Australian ruling class stokes anti-China campaign

This is the speech Cheryl Crisp gave on May 1st, 2022 at the International Online May Day Rally. Crisp is the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in Australia. To see all the speeches, visit ours topic page.

Cheryl Crisp, National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in Australia

On behalf of SEP Australia, I welcome all attending the International May Day 2022 Rally.

A lot has changed since we last celebrated International Working Class Day a year ago.

The unchecked spread of Covid-19 in every country except China has condemned almost 20 million people to needless deaths. A virus that science, medicine and health professionals knew how to eliminate was unleashed on the world’s population as production, profit and wealth were prioritised.

The war in Ukraine threatens the planet with a Third World War and nuclear war. It is the result of long-held plans by US imperialism to dismember and destroy Russia. In this proxy war by NATO and the USA against Russia, Ukraine is being used as a deployment area and its population as cannon fodder.

The working class around the world faces an inflationary spiral that leads to rising prices, food shortages, hunger and starvation deaths. These are the consequences of both the pandemic and the war.

Despite the constant mantra that Australia is a “lucky” country with an exceptional status, the country has changed profoundly. As in most countries, the life of the people here is unrecognizable compared to the life of just two years ago.

Around this time last year there were fewer than 30,000 corona infections in Australia. Today it’s nearly 6 million, with 96 percent of those cases occurring in the past five months. The number of deaths was 910 in May 2021. Today the number is 7,142, with 72 percent of the cases occurring after December 1, 2021.

The country is now in the middle of an election campaign. Scott Morrison’s coalition government and the Labor Party, which is in opposition, have conspired to ensure there is no mention of Covid. Despite rising infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths, the saying is: “The pandemic is over.”

The reason for this catastrophe is that all measures that the government reluctantly introduced in March 2020, which kept the number of infections and deaths relatively low, were scrapped again. Everything has been dropped: lockdowns, testing, isolation, contact tracing and social distancing measures. All reporting of the pandemic was also abandoned.

A feverish war hysteria has taken its place, intended to prepare the population for a military confrontation with China. The entire political elite, led by the coalition and the Labor Party, are outdoing each other in their effervescent denunciations of China. They are concerned with showing who can best serve US imperialism and promote provocations against China.

It is hard to believe that while the United States is fueling a war against Russia that threatens to unleash catastrophe in Europe and beyond, it is simultaneously stepping up war preparations against China.

Australian politicians and the US Biden government reacted hysterically to the signing of a security pact between China and the tiny Solomon Islands nation a week ago. The islands have fewer than 700,000 inhabitants and are thousands of kilometers from Australia and the USA. The hysterical reactions stem from the fact that the pact is seen as a threat to long-term US hegemony in the Pacific, which Washington has dubbed an “American lake”.

Australian Defense Minister Dutton said on ANZAC Day, the day the Australian ruling class celebrates the carnage of World War I, that “at the time, the way to keep the peace was to prepare for war”. Prime Minister Morrison threatens that a “red line” would be crossed if the Chinese establish a military presence in the Solomon Islands, which are “on Australia’s doorstep” – a barely veiled threat of military intervention.

But it was the Labor Party that responded to the agreement with the most bellicose and downright disturbing accusations. Labor’s shadow foreign secretary, Penny Wong, called the government’s failure to prevent the deal from being signed as the “greatest foreign policy blunder in the Pacific since the end of World War II.”

Labor has joined the US response in which Kurt Campbell, the White House coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, was dispatched to the Solomon Islands capital, Honiara. He threatened like a mafia don: “Should steps be taken to establish a virtually permanent [chinesische] military presence, power projection capability, or a military installation, the United States would have significant concerns and respond accordingly.” There is more than mere circumstantial evidence that military action and regime change are being considered.

The breathtaking hypocrisy is visible in front of all eyes. Unlimited lethal weaponry, military training and financial resources have been made available to Ukraine, reportedly to protect its right to membership in NATO. But if the Solomons exercise their right to sign a pact with China, they will face threats from the world’s most powerful military nation, backed by their deputy in the Pacific, the Australian government and the Labor Party.

The SEP places the struggle for the unity of the Chinese and Australian working classes in a common struggle against capitalism, ie the root of the war, at the heart of its election campaign.

In fact, the only war that should be waged is against Covid. But the ruling elite in every country has given up this struggle and ordinary people, the poor and the working class are paying the price.

As on the international level, it is the working class in this country that is hardest hit by the virus. 36 percent of all Covid-19 deaths occurred in the 20 percent of areas most deprived. The top 10 percent who enjoy the most benefits accounted for just 9.8 percent. Immigrants in Australia were more than two and a half times more likely to die from Covid-19 than native-born people and people born in the Middle East were almost nine times more likely to die than average. Long Covid deaths are increasing at an alarming rate.

The pandemic and now the war in Ukraine has led to a massive increase in the cost of living due to fuel and food price hikes. Inflation in Australia jumped to 5.1 per cent in the last quarter, the sharpest increase in almost three decades excluding the Goods and Services Tax introduced in 2000. Today’s inflation is higher than it was after the global financial crisis of 2008. For basic goods or services, it is almost 7 percent. Wages, on the other hand, have stagnated for almost a decade.

The right to a roof over your head is history. Nearly 10 percent of the poorest voters in the country have a mortgage burden of up to 76 percent — and that’s ahead of a planned rate hike that could happen as early as next week. Of the 46,000 rental homes available nationwide, only 32 are affordable for recipients of unemployment benefits.

It is these unbearable conditions that drive the workers into struggle. Nurses, paramedics, health workers and now teachers are striking against the crippling workload and subpar pay. A rebellion develops against the government and the unions, which are pushing through the government’s demands.

The solution to this catastrophe, which is getting worse and worse, cannot be to put pressure on parties, governments or trade unions. Instead, independent action committees must be built in factories, schools, hospitals and neighborhoods that can provide the leadership and socialist perspective necessary to wage these struggles.

Finally, on this May Day, we particularly emphasize the international unity of the working class. We address in particular the Chinese working class, the largest in the world. The enemy of workers in Australia and worldwide is not the Chinese masses but the capitalist class. In unity with all sections of the working class, we must organize and fight for a socialist future.

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