It is clear now that the Australian Council of Trade Unions under the leadership of its new National Secretary Sally McManus has taken a far-left socialist direction. She uses the language of class warfare and refuses to acknowledge that there is any problem with corruption and criminality within the trade union movement.

She has only been in the job since March this year but has already stated that it is okay for Australian workers to break the law, the era of neo-liberal free market economic policy must come to end and decrying the alleged practice of wage theft.

Her agenda is already beginning to take shape within the federal Labor Party with Bill Shorten vowing to make inequality the centrepiece of the next election. This has been backed up by his policy to increase taxes on family trusts, promising to reinstate the deficit levy and restore Sunday penalty rates.

The influence that Sally McManus would hold over the direction of Australia under a future Labor government was recently dubbed McManusstan by a leading business figure, telling the business lobby to get their act together or risk being stomped over by McManus and her comrades.

The left-wing activists wholeheartedly embraced the concept of McManusstan, believing it to be a workers’ paradise, nevermind the fact that efforts to create a workers’ paradise last century ended in famine, terror and destruction (economic growth through the free market is the only method that can actually give us something close to a paradise).

Over the weekend Sally McManus ratcheted up her rhetoric against the bourgeoise while speaking at the 100th Anniversary Dinner of the Great Strike of 1917, which saw railway workers in Australia strike for six weeks.

She unveiled what could be called the McManusstan National Anthem which is all but a war declaration against employers, businesses and governments. The lyrics were accompanied by music in a video released by the ACTU as McManus stood behind an Australian Railway Union illustration from 1917 that proudly displayed the word ‘socialism’.

You can sack us, you can outlaw us.
You can vilify us every single day with all of your media might.
You can tap our phones, you can raid our offices.
You can bring in laws to police us.
You can support laws to make our work harder.
To take away the support for unions to grow
And any acknowledgement that we exist.
You can fine us, and jail us.
But you will never ever defeat us.
We are not going away
We will never go away
And the harder you fight us, the more you teach us.
For you can never crush or destroy a belief:
The right of all of us to be treated equally and fairly.
And you can never take away our power, the power of unions
The simple act of working people deciding to stick together.
Solidarity forever comrades, here’s to the Lily Whites of 1917

She had a busy weekend as she was also at the Garma Festival for which she used the opportunity to play the race card declaring the Community Development Program which is work for the dole for remote Indigenous communities as a racist policy because it works out to be below the minimum wage. The reason why the CDP and Newstart are below the minimum wage is to act as an incentive for the unemployed to find work, but nevermind economics.

Under the leadership of Sally McManus, the ACTU is also campaigning on the left’s favourite social justice issues joining the push for same sex marriage and rejecting a plebiscite. I doubt they held a ballot of trade union members to ask if they thought such a campaign should be funded with their union dues.

Those who believe in the power of the free market to enable us to all prosper probably now yearn for the days of the moderate leadership of Greg Combet when he was ACTU Secretary. It is clear that ever since the ACTU defeated the Howard Government in 2007 over WorkChoices that they are now back in the ascendency. The Coalition is too scared to propose any significant reform of industrial relations so the trade union movement has been emboldened to push for even greater powers.

It should be clear to everyone now that Sally McManus would like to radically transform the Australian economy in a much more centralised manner. Even supporters of the trade union movement who believe they play a vital role in protecting Australian workers should concede that McManus’ goal of crippling Australian business goes too far. Businesses still need to prosper for workers’ living standards to increase unless you are of the belief that governments can coordinate the economy.

The concept of McManusstan has now been embraced by the left, now they have their anthem. Australia can still be saved from the inevitable disaster that McManusstan would bring, the warnings should be heeded.

Author Details
Tim Wilms is the Founder and Editor in Chief of https://theunshackled.net. the Host of Tim’s News Explosion, the WilmsFront interview program and The Theorists with Andy Nolch. He based in Melbourne, Australia where he also conducts field reports.
×
Tim Wilms is the Founder and Editor in Chief of https://theunshackled.net. the Host of Tim’s News Explosion, the WilmsFront interview program and The Theorists with Andy Nolch. He based in Melbourne, Australia where he also conducts field reports.