slavery

The South Australian Liberal Government is preparing the ground for a cheap labour flood by axing labour hire laws targeting migrant worker exploitation. The question of whether or not South Australian’s actually want this people flood is far more problematic. Back in October last year, the lobby group representing migration agents warned that South Australia’s population growth could fall to zero, and economic problems would worsen, following visa reforms by the federal government. Thankfully, this false alarm was ridiculed by former South Australian Premier, Jay Weatherill, who rejected the Migration Institute’s special pleadings. Article by Leith van Onselen, first published at https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/09/and-now-for-the-crush-loading-of-adelaide/ on September 21, 2018.

By Leith van Onselen

As Melbourne and Sydney rage builds, the answer for the living standards destroying growth lobby (property, banks, retail) is South Australia, via Domainfax:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison threatened to “pull levers” to get growth under control on Thursday, including sending international students to regional universities to relieve urban congestion as he puts together a formal population policy.

“Up in the north, they want more population, in Adelaide they want more population,” he said.

“I can tell you, in the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, they don’t.”

The South Australian Liberal Government is preparing the ground for a cheap labour flood by axing labour hire laws targeting migrant worker exploitation. From The ABC:

Attorney-General Vickie Chapman has announced the State Government will seek to repeal the Labour Hire Licensing Scheme which was put in place by the former state government.

The scheme, which came into effect earlier this year, includes stricter penalties for wrongdoers and a requirement for all labour hire companies to be licensed.

The amendments successfully passed SA Parliament in November 2017 and stemmed from a Four Corners investigation alleging the exploitation and underpayment of migrant workers at various companies.

“The whole regime will go,” Ms Chapman told the ABC.

“The labour hire laws were established on ideology and they’ll be repealed on common sense…

The move has been met with both support and outrage, with Business SA applauding the repeal but the Opposition and SA Unions vowing to fight against it.

Let’s recall what the parliamentary inquiry into establishing a modern slavery act said:

Committee view

9.146 The Committee recognises that recent Commonwealth, state and territory inquiries have highlighted the role that unscrupulous labour hire companies play in contributing to the exploitation of migrant workers…

9.150 While the Committee acknowledges that a labour licensing scheme is no ‘silver bullet’ to stopping exploitation and modern slavery, it considers that taken together with the Australian Government’s existing measures and the recommendations of this report, it will assist to improve protections for migrant workers…

Recommendation 48

9.152 The Committee recommends that the Australian Government establish a uniform national labour hire licensing scheme, consistent with recommendations by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, the Joint Standing Committee on Migration and the Senate Education and Employment References Committee. This licensing scheme should incorporate random audits and unannounced inspections of labour hire firms to ensure compliance.

We can’t have that! The horribly conflicted Migration Council wants less protections and it must have its way.

The question of whether or not South Australian’s actually want this people flood is far more problematic. Back in October last year, the lobby group representing migration agents warned that South Australia’s population growth could fall to zero, and economic problems would worsen, following visa reforms by the federal government. Thankfully, this false alarm was ridiculed by former South Australian Premier, Jay Weatherill, who rejected the Migration Institute’s special pleadings:

“In South Australia over the last five years, during the Census period 2011 to 2016, (we) grew at five per cent,” he said. “That’s faster than France, it’s faster than the UK, it’s faster than the US. So in international terms population growth has been quite robust.

“In international terms, (we are) growing like a chemistry experiment. We are growing at twice the rate of the growth of the OECD, three times the rate of the growth of many countries around the world.”

When challenged about the state’s decline in population growth relative to other Australian states, he said: “We’re not running a high population growth strategy.”

“Look if you want to spend an hour and a half in traffic or spend over a million dollars for a home and actually deal with the crime and the dysfunction and the disunity that occurs in some of those other fast-growing places you’re welcome to it, but we like it here.”

During a subsequent debate, South Australia’s then opposition leaders warned that the state’s population was growing too slowly, which earned another strong rebuke from former Premier Jay Weatherill. From News.com.au:

South Australian party leaders have butted heads over population growth at a debate hosted by the SA Press Club on Friday.

While SA Best leader Nick Xenophon and opposition leader Steven Marshall highlighted the state’s rate of growth as an area of concern, Premier Jay Weatherill said he was “not a high population growth person” and neither was his government.

“The notion that we’re a slow growing state is nonsense, it’s just that the rest of Australia is growing like a science experiment,” he said.

Here’s the chart of South Australia’s population growth:

Hardly looks like an “area of concern”, does it?

Then again, Jay Weatherill lost the election. So perhaps SA wants a new dose of falling living standards. Here’s the chart of South Australia’s labour underemployment and underutilisation rates (some of the highest in the land):

The irony is that the SA labour market has been hollowed out by manufacturing-destroying exchange rate lifting policies of the growth lobby. Now it will be internally deflated instead.

Get set for the crush-loading of Adelaide. Rising house prices, falling wages and reduced amenity for all.

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The Law Council of Australia has applauded the Australian Government’s confirmation that it intends to ratify the ILO Forced Labour Protocol as a vital development in combating forced labour, trafficking, and slavery-like practices.

The Protocol establishes obligations to prevent forced labour and, importantly, to provide victims with access to remedy. The Protocol reaffirms the importance of prosecuting the perpetrators of forced labour and ending their impunity. It adds new elements to the Forced Labour Convention which Australia ratified in 1932, aimed at tackling the complexities of modern slavery and addressing the root causes of forced labour.

Law Council of Australia President, Fiona McLeod SC, who has long played a prominent role in advocating for a more robust Australian approach to anti-slavery, noted the significance of the confirmation.

“The Australian Government’s move to ratify the ILO Forced Labour Protocol is a crucial step and, on behalf of the Australian legal sector, I congratulate the government for taking it,” Ms McLeod said.

“Tens of millions of people worldwide face slavery like conditions and many thousands in Australia.

“The social, economic, and moral impact of those numbers is staggering, and it is predominantly the world’s most vulnerable people, including women and children, being exploited.

“The Forced Labour Protocol also requires the Australian Government to support due diligence by both the public and private sectors on supply chains.”

Ms McLeod noted the announcement could be added to a number of other significant shifts in 2017, including steps toward the establishment of a Modern Slavery Act, and the Australian Government’s announcement of a Modern Slavery in Supply Chains Reporting Requirement.

Ms McLeod this year chaired the Labour Exploitation Working Group of the National Roundtable on Trafficking, Slavery and Slavery-like Practices. She also participated in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group on Implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Criticism of some elements of Ms McLeod's statement:

Candobetter.net Editor: Ms McLeod also said, "Australia’s wealth, privilege, and strong rule of law makes it a country well-placed to play a leading role in dealing with this global scourge," but we think this is a questionable assertion, since it ignores the loss of democracy, the rise in homelessness, obesity, the relaxation of labour laws in this country permitting the exploitation of imported cheap labour, and the enormous divisions of wealth in Australia. We also feel that Australia has generally played the role of yes-man to wars and globalisation, and therefore cannot be accurately described as a 'leader'. Australia's 'strong rule of law' might also be questioned on the grounds that most people cannot afford to pursue matters in court or pay the cost of lawyers against corporations.

Did fossil fuel cause capitalism or did capitalism cause the creation of the technology to use fossil fuel for industrial processes? Did population start to grow in Britain before or after industrial capitalism? Why did the industrial revolution begin in Britain? Were there any precedents? Beginning before Roman Britain, this work of evolutionary sociology also looks at how Doggerland, sea-level changes accompanying ice-ages and global warming, forestation changes, malaria and plagues may have affected population movement, along with kinship rules, inheritance laws, and access to distant and denser communities through new modes of transport. Then, departing from Roman Britain, the book examines changes to the political system, fuels, technology and demography during the Reformation, the Restoration, the Dutch capitalist revolution, and the Trade Wars, to the eve of the French Revolution, which is the subject of the next volume. Hint: The cover on this book is like a treasure map and contains the major elements of the final theory. Order Demography Territory Law2: Land-tenure and the Origins of Democracy in Britain.

Demography, Territory and Law (Volume 1: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations) identified a bio-social system that keeps populations in steady-state with their environments. In this stand-alone second volume, the author tests that theory on Britain, where the world's first remarkably fast and sustained population increase began. Did this growth coincide with disruption of clan and tribal organization and relationship to place? Other possible causes investigated include capitalism itself, as well as fossil fuel.

Did fossil fuel cause capitalism or did capitalism cause the creation of the technology to use fossil fuel for industrial processes? Did population start to grow in Britain before or after industrial capitalism?

The author finds that Britain's unusual population growth was built into the British land-tenure system, which caused more fertility opportunities and diverged from that of the Romans or their successors on the European continent. The author confirms the long held suspicion that this inheritance system had something to do with the development of capitalism in Britain rather than elsewhere, and this book develops a completely new theory of capitalism.

Beginning before Roman Britain, this work of evolutionary sociology also looks at how Doggerland, sea-level changes accompanying ice-ages and global warming, forestation changes, malaria and plagues may have affected population movement, along with kinship rules, inheritance laws, and access to distant and denser communities through new modes of transport.

The book finds that the industrial revolution was not inevitable, but more likely in Britain than elsewhere because of the confluence of land-less labour, proximity of coal and iron, and deforestation after the injection of gold and silver from the New World. As it produces more private property and capitalism, the peculiar British system increases wealth disparities and reduces democracy. In France, however, population increase and industrial capitalism did not develop spontaneously, but a democratic revolution did.

Demography, Territory and Law2: Land-tenure and the Origins of Capitalism in Britain

Preview

Order from Lulu - ships in 3-5 days in Australia, US, UK and France.

This is a good film about how government and capitalism deprives people of freedom and gets them to coerce each other. It attributes increases in wealth since the second world war to increases in financial freedom, apparently not understanding the importance of the vast store of fossil fuels we have exploited since the 18th century. Nonetheless it makes good and valid points on a classic them.

Comments and discussion welcome.

For instance, is it really sufficient to 'see' your prison in order to escape it?

How the tragic situation of Haiti's overpopulation and poverty came about? There were not always 9m hungry people there. When this once rich and beautiful island was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492, it was inhabited by a population of about 100,000 Amerindians, living in a steady state economy. The Amerindians refused to mine gold for the Spanish, so the Spanish imported many thousands of slaves from Africa. The French took the whole island over in 1697 and it remained their most lucrative possession until 1825, despite the inhabitants claiming independence and freedom from slavery under the French Revolution of 1789. At that time there were few Amerindians but about 400,000 African slaves and 100,000 colonists. Added on 17 Jan 2010. Slavery is ongoing in Haiti.

We should never forget that the wealth of the developed world was originally built on the slave trade, until coal and oil became cheaper than slaves. And slaving is still going on in Haiti, as A Crime so Monstrous shows.

The Island of Hispaniola, which Haiti, on the western end, shares with the Dominican Republic to the east, was discovered by Christopher Columbus. In colonial times Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue. The west was rich in minerals, notably gold, but the east lacked minerals. The Amerindian population refused to be slaves, so the Spanish imported slaves from Africa to dig up the minerals and farm crops of sugar and coffee for export. On the east side French buccaneers set up camp and, in 1697, the whole island became a French possession. After vicious trade-wars with Britain and other countries lasting on and off for a century, Saint-Domingue was the only French colony left. At the time though, Haiti was the jewel that every country craved. One in eight French people derived their income directly or indirectly from that slave colony and picked it clean. Its GNP was around a third the size of the French mainland economy in 1789.

In 1789 the people of Saint-Domingue, being French, successfully claimed representation in the French revolutionary parliament, which banned slavery. But the French elite would not let go of their cash-cow so easily. The slaves fought courageously for freedom against colonial soldiers from Spain, England and France.

Slavery was formally re-established by Napoleon in 1802 after many battles.

It was not until 1833 that the French State recognised the independence of Saint-Domingue, which took the name Haiti. Incredibly Charles X extorted massive reparations from the Haitians, although so many Europeans had lived off their backs and their land for well over two centuries. The island was impoverished through the payment of the 'debt' which was paid by 1833. Whereas, at the end of the 15th century, shortly after discovery by Christopher Columbus, the population was about 100,000 indigenous Amerindians, following the discovery of gold, by the time of the French Revolution and its own revolutions, it had been unsustainably bloated by continuous importation of massive volumes of slaves from Africa, to a total around 400,000, plus 100,000 Europeans. In 2010, with a population estimated at around 9 million, it is among the poorest states in the world.

Yet, just before the French Revolution, Saint-Domingue was the biggest producer of sugar in the world and produced more than half the coffee in the world. Its external trade was more than one third of metropolitan France’s. One in eight French people lived directly or indirectly from its product, which depended on enslavement of the inhabitants.

This is what happens when a population is deracinated and disorganised in an economy where the only way of getting a living is by your hands. Remember how the original Amerindians had a small and steady population? So did the Africans in the countries from which they were taken. Artificial stimulation of population growth has disastrous consequences, even when it is not done by elites for outright slavery. Haitians have little money for food, let alone contraception, and little access to either.

Poor Haiti. And now this terrible earthquake.

It makes me really angry when all you hear in the news is that the Haitians were the first slaves to get independence and then of how they squabbled. I think that we can safely assume that they may have independence but that the old slave economy has remained, with wages very hard to come by, and that this overt poverty has permitted the classic slave trade to continue, as the book, A Crime so Monstrous, by Benjamin Skinner, shows.

"Chavannes says today’s “dramatic situation” has deeper roots. Delayed agricultural reform is partly to blame, he says, with no proper sharing out of land since independence in 1804, when division of the land of poor slaves amongst the generals merely produced what he refers to as “neo-slavery”. “Agrarian reform is pressing”, says Chavannes, pointing out that 80% of local court cases involve haggles over who has jurisdiction over which parcel of land.

Up to the 1960s however, Haiti was self-sufficient in food. After which the neo-liberalist regime began to bite and gradually destroyed local production, rice, poultry and eggs industry being examples. Since then, the country has suffered from a lack of political commitment to the sector, he argues." Source: Serge Gilles (Leader of the Fusion des Sociaux Democrates Haitienne - Haitian Social Democratic Fusion Party)

NOTES

Editor's note: Additional information about the slave trade in Haiti was included on 17 January 2010.