Howard is Gone But What About His WorkChoices? by John/Togs Tognolini

Howard has plummeted into the rubbish bin of history, where he belongs. And of course, much of the reason for his political dive into the historical void was his WorkChoices. It was Howard and the Liberal/Nationals own born to rule conceit with WorkChoices that largely cost them the election, there were a few other major issues such as Climate Change but this was the main issue.

Howard and his ilk are out? That freight train that hit the Liberals/Nationals on 24/11 was the Your Rights At Work Campaigns across the country, and Rudd hitched a ride on it. People who turned out in their thousands for 06 & 05 Your Rights At Work rallies, and this years Victorian Trades Hall September 26 Victorian mobilisation of 30,000 workers against the IR legislation in Melbourne and the Rockin For Workers Rights Concert at Sydney’s SCG. And there was the 12,000 to 15,000 people at the 8/9 Stop Bush/Make Howard History demonstration during APEC in Sydney.

My mate Liam Mitchell and I were told at the massive Your Rights At Work/ALP election party (300 people where present, mostly unionists who had all been involved in YRAW and a few Greens) in the Katoomba Family Hotel,‘’That I don’t need to tell you guys that the real fight starts now.’’ In regard to WorkChoices and Rudd’s WorkChoices Lite, by a leading activist Phil Doyle in the Blue Mountains YRAW campaign. No one was talking like that about the ALP/ACTU Accord when Bob Hawke was elected in 1983. By the way this pub was decked out in heaps of YRAW corflukes and one corfluke each from the Greens, ALP and Socialist Alliance.

We are now at the start of our own Blair/Brown New Labour period, with Rudd taking up the prime ministership. But there is no where near the amount of illusions in Kevin Rudd in 07, as there was for Hawke in 1983, when Malcolm Fraser was defeated. One thing I noticed in the Family Hotel that night was how many people quickly turned their backs on Rudd during his victory speech, saying things like, ’’Needs another speech writer.’’ People see Rudd as a career politician; even the Liberals said he was a younger John Howard.

I have no doubt there will be ALP ‘’historians’’ writing bullshit about how great the Accord years were under Hawke and Paul Keating. How these years were a Golden Age for workers and the economy. For the writing and production of history is after all, another battleground of the class struggle. And on this I’ve come across a 20 minute film I made in 1992 called, Working Class Representation in the Aftermath of the ALP’s Outlawing of the BLF.

It’s a good, brief, historical doco featuring interviews with Dave Kerin and Dennis Evans and has footage of the Victorian police attacking the BLF picket line at 417 St Kilda Rd in 1991, where they targeted John Cummo/Cummins with a police horse and got Dennis Evans instead. It’s excellent for the political era that we are now entering. As well as explaining the class nature of the state and the political nature of the ALP.

I've started a new lable on Togs's Place.Com, Howard is Gone But What About His WorkChoices? It's time for the new ALP government to deliver or Rudd is going to become a new four letter word.