Australian Business Has Used the Pandemic to Attack Workers — Now It’s Time to Fight Back
Much of Australia is back under pandemic lockdown thanks to Coalition mismanagement. The Liberals have used the crisis to bolster big business. Now the workers’ movement needs to champion its own measures to counter the pandemic and rebuild the economy.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian speaks during a press conference in Sydney, Australia. (Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images)
In response to the rapidly spreading Delta variant of COVID-19, much of Australia is once again in lockdown. The current outbreak was concentrated initially in Sydney and the mistakes made by New South Wales’s (NSW) Coalition government have refocused attention on the worst aspects of Australia’s COVID-19 response. As lockdowns spread to other states, it’s clear that the Coalition’s response to the pandemic has been a disaster for everyone except big business.
The capitalist class has exploited the crisis to drive down living standards and boost profits. Now, however, the gloss is coming off the Liberals, thanks to the poor handling of the latest outbreak by the NSW government and the mangling of Australia’s vaccine rollout by its federal counterpart. To seize on this and to rebuild an economy that delivers for the vast majority of people, the labor movement must fight for a pro-worker recovery plan.
Corruption and Ineptitude
Even by the eyebrow-raising standards of NSW’s notorious tradition of corruption, Gladys Berejiklian’s Coalition state government has been rocked nonstop by scandal. Early on in the pandemic, her government found itself at the center of the Ruby Princess fiasco.
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