People before profits! Put the mines, banks and energy companies in the hands of the people!
Socialist Alliance 2013 federal election campaign
The Socialist Alliance says: Bring the mining industry, the big banks and the energy companies under public/community ownership and control, so that they can be run in a way that respects Aboriginal rights, the environment and social justice.
The urgent need to address climate change alone demands that these industries be immediately taken out of the hands of the billionaires and their global corporations and operated as not-for-profit public services under the democratic control of the majority.
From Greece to Australia, the whole world has witnessed the bankruptcy of capitalism as it has destroyed the lives of billions of people through the wholesale privatisation of our collective wealth and socialisation of their losses.
In Australia, Liberal and Labor governments have squandered the fruits of the biggest ever mining boom which has come to its peak. The Australia Institute calculated in May this year that income tax cuts between 2005-06 and 2011-12 have taken $169 billion out of federal revenue and had disproportionately benefited the richest 10%.
While mining companies and banks have made hundreds of billions of dollars in super profits, they have paid the smallest ever proportion of these profits in tax. Labor’s mining tax was a dud.
We cannot afford to leave our future to the likes of Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and the faceless bankers. If we do so, we won’t have a future worth leaving to future generations.
The mining industry needs to be publicly owned not just to redistribute the huge profits being made from exploiting finite resources, but also to stop uranium mining and to phase out coal and other fossil fuels, while creating new jobs in radically boosted renewable energy, public transport and other social infrastructure.
The banks do not have to be run as profit-gouging private operations. They can be run as a not-for-profit public service providing cheap credit to families, community groups and small businesses and a safe and ethical way for people to invest their savings. Instead of gambling these savings on irresponsible and dangerous corporate schemes, our collective savings can be used to fund the public infrastructure we need for a just and sustainable future.