The hysteria gets worse

Bob Gould

Norm Dixon works himself up into an artificial frenzy, calls Peter
Beattie a scab and claims Beattie is supporting the police officer who
was carefully criticised in the coroner's report on the Palm Island
events.

I saw Beattie on television commenting on these matters. He was
cautious, but he went out of his way to say that he had confidence in
the coroner, who did her job very professionally. He went on to say
that the police officer had been removed from active policing and
placed in office work.

He added that it was up to the Director of Public Prosecutions to
decide how to proceed, and by implication whether to prosecute the
police officer. That's hardly supporting the police officer, anywhere
but in the feverish propaganda of Dixon and Riley.

Bourgeois jurisprudence includes the doctrine of the separation of
powers. This doctrine isn't perfect from a socialist point of view,
but it is quite unreal to expect a politician of the careful
Bonapartist Labor sort to proceed outside the framework of that doctrine.

After all, when campaigning for proper treatment for David Hicks,
socialists take the agitational position, quite properly, of demanding
normal legal procedures rather than Bush's kangaroo court. Socialists
should be very careful about demanding summary justice for anyone.
The artificial fury of Riley and Dixon aside, they should consider
these questions:

a. An election is about to take place in Victoria. The Labor
government has reformed the Victorian upper house, introducing a form
of proportional representation, thus democratising a reactionary
institution that has been a fetter on the workers of Victoria for 150
years. The ruling class in Victoria is very worried about the awful
prospect of Greens being elected in four or five of the upper house
seats under the new proportional representation arrangements, and
having the balance of power. This is all thanks to democratic reforms
introduced by a Labor government, which is no small thing.

b. Even concerning the extremely conservative Labor government in NSW,
Blind Freddy can see that virtually the whole of the ruling class is
now preoccupied with trying to remove the Iemma government. The
reactionary state political correspondent, Imre Salusinsky who has now
made the transition from alleged humourist to high politics
commentator, spelled it out brutally this morning to Virginia Trioli
on the ABC, talking about Howard's speech at last night's Quadrant
dinner. Salusinsky said that the Tories were putting maximum effort
into defeating the Iemma government because the determined stand of
the NSW trade unions had stiffened up the Iemma government on Work
Choices, and that was a very considerable obstacle to federal
government plans to shackle the working class (my words, not
Salusinsky's).

In these situations, real class forces are at work. There are many
more issues facing the labour movement than the dopey, ultraleft and
increasingly mad preoccupations of Dixon and Riley.