Privatisation loses in Queensland election

Jonathan Strauss & Marg Gleeson write that Privatisation loses in Queensland election.

The Queensland Chamber of Industry said it would not support any reversal of the LNP’s changes to workers’ compensation. It is crucial that the trade union movement continues to mobilise to ensure that a Labor government acts in the interests of the workers who contributed so effectively to its victory at the polls.

Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk said after the election that the thousands of public servants sacked by Newman would not automatically be reinstated. This is a blow to those victims of austerity. Their cause, and the repeal of the anti-union laws introduced by the LNP, should be taken up by the trade union movement as a priority.

The Newman experience has shown people can exert power. Any government, even one with a huge majority, can be a one-term wonder. Queenslanders are feeling elated at having demonstrated this at the ballot box.

This feeling of empowerment is welcome and understandable. However, unions and social movements need to maintain their own, independent, mobilisation if Labor is to be held to account for their interests. Already the environment movement is calling on the ALP to ban new coalmines and save the Great Barrier Reef.

Labor’s victory was necessary to halt the sale of public assets. It does not provide a political alternative to the neoliberal project. If the demands of the social movements and the social needs of the community are to be met, an alternative to the ALP/LNP duopoly needs to be forged.

In recent years, huge movements of people mobilising against austerity in Europe and Latin America have turned away from the established parties. A mobilised community, with a renewed sense of its power to effect change can build such alternative for change in Australia.

Emphasis Mine

Even so, this shows the limitations of parliamentary democracy in that the Queensland Chamber of Industry is still able to dictate to the government. Those that control the means of production control the state.