Rally Calls to Rip the Electricity and Fuel Sectors From the Tycoons and
Bring Them Into Public Hands

12 April 2023: Last Saturday, over thirty people rallied in the Western Sydney suburb of Auburn to demand that the electricity, coal, oil and gas industries be ripped out of the hands of the greedy tycoons and be placed into public ownership. The action was in response to the unaffordable cost of living and plummeting real wages. In introducing the action, rally emcee Samuel Kim, who is also a leading member of Trotskyist Platform, explained:

Sisters and brothers, we are gathered here today because everything is way too expensive. Electricity, petrol, gas, rent, food … you name it. Bread and cereal prices are up nearly 13% over just this last year. The price of milk and other dairy products has risen nearly 15%. Meanwhile, workers wages are barely rising. As a result, large numbers of people are being driven into poverty. Many people are having to skip meals and forego buying essential medicine. Hundreds of thousands of people are set to endure winter shivering in discomfort.

A major cause of the rising prices is the skyrocketing cost of petrol, electricity and gas. This is not only increasing our fuel and power bills but has driven up the cost of refrigerating, processing and transporting food and other groceries.

So why are the prices of fuel and electricity so high? It is because the greedy rich corporations and company owners have decided to put up their prices for higher profits. And guess who’s paying up so that these tycoons can get even richer … You and I, the working-class, are paying.

As the call-out for the April 8 action stressed:

What we need is for all of the petrol, electricity, gas and coal sectors to be taken out of the hands of the ultra-rich profiteers that own them and be brought into public ownership….

The ruling class’ only “method” to try and contain steep prices is to crash the economy by jacking up interest rates. But we won’t be able to endure unaffordable prices if we lose our jobs or have our hours cut in the resulting recession! Let’s push down the cost of living and do it in a way that protects workers’ livelihoods and stops the slashing of our living standards! Let’s drive down the prices of everything by bringing the petrol, electricity, gas and coal sectors into public hands! We can’t allow the current filthy rich owners of these sectors – like Mike Cannon-Brookes and Kerry Stokes – to keep on milking fat profits at our expense!

The action was jointly built by Trotskyist Platform and the Australian Chinese Workers Association (ACWA). Speakers at the rally included Brenda Wang, a senior member of the ACWA, Sarah Fitzenmeyer, the Chairwoman of Trotskyist Platform and Wayne Sonter from the Revolutionary Housing League. After the introduction from the rally emcee, a message of solidarity to the protest was read out from Pete a retired coal mine worker in the Hunter Valley. The message stressed how the mining capitalists are not only exploiting their workers and charging the public exorbitant prices but are also leaching from the public budget through receiving a huge fuel rebate:

Firstly, I send to you all Comradely greetings from the Hunter Valley in NSW. I am a retired coal miner from Muswellbrook and I worked for BHP at their Mount Arthur open cut mine that is just on the outskirts of town for 20 years.

I come from a long line of miners that started out in the turn of the century at Broken Hill in the far west of NSW.

You are gathering today to voice your opposition against the private ownership of our natural recourses and have them returned to the people of Australia and I wish you every success.

Mount Arthur coal mine where I was a slave to the capitalist system produces both coking coal used in steel making and thermal coal mostly used in power generation….

BHP owns Mount Arthur mine 100% and has recently announced a record pre tax profit for the SIX months up to December 2022 of 1.4 BILLION US Dollars for that one single mine alone. That breaks down to approximately 10 million Australian dollars per day !!!

All of the mining equipment that is used in the mine is diesel powered so the amount of diesel fuel required to run the mine is a staggering amount, millions of litres annually in fact. One of the best  kept secrets that the coal miners keep closely guarded is the fact that the Federal Government gives them back a rebate of 47.7 cents per litre. That is for every litre of fuel used in the mine they claim back 47.7 cents and with millions of litres of fuel used annually they get a very fat cheque in the mail to help them pay their fuel bill. This Comrades has to STOP!

… Information that I have from the Australia Institute in Canberra tells me that the mining industry in Australia for the years 2022/23 will receive 7.7 BILLION dollars in fuel rebate and for the years 2023/24 it jumps to 9.2 Billion dollars.

This is YOUR money Comrades going to the dirty Capitalists !!

Rise up Comrades and voice you opinion on this unfair handout to the fat cats of the coal industry!

Among the placards that Trotskyist Platform carried at the event included: “Confiscate the Power, Coal, Oil and Gas Industries from the Greedy Tycoons And Put Them Into Public Hands!”, “Fight for: The Seizure of the Power and Fuel Industries From the Capitalists And Their Transfer Into Public Hands, a Massive Increase in Public Housing and the Conversion of All Casual Jobs into Secure, Permanent Ones!”, “Australia: Power, Fuel, Ports and Finance Sectors in the Hands of Super-Rich Big Shareholders – 6.8% Inflation, Plummeting Real Wages. China: All these Key Sectors Under Public Ownership – Just 1% Inflation and the Fastest Growing Workers’ Real Wages in the World” and “We Don’t Want to Cop Higher Prices for the Sake of the Global Ambitions of the Capitalists that are Ripping Us Off – Lift Western Sanctions on Russia!”  

Participants in the spirited rally loudly chanted: “Fuel and Power into Public Hands!” and “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Confiscation’s the Way to Go!” Many passers-by in multi-racial, working-class Auburn stopped to listen to speeches and read the protest banner and signs. They also viewed a beautiful cultural performance put on by Chinese dancers from the ACWA during a brief interlude between the speeches.

The April 8 action received favourable coverage in several Australian Chinese language news outlets, international Chinese language outlets and also in several news platforms in mainland China. Some of the latter outlets especially highlighted the point made by ACWA spokeswoman Brenda Wang that the reason that China has much lower inflation than Australia is because she has public ownership of her key sectors. By thus showing people in China that even pro-working class activists in Australia understand the benefits of China’s system based on social ownership of the backbone industries and are demanding the nationalisation of key industries within their own country itself, the rally had the indirect effect of boosting the morale of staunch Chinese communists who want to defend and strengthen China’s socialistic state sector as against rightist elements who want to give greater openings to private – that is capitalist – “entrepreneurs” (read exploiters).

Emphasising the need to build a powerful working-class movement to win the transfer of the fuel and electricity sectors from the hands of the capitalists into public ownership, rally emcee Samuel Kim concluded the April 8 rally with a call to action:

Comrades and friends, fellow working class people in the good struggle – the costs of living for food, rents, fuel and electricity are eroding savings. Many even go hungry or take out loans. Wages are stagnant, and are in affect going backwards as the cost of living soars. Huge parts of the economy are controlled by the greedy rich who only care about themselves. They aggressively pursue profits – profits stolen from the wages of workers.

Today’s protest is one of many that will happen in the future. It is just the start, as things are not getting better. That is why we need to prepare for a future movement.

We reprint below the speeches given by the ACWA and Trotskyist Platform representatives at the April 8 action.

Speech by Brenda Wang, leading member of the
Australian Chinese Workers Association:

The Australian Chinese Workers Association strongly supports this rally to drive down living costs and to bring the fuel and power sectors into public ownership. I want to acknowledge that we are gathering here on the stolen land of the Dharug First Nations people.

Like our fellow working-class Australians of all ethnicities, Chinese workers in Australia have been enduring increasingly unaffordable living costs. Electricity prices, petrol costs, rent, food prices and the prices of other groceries are unbearable. Many working-class people of Chinese descent in this country are being driven into poverty just like our sisters and brothers of other ethnicities. We understand that the high cost of fuel and electricity is a major part of what is driving costs up across the board. That is why we in the Australian Chinese Workers Association support the struggle to take the electricity, oil, gas and coal sectors from the rich tycoons and put them into public ownership.

The Australian Chinese Workers Association is a mass organisation that organises Australian-Chinese workers to defend their workplace conditions and assert their rights to access social services; while linking the Chinese working-class community with the overall Australian trade union movement and involving them in broader social justice campaigns within Australia.

I want to share some of our experience as immigrants from the Peoples Republic of China and as people who still have many friend and relatives in China who we are in regular contact with. In China, not only is the fuel and power sector under public ownership but so are most of the steel, mining, ports, shipping, banks and other major sectors. That is why China has very low inflation now unlike the countries where these sectors are owned by rich shareholders. It is also why workers real wages continue to grow rapidly in China and the economy continues to develop. So if anyone tells you that public ownership does not work, please explain that they are mistaken. Public ownership works – we know this from our own experience and from that of our family and friends.

So I hope that Australian working-class people of all ethnicities can unite to struggle to bring the fuel and power industries into public ownership. And I hope that we can also unite to fight for higher wages, more low-rent public housing and other measures urgently needed by the masses. We in the Australian Chinese Workers Association pledge to do all we can to support these noble causes.

Speech by Sarah Fitzenmeyer, Chairwoman of Trotskyist Platform:

I acknowledge that we are gathering here on the stolen land of the Dharug First Nations people. And right across these stolen Aboriginal Peoples lands, the super-rich owners of Australia’s oil, gas, coal and renewable energy companies are making huge, obscene profits. They are making these sky-high profits both by exploiting their own workers and by over-charging us all for fuel and electricity.

But sisters and brothers it is not just the owners of the oil, gas and coal producers who are ripping us off. Right throughout the chain of the fuel and power industries, the billionaire owners of these companies involved are jacking up prices. This includes the oil refiners, the fuel distributors, the fuel retailers, the electricity generators and the electricity retailers.

If you cross the railway line and go not too far to South Granville, you will see that there are two petrol stations owned by United Petroleum. United is one of Australia’s biggest petrol retailers. United outlets are notorious for paying their workers below award wages. The company is owned by two Australians, Avi Silver and Eddie Hirsch. Each of them have acquired a fortune of over $1.6 billion from under-paying United workers and overcharging customers. So when you fill up petrol or buy food at a United outlet and wonder why you are paying such high prices, just know that a good chunk of what you are forking out is used to sustain the lavish lifestyle of two Australian billionaires.

Now, I want to speak about Australia’s biggest electricity supplier, AGL. By far the biggest shareholder in AGL is Australia’s third richest person, Mike Cannon-Brookes. Last financial year, this Mike Cannon Brookes company slashed more than 500 jobs, while pushing the remaining workers to toil harder at their jobs to cover the work of those who were retrenched. Through such exploitation of workers, Cannon Brookes has acquired a $28 billion fortune. Five years ago, he bought Australia’s first home that reached a price of $100 million! Last year, Mike Cannon Brookes share of AGL’s $860 million profit was almost enough to buy himself yet another $100 million home! So those of you who are AGL customers, when you fume at how high your next electricity or gas bill is, just know that a big slice of what you pay may well help a high-living Australian billionaire buy yet another $100 million mansion!

And as you continue to pay unaffordable prices for food and other groceries, just know that part of your payment is going to cover the high costs of transport, refrigeration and processing resulting from the rip-off fuel and electricity prices set by the companies owned by Australian billionaires like Mike Cannon Brookes, Avi Silver, Eddie Hirsch, Ivan Glasenberg and Kerry Stokes.

Sisters and brothers, we have put a stop to this! We cannot continue to tolerate unaffordable living costs just to sustain the lavish lifestyle of greedy tycoons. That is why we need to reverse the electricity privatisation that has taken place over the last two decades. That means we need to fight for the confiscation of the power industry from its current, super-rich owners so that it can be transferred back into public hands. The same nationalisation also needs to happen to the oil, gas, coal and renewable energy sectors. This is what is needed to seriously drive down these exorbitant living costs!

However, the ruling class and their media are doing everything possible to stop you coming to this realisation. That is why they want to blame Russia’s intervention in Ukraine for the high cost of living. But the fact is that prices were going up even faster before the war escalated last year. It is not the war or Russia’s actions that is causing high energy prices – it is because of the sanctions imposed by Western regimes against Russia and we must not be supporting these sanctions. The Australian, American, British and other Western regimes are waging a proxy war against Russia because they want to ensure that the tycoons that they serve maintain their exclusive right to exploit most of the world. It is true that Russia is also ruled by a greedy capitalist class just like here. But because Russia is economically weaker, it is not Russian capitalists that dominate most of the world but rather the American, British, Australian, Japanese and other Western capitalists. For example, resource-rich Papua New Guinea’s entire oil production is owned by Australian corporations! So it will be good for the world’s masses and good for the working-class people of Australia if the greedy ruling class that exploits us and rips us off suffers a blow by having their proxy war against Russia defeated. So we should oppose these sanctions on Russia – sanctions that are helping to drive up our living costs. We shouldn’t have to endure higher prices for the sake of the global ambitions of the capitalists that are ripping us off!

Yet, even these sanctions have not, by themselves, caused the steep price rises. Energy prices have surged because the greedy owners of the Australian fuel industry have chosen to massively increase prices here to match the increased world price. Just because world prices have increased doesn’t mean that we have to cop these increases here. After all it is here where many of these resources actually come from – produced by our labour. And the governments and pro-capitalist political parties have chosen to allow these tycoons to get away with this. The right-wing Liberal Party openly opposes any measures to curb power and fuel prices. The Labor Party, because it has a working-class base wants to look like it is trying to bring down living costs. But because it is so very committed to avoid angering the big end of town, the ALP takes only very weak measures. The price limit for gas that the Albanese government has implemented is nearly three times what the gas price was two and a half years ago! No wonder it has been announced that our electricity prices will go up in July by even more than they went up last year.

So we cannot rely on any of the current parliamentary parties to do what is needed to bring down unaffordable prices. That is why we need to build a campaign of mass actions, including protests, occupations and workers industrial action to demand the transfer of the fuel and power industries into public hands.  That is why we in Trotskyist Platform decided to initiate today’s action to begin the building of this much needed movement.  Sisters and brothers, if we look at the mass strikes in Britain against falling real wages and the militant protests in France against the government raising the age of eligibility for the pension, this gives us a small taste of what is needed here.

At the same time, we must understand that the rip off prices that we’re all paying for fuel, electricity and groceries is just a symptom of a much bigger disease. And that disease, is this decaying capitalist system that is only surviving by driving down real wages and forcing workers into ever more precarious forms of employment. So as well as demanding the transfer of the energy and power sectors into public ownership we need to fight for big wage rises, for the conversion of all gig and casual jobs into permanent secure positions and for a massive increase in low-rent public housing. To wage such struggles we need to build unity amongst all of the working class.

That means we must positively mobilise to oppose state violence against Aboriginal peoples, win the rights of citizenship for all guest workers, refugees and international students and defeat all far-right racist attacks on people of Asian, African and Middle Eastern backgrounds, stand with and support all women’s rights activists and the LGBTQIA+ community.

Now, working-class people do need a party, But not one like the ALP that accommodates the capitalists and runs their capitalists’ state for them. What we need is a workers party built to organise our intransigent and steadfast resistance against the exploiting class.

Sisters and brothers, nationalising the energy and power sectors will be an important step to driving down unaffordable prices. But it will be only be just a step because currently the state machinery itself is under the control of the big end of town. We will need to assert people’s inspection and supervision of any publicly owned fuel and power industries. These sectors and indeed the whole economy can only truly be made to work for us when we the working class take control of the state itself.

Now the apologists for the ruling class tell us that such talk of workers rule and public ownership is outdated and impractical. There is however a huge hole in their argument. For in the world’s most populous country, the Peoples Republic of China not only are the fuel and energy industries dominated by public ownership so are all the other key sectors including the banks, shipping, steel, ports, car manufacturing, airlines and telecommunications. To see how this works, lets look at state-owned China National Petroluem Company. This giant has a monopoly on China’s oil and gas production. Yet because it is directed as a public necessity to keep down prices, the profits of this Chinese state-owned giant is only just over 4% of its total sales. By contrast, Kerry Stokes oil and gas company here in Australia, Beach Energy has profits that are nearly 30% of its sales. That is why we are suffering an inflation rate of nearly 7%, while in China, through their public ownership of key sectors, they have kept inflation to just 1%. And while workers real wages here are markedly lower than they were 11 years ago, in China, workers real wages have more than doubled in the same period. Yet China’s socialistic system centred on public ownership is precisely what makes the capitalist rulers of the U.S. and Australia so hostile to her.

For they fear that China’s successes in uplifting her people out of extreme poverty will make the masses in their own countries also demand a system based on public ownership. But demanding public ownership is exactly what we need the masses here to fight for! So we should support, applaud and want the great example of socialistic China to continue in its success. That is why it is in the clear interests of the working-class of Australia and the world to oppose all the attacks on socialistic rule in China – whether that be the war-mongering AUKUS submarine project or the lying propaganda that China is persecuting Uyghurs and people in Hong Kong.

Sisters and brothers, we do not need to accept a system based on ownership of industry by filthy rich tycoons who exploit workers labour and charge us unaffordable prices. Let’s stop the ever growing slide into poverty for low-paid workers in Australia! Let’s fight for the confiscation of the coal, oil, gas and power companies and their prompt transfer into public ownership! Let’s build a spirited movement to fight for this. Let’s build on today’s action!