On May Day, thousands of workers from in and around the
industrial trading city of Port Kembla in New South Wales (NSW) rallied against
the AUKUS deal. AUKUS will see Australia procure nuclear-powered submarines
from the United States, and is designed to counter the rise of China as a
global power. To date, this was the biggest demonstration against the pact held
anywhere in the world.
AUKUS potentially involves Port Kembla hosting a US nuclear
submarine base. This would come at the expense of the region’s developing green
energy infrastructure. The protesting workers argued that the current drive to
war will endanger the city and imperil the many thousands of union jobs that
would be guaranteed by a green transformation.
International media outlets in AUKUS partner countries and
China have begun to take notice. The workers of Port Kembla will now prove
decisive in shaping not only their own futures, but Australia’s role in the
biggest conflict of the era.
Jacobin spoke with Arthur Rorris, secretary of the South Coast
Labour Council, to find out how this small city came to take the lead in the
fight for jobs and peace.
________________________________________
CHRIS DITE
Why are the workers of Port Kembla and the wider region
opposed to AUKUS?
ARTHUR RORRIS
The vast majority of workers and the community in the region
are opposed to this. We saw evidence of that on the weekend. Some context here
is important. Port Kembla is a trading port in a coal mining region. About
fourteen years ago it became very clear that decarbonization was not an if but
a when. We were carbon central: our steelworks alone accounted for 7 percent of
all greenhouse emissions for the state of NSW.
As union leaders we decided that “saving the planet is going
to take a lot of work, and we want that work to be done in Port Kembla.” We
built a successful coalition of workers and unionists who agreed on one key
thing: this revolution is happening. The only choice we had to make was whether
we got these new green jobs or let them go offshore like almost everything
else.
According to NSW government analysis, there are now
expressions of interest for more than $43 billion in wind, solar, and hydrogen,
centered around our port. We’re looking at eight thousand jobs in this region
alone in the next decade through renewable energy projects — not including the
offshore wind farms! For that to happen we have to now start building our green
hydrogen capacity. This requires renewable power generation: a combination of
offshore wind and terrestrial-based solar industries. Our approach to this is
very pragmatic; it’s a planned and costed way forward.
The proposed nuclear submarine base screws our region’s entire
renewable agenda and industrial transformation. This is at the heart of a lot
of the angst here. We can’t do both. It’s not a big trading port. Any space we
do have left is earmarked for our renewable sector. And even if there was room
in the port, the exclusion zones around any future base will rule out the wind
farms we need to drive power into the industrial area.
CHRIS DITE
So the opposition is mostly centered around green jobs?
ARTHUR RORRIS
The nuclear issue is also causing a storm here. Port Kembla
was declared a nuclear-free port and city more than forty years ago; this was
reaffirmed by city hall last year. We worked very hard to educate our community
and are still educating them about the nuclear issue. We put up posters
explaining how each one of these proposed submarines will have enough enriched
uranium to account for three Hiroshimas. We rolled out the maps so people could
work out how their homes, schools, and hospitals could be affected by a nuclear
accident.
They’ll call us NIMBYs. But no one’s going to believe we’re
prissy about things. We’ve got steelworks and every carcinogen known to humanity
in our backyard. This is different. It’s an attempt to conscript our entire
community into a war machine, then put a nuclear target on our backs for our
troubles. That will not happen here under our watch.
CHRIS DITE
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on the weekend that AUKUS
is more about jobs than national security. What’s your response to this?
ARTHUR RORRIS
What jobs? The government says that AUKUS — which is set to
cost close to half a trillion dollars — will only create twenty thousand jobs
over thirty years. These claims haven’t been backed up. They’re not proposing
to actually make the ships here in Port Kembla. They’re not even really
proposing to service them. It’s not as if we’ll have apprentices from the steel
mill allowed to work on these ships. No one believes we’ll be allowed anywhere
near them.
Like the Rust Belt in America, we’ve been losing thousands of
jobs for years. The steelworks used to employ twenty-three thousand people
directly. It now employs three thousand directly, and we’ve got another ten
thousand as contractors. Only renewables will get those jobs back and everyone
knows it.
It’s the first time in my memory where we are not wedged in
the labor movement between jobs or the environment. We’ve actually got jobs and
the environment on one side.
Politically this is quite an amazing moment. It’s the first
time in my memory where we are not wedged in the labor movement between jobs or
the environment. We’ve actually got jobs and the environment on one side. On
the other side are the imperialists, United States, and Australian navy. This
is why both governments might be a bit nervous about this agenda now —
particularly when it comes to Port Kembla. There’s no way you’re going to
convince this community that both renewables and the nuclear base are possible.
CHRIS DITE
You’ve criticized military officials for making these huge
decisions on behalf of the rest of us. You’ve also been critical of “spooks”
and “arms dealers” for trying to lecture us into accepting them. How did ordinary
workers get so shut out of this debate?
ARTHUR RORRIS
Many Australians are starting to understand that the decision
of whether or not to go to war has been taken away from the Australian
government and, by virtue of that, the Australian people. There’s clearly been
a coup in defense policy. We’ve seen how this works in Darwin. Very quickly and
methodically they extended US troop rotations. Slowly but surely they shifted
the focus of our defense from defending Australia to defending US economic
interest in the South China Sea.
It’s critical for people to understand how these crazy
decisions are made. It starts with military figures creating consultancies that
call themselves independent, but have an agenda. Former prime minister John
Howard used taxpayer funds to establish the Australian Strategic Policy
institute (ASPI), one of the leading so-called independent strategic think
tanks for the military. It’s funded in part by arms dealers, the Department of
Defense, and others. This collusion isn’t even hidden. It’s justified on the
basis that it is somehow in the national interest to have defense policy
manufactured by people who have the most to gain from conflict.
These are the people that drove much of the AUKUS agenda at
the start, as well as Scott Morrison in his dying political days. AUKUS was
really his parting gift. Morrison and these spooks took the opposition leader —
the current prime minister — into a security briefing that was big, scary, and
allegedly clear enough to commit them all to AUKUS within a day. Twenty-four
hours to hand over $368 billion and determine that China is our enemy — even
though there’s no evidence that they’re about to attack Australia.
The US navy has always wanted an east coast base in Australia
and under this plan they’re going to get one. Our laws say that you can’t have
foreign bases in Australia, so they’ll call it a joint military installation.
But the only thing Australian in this base will be the Australian flag. And
ironically it’ll probably be made in China.
One of the things our movement should do is bring the
beneficiaries of war into the daylight. We should shed light on who they are,
who pays them, and where they come from. Here in this region we’re very
determined to tell our community on which side these people’s bread is
buttered.
CHRIS DITE
The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) has been a consistent
voice against AUKUS and the drive to war. Conservatives regularly argue that
the unionization of the ports is a threat to national security. Could you
explain the MUA’s long-standing argument that it’s actually privatization and
profit-seeking that threatens livelihoods?
ARTHUR RORRIS
Obviously, the conservatives will take any opportunity they
can to have a bit of a swipe. This line that unions are somehow a threat to
national security is disgraceful. Proportionally more unionized seafarers died
than navy sailors in World War II in Australia. That was all part of the war
effort against fascism.
The conservatives have been ideologically driven to keep
unionized Australian labor out of the coastal trade. They actually passed laws
to stop Australians getting jobs in Australian coastal waters. They now have
weaker security requirements for much of the exploited international labor
working on “flag of convenience” ships than they do for Australian seafarers
and maritime workers. So there’s an argument that the conservatives are the
ones compromising national security.
Having unionized local seafarers on domestic coastal routes —
cabotage as they call it — is an idea that our friends in the United States
know all too well ever since the Jones Act. Virtually every other country
around the world operates with the idea that your coastal waters are best
served by your nationals. Domestic routes are highly unionized almost
everywhere. Australia is a weird exception. That’s been driven politically,
mostly by conservative governments.
But some of the military chiefs recognize aspects of all this,
and some conservatives sort of have a foot in both camps. The current Labor
government has committed to an Australian strategic cargo fleet. The maritime
unions have been asking for this for a very long time. We know from numerous
reports about the current state of exploitation of foreign labor around the
coastal trades. It is to the benefit of everyone to have a domestic fleet, and
strong, unionized labor working those routes.
CHRIS DITE
There’s been a lot of opposition to the MUA’s proposal to
create a modest Australian shipping fleet. But Australia’s second-richest
person, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, has spent the last ten years building his own
small independent armada. Clearly he sees a business case for owning your own
cargo ships in a volatile time. Is this a case of one rule for the bosses and
another for the workers?
ARTHUR RORRIS
The business cases are different. At the end of the day,
whether it’s at sea or on land, private corporations legally have to put their
shareholders in front of all other interests — including the national interest.
The steelmaker here in Port Kembla is a multinational company with interests in
the United States, Vietnam, and China. It’s threatened to shut down the
Australian industry on more than one occasion.
Their business is making money, not making steel. Whether they
make it here or elsewhere is not their primary concern. If making money for
their shareholders means shutting up shop in Port Kembla, then that’s what
they’ll do. That’s the reason we can’t let the market determine strategic
industrial development and retention — particularly when it comes to steel. I,
for one, think, and many others here would agree, that if corporations hold
communities to ransom, then the government has an obligation to nationalize
them.
At the end of the day, whether it’s at sea or on land, private
corporations legally have to put their shareholders in front of all other
interests — including the national interest.
CHRIS DITE
Workers in the region you represent now find themselves in the
leadership of something huge. They’re at the center of a coming storm and the
world is paying attention. What’s next for the movement?
ARTHUR RORRIS
My brief from the labor council is Port Kembla. And as a
leader of the council, part of my job is to analyze how all these things relate
to one another. The government says a decision hasn’t been made and won’t be
made for ten years. Well, we were born at night but not last night. The notion
that this government can promise us ten years — when they face federal
elections every three years — is just not credible. The conservatives have
already told us that if they get in power, the base is going to be here faster
than you can say San Diego. So no one buys this idea that it’s been kicked down
the road.
The base in Port Kembla has to be ruled out. That is our chief
focus. But I can well understand that other ports around the country might feel
the same way as us. Our next step is to escalate this push by creating a
fraternal alliance with other central labor councils in ports around the
country. We started that process on the weekend at our rally. We had
representatives from other ports, from Sydney, the mountains, and elsewhere. We
want to accelerate this process.
There should be a national conversation about this. It should
be on the national agenda of the union movement. Our thinking is that we start
with our fraternal relationships with other regions. Knowledge is very
important, history is very important, analysis is very important. All this can
only be done through rallies, conferences, seminars, and building alliances.
Most importantly, this all has to be driven by the rank and file.
Opinion polls now tell us that despite the Sinophobic campaign
of recent years, only one in five Australians sees China as an imminent threat.
That’s a spectacular failure from the war hawks. Whether these four out of five
people will see the situation as alarming enough to mobilize is the challenge
for our movement.
CHRIS DITE
Do past struggles at the port inform your approach at all?
ARTHUR RORRIS
Port Kembla has been a very militant port, an internationalist
port, very strong on issues of social conscience. It was the site of one of the
world’s first social movement strikes, the Dalfram dispute in 1938. The
wharfies refused to load pig iron bound for Japan. They knew it was going to be
used as bullets and bombs against the Chinese in the first instance and then
against us. Everyone could see war was coming.
All of Wollongong supported the strikers. The bosses tried to
get the steelworkers to scab on the wharfies but they refused. So the bosses
shut down the entire steelworks as payback. We had market gardeners from Sydney
— the Chinese community in particular, but also others — who fed Wollongong
during that entire dispute. It ended up with Attorney General Robert Menzies
from the then-government coming down to Wollongong to “sort out the
communists.” He left with rotten tomato stains on his back and a nickname that
lasted his entire lifetime — Pig Iron Bob.
I’m not saying the community hasn’t changed at all since then, or that history compels us or determines our policy. But it certainly gives us confidence, strength, and insight into how these things can be won. It also helps to put a bit of fear into our opponents. We have been rolling it out lately for everyone who will listen. People like what they hear. A journalist asked us, “What happens if the government keeps going?” We said they’ll have to fight Port Kembla before they even get to China. And we mean it. The mood is that strong down here — we are not going to let this happen.
CONTRIBUTORS
Arthur Rorris is secretary of the South Coast Labour Council
in New South Wales.
Chris Dite is a teacher and union member.
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