Photo Above: Sydney, 2 April 2022 – Demonstrators march to demand that the measures China is using to beat poverty be applied here.
Photo Credit: Demi Huang/New Impressions Media

Rally Opposes Privatisation and
Exploitation in Australia,
Demands that the Measures
China is using to Beat Poverty
Be Applied Here

5 April 2022: Last Saturday, supporters of workers rights from a broad range of racial backgrounds came together in spirited protest against privatisation and the growing exploitation of working class people in Australia. To inspire the struggle to win anti-poverty measures here in Australia, the Sydney rally highlighted the anti-capitalist and other pro-worker measures being taken right now in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). At its height, the April 2 protest was some 70 strong, although one of the community media sites reporting on the protest puts its size at “nearly one hundred.”

The united-front protest began with the rally emcee, Yuri Gromov, who is also the editor of Trotskyist Platform’s journal, The Spark, introducing the purpose of the action:

“While the business owners who make their money from exploiting workers’ labour are getting richer and richer, the poor are getting poorer. Prices are soaring but workers’ wages have barely risen. The living standards of low paid workers has been falling.

“Bosses are driving more and more workers into casual and gig jobs with no job security. A huge number of workers do not know how many hours of work they will get from week to week. Having so little job security, it’s easy for capitalist bosses to force us into accepting terrible working conditions. In the food delivery sector, many drivers and riders are doing deliveries all day and not even making the minimum wage.

“Australian governments of all stripes are carrying out policies that are making life harder for working class people. They have been selling off public housing like crazy. Much of the public sector has now been privatised and this always leads to job losses, attacks on workers’ conditions and higher prices for consumers. Federally, the Morrison government is now set on privatising the NBN. Here in NSW the state government continues its surreptitious, gradual privatisation of bus and rail services.

“We are here today to push back against all this. We demand a guaranteed minimum wage for all food delivery and other gig workers. We demand that the sell-off of public housing stop now and that instead there be a massive increase in public housing. We demand an end to all privatisation. Instead of privatisation we call for the nationalisation of the banks. That is the way to ensure that credit is allocated to areas of public need like poverty alleviation projects rather than a crazy huge amount of money being siphoned off as bank loans to housing speculators, a truly horrendous waste of funds which is only pushing house prices up and up and making life harder for working class families struggling to keep up their rent and mortgage payments alike.

“…Today, we want to highlight something positive that can inspire our fight against poverty and exploitation. There is one particular country that has been heading in the opposite direction to the agenda of privatisation and neo-liberal attacks on workers rights that has been happening throughout the capitalist world. And this country headed in the opposite direction is not just any country. It is in fact the most populous country in the world with a fifth of the earth’s people: the Peoples Republic of China.

“Last year the PRC not only decreed that food delivery platform companies must ensure that all food delivery drivers and riders always get at least the minimum wage but started expanding those protections to all gig workers. At the same time, China has been on an intense campaign to provide public housing to her low and lower-middle income population. Moreover, rather than carrying out large-scale privatisations, all of China’s banks and most of her other key sectors remain under public ownership.

“Therefore, socialistic China’s path can be an inspiration to the struggle for working class people’s rights in Australia. That is why Australia’s capitalist regime and pro-capitalist media are doing everything they possibly can to denigrate the PRC. They don’t want the masses here to be inspired to resist privatisation and exploitation. We need to condemn these lying propaganda attacks against China as part of standing up for working class people’s rights in Australia….”

Rally participants listen to an address to the demonstration by rally emcee, Yuri Gromov.
Photo credit (above photo): Demi Huang/New Impressions Media
Photo credit (below photo): Sydney Today APP

Last Saturday’s demonstration was jointly initiated by the Australian Chinese Workers Association and ourselves in Trotskyist Platform. It was additionally endorsed by the Communist Party of Australia’s Wollongong Branch and by the group, Communists West Sydney. Representatives of all the endorsing groups as well as other individuals addressed the united front rally. Chairwoman of Trotskyist Platform, Sarah Fitzenmeyer stressed in her speech the need for a class struggle strategy for defending working class people’s rights. She also emphasised that the fight against capitalist exploitation in Australia requires solidarity with socialistic rule in China:

“The fact is that during the last few decades, Australia’s capitalist business owners have increased the rate at which they exploit workers’ labour….

“Today, while Morrison’s Liberals have made it clear that they want to sell off the NBN, the only response from the ALP is to say that they oppose an immediate privatisation while leaving the door open to a sell-off in the future. The only way we can push back against privatisation and the ever growing exploitation is through mass struggle and workers’ industrial action. This is how the working masses have always won whatever rights we still have left now. The more that working class people understand that nothing can or will be gained through supporting any of the parliamentary parties at the upcoming election, the more determined we the working class people will be to build the mass actions that are needed.

“… In February last year, guest workers from China spearheaded the first ever strike by gig workers in Australia when they and other food delivery riders took action against British-owned company Hungry Panda and WON! However, we must be very wary that such struggles are not undermined and workers don’t buy into the national security obsession being promoted by the Australian ruling class. This national security propaganda deceptively claims that workers and the capitalists who exploit them have a common national interest. Now, in the name of national security, Australia’s capitalist regime has joined the U.S. in aggressively interfering into the Ukraine-Russia War with sanctions and arms grants. The regime here has also used the war to further ramp up their Cold War drive against China.

“Trotskyist Platform says that when Australia’s capitalist ruling class push `national security’ they only mean the `security’ of their profits and their system of exploitation. However, the current leaders of the workers movement, the Labor Party, joins the Liberals in fully supporting the ruling class’ so-called `national security’ agenda. In doing so they are obscuring the need for workers to resist the local, all Australian, capitalist exploiters who are undermining the security of our living standards in the capitalists’ drive for ever greater profits.

“We need a new agenda to guide our workers movement. An agenda driven by us, the workers, fighting for what we actually need….

“Whenever such a pro-working class agenda is promoted, the ruling elite screams that such violations of free-market principles are `impractical’. But this is a lie because many of the things we are calling for here today are actually being quite successfully implemented right now in the Peoples Republic of China.

“The reason that China is able to carry out such policies is that it is the working class who hold the power there. The toiling classes grabbed power through a massive revolution in 1949….

“China’s success makes Australia’s capitalist regime very fearful. They are petrified that the masses here will look at the great gains of the working masses in China and decide that they too need to fight for socialism here. That is why the rulers of Australia and other powerful capitalist countries are intent on crushing socialistic rule in China. We must NOT allow the imperialist powers to succeed!

“…it is in the interests of at least 90% of Australia’s population to uncompromisingly defend socialistic rule in China. We must oppose the U.S. and Australian military build up aimed against socialistic China. Just as importantly, we must rebuff the lying Western propaganda attacks on the PRC over Uyghurs, Tibet and Hong Kong!

“It is true that China’s victory over capitalism is incomplete. China’s anti-capitalist crackdown does need to go much further. The PRC’s march towards `common prosperity’ – if it is to truly succeed – requires that the tech, real estate and light manufacturing sectors be confiscated from China’s tycoons and brought into public ownership as well. And this is why we need more solidarity actions with socialistic rule in China right here and all across the world. Solidarity from comrades abroad will give confidence to staunch socialists within China to defy the hostile pressure coming from the capitalist world.  Solidarity with the PRC will help to drive them towards complete socialism.

“If socialistic rule in China continues to strengthen, it will embolden the struggle against capitalist exploitation in this country. Right now, let’s use the fact that the world’s most populous country is successfully operating a system based on public ownership to inspire our own fightback against privatisation and exploitation in Australia. Let’s start working towards common prosperity here in Australia by advancing the struggle for working class rule.”

Speaking to the media during the rally, Jenny Zeng, general secretary of the Australian Chinese Workers Association (ACWA) called for improvements in people’s livelihoods in Australia that will “allow everyone to have jobs and food, without having to worry about life.” The ACWA is a group that organises Australian-Chinese workers to defend their workplace conditions and assert their rights to access social services. As part of their contribution to the April 2 action, the ACWA’s art troupe put on a captivating cultural performance. This included a drum performance in the classical style of North China, a classical dance routine paying tribute to China’s long history and a classical dance performance in the style of China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region signifying blue sky and a happy life.

Also addressing last Saturday’s demonstration was long-time community activist Peter Butler. He powerfully motivated the need for public housing and for other measures that put the needs of the masses first. Peter Butler also attacked the Australian media’s portrayal of the troubles of large Chinese real estate developer, Evergrande. He pointed out that the media wanted to portray Evergrande’s crisis as a sign of China’s supposed impending doom but had hidden the most important aspect of the events surrounding Evergrande: wealth and power were being transferred out of the hands of Evergrande’s greedy billionaire owner and into the hands of the public. In this he was referring to the fact that not only were Evergrande’s troubles the result of the PRC’s moves to curb housing speculation in order to make housing more affordable for the masses and not only had Chinese authorities forced Evergrande’s owner Hui Ka Yan to sell some of his personal assets – including two private jets, several mansions, expensive art works and shares –  to ensure that Evergrande’s workers keep on getting paid but they have pushed Evergrande to sell off to PRC public sector enterprises at low price a number of property assets, while the PRC state has also confiscated parcels of land and other assets owned by Evergrande. Indeed, as in the recent cases of financial conglomerate Tomorrow Holdings, former insurance behemoth Anbang and the real estate and airport operations of the now defunct, giant conglomerate HNA Group, the PRC state has handled the collapse of large private sector corporations in China in such a way that it leads to the transfer of assets from the hands of tycoons into the collective hands of all the people.

For his part, Zac, representing the Wollongong Branch of the Communist Party of Australia, concluded his speech by stressing that unlike what the mainstream media say, China is no military threat whatsoever to the people of Australia. Rather China is winning out in economic competition with capitalism through its own system. Zac emphasised that it is this system of China’s, a system of socialism, which is what Australia’s capitalist rulers really fear.

After several speeches and the cultural performance, the rally marched southwards through city streets from its starting point in Sydney’s Chinatown. Marchers energetically chanted: “More public housing”, “Public housing for you and me – Just like in the PRC”, “Hey ho, hey ho, privatisation has got to go”, “Stop privatisation – Nationalise the Banks” and “P-R-C, Is fighting poverty!”

The final part of the action was a picket outside the offices of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) to protest anti-PRC bias in the Australian media. About one-third of the participants from the main part of the rally joined this brief protest picket. As demonstrators approach the ABC’s premises they chanted, “A-B-C: Always Bashing China!” As rally emcee, Yuri Gromov explained:

“… because the PRC’s socialistic system favours working class people, the capitalist ruling classes in the likes of the U.S.A, Australia and India see the mere existence of such a system as a threat. Hence the media owned or controlled by capitalist tycoons have been waging non-stop propaganda attacks against China. The ABC – which let’s be honest forms the propaganda department of the Australian capitalist state – is one of the worst but will be even worse, if you can imagine it, if it ever becomes privatised itself. In attacking the PRC, the ABC and other media outlets are necessarily denigrating China’s anti-capitalist and pro-working class measures. The media are therefore undermining support for the type of measures needed in Australia to alleviate poverty and combat exploitation of workers.”

The April 2 demonstration was intensively covered by two of the most popular Chinese language media sites in Australia: New Impressions Media (which runs the website Australian Impression and the Sydney Impression WeChat site) and Sydney Today. On the latter site, there was a hot debate amongst readers with 42 readers comments: most sympathetic to the demonstration but a few hostile as well.

Saturday’s action concluded with the rally emcee thanking participants for braving not only the pandemic but the hysterical China-bashing political climate. However as the rally chair pointed out: “with poverty, homelessness and exploitation in Australia ever increasing and with new rounds of privatisation looming we all have a massive amount of work to do.” In carrying out this work to build class struggle resistance against exploitation and privatisation in Australia we are inspired by the anti-capitalist and pro-working class measures being implemented in the world’s most populous country.