flow-on effect—for every auto worker, there are at least six workers in the supply chain.
• The combination of job cuts, high interest rates and hyperinflation in the cost of every day necessities has pushed almost a million families into mortgage stress, and hundreds of thousands are losing, or are set to lose, their homes.
• The average superannuation fund went backwards by six percent last year, and many went down 12 percent or even higher; the government has conditioned people to look at superannuation as their main retirement security, which has exposed them to the global financial meltdown. Not only are pending retirees starting to panic, but the skyrocketing cost of living has pushed existing retirees and pensioners to the edge of survival.

What is Kevin Rudd doing? He is:

• Unleashing an education “revolution” under the smokescreens of “transparency”, “competition”, and “standards”, to make it easy to sack teachers and principals, and close down or merge schools, modelled on the school administration policies of fascist New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a leading advocate and example of the private business takeover of government;
• threatening to cut off welfare to the poorest and most disadvantaged families in the community, as a punishment for school truancy;
• targeting old-age pensioners as an “unsustainable” burden on the budget, and pushing to raise the minimum age, which disturbingly recalls Hitler’s “useless eaters” argument; all the while it is sitting on a record $21 billion budget surplus;
• insisting on more free trade, including more tariff cuts for the automotive industry, which will destroy most of what’s left of our manufacturing and high-technology machining capacity, and obliterate our most high-skilled jobs; and
• shutting down whole swathes of our agricultural production, with climate change policies relating to water use, land clearing etc., and putting what’s left of our industrial economy on notice that it will also be shut down by the impending carbon emissions trading scheme.

Rudd is modelling his government on the “New Labour” régime of Britain’s Fabian PM Tony Blair, including appointing imported British Blair apparatchiks to direct his government’s policies through a central policy unit; Blair’s privatising and de-unionising agenda proved so right wing, he was dubbed “Thatcher in drag”.

The Australian people voted against a continuation of Howard’s economic fascism, but under Rudd they are getting an even bigger dose. Only the Citizens Electoral Council is committed to solutions to this economic crisis, which are based on promoting the common good—the Homeowners and Bank Protection Bill, nationalising our resources, increasing food production, a national fertiliser industry, and a national bank to finance productive industry and infrastructure.

Click here to read, “What is fascism, really?” from the April/May 2008 New Citizen.
Click here to order a free copy of 1932, the DVD which situates the fight Franklin D. Roosevelt led against fascism.