Corporations reap profits amid drought

by Nathan Barnes

The drive to "free trade" involves the scrapping of protection for local 
industry and agriculture. Its goal is unfettered access for transnational 
corporations to exploit the world's labour and resources. Thus it is 
interesting that a number of high-profile supporters and beneficiaries of 
free trade policies are members of a group called "Farmhand for Drought 
Relief" that got together last week in the name of Australia's hard-hit 
farmers.

The gathering, which included News Ltd chief executive John Hartigan, 
Telstra chairman Bob Mansfield, Consolidated Press Holdings chairman Kerry 
Packer and advertising executive John Singleton, pledged $4.5 million for 
"emergency aid for drought-stricken farmers".

While there is no doubt that many farmers are in dire straits and in urgent 
need of relief, there is considerable hypocrisy and cynical manipulation 
behind such corporate largesse.

Farm aid could come from any number of sources where taxpayers' money is 
being wasted by government. For example, from just one deal in military 
spending in the Howard Government's frenzied rush to war. A contract was 
announced last week between US company Electric Boat Corporation and the 
Australian Submarine Corporation.

The Government will fund this venture by moving Electric Boat Corp 
personnel to Australia at the cost of $37 million. (Unlike the cap on 
workers' entitlements, the cuts in welfare, education etc, the military 
budget is open-ended.)

That $37 million would sure come in handy to farming families. Instead they 
are now the subject of what comes down to an exercise philanthropic 
condescension. For philanthropy — a Howard Government pet project — is 
what the Farmhand project is about.

By its very nature it belittles the working farmers whose sweat and toil 
has contributed so much to Australia's economic well being over generations 
and who now should receive unstinting and unconditional support from the 
Government.

Instead they get a token from some mega-rich businessmen and the likes of 
Westpac that are eager to shore up their sagging corporate images.

As such it has been promoted by a saccharin media campaign. This 
propaganda, not surprisingly given plenty of space in the News Ltd papers, 
uses the image of a child on a drought-stricken background, a three-year-
old on her family's farm near Brewarrina in NSW. Give her a hand ran 
the headline.

If you reckon something seems familiar here, you're right. This cynical 
appeal to people's genuine sentiments mirrors the mass media's coverage of 
third world drought, poverty and deprivation.

That too is used to hide the reality of the domination of the big 
corporations, the cruel and parasitic dictates of the World Bank and IMF 
and the ruthless exploitation of labour and natural resources.

In Australia, land has suffered many decades of corrupt misuse and abuse as 
big agribusiness, backed by government, steamrolled primary production, 
destroyed mixed farming and overused pesticides. Their land clearing has 
put species diversity in extreme peril and created the conditions for 
increased salinity.

The endless demand for water licences by the likes of the cotton 
conglomerates has been the major cause of the crisis in our river systems. 
Governments have been complicit in this environmental vandalism, the 
results of which become glaringly obvious during times of drought.

In dry times it is the small and medium sized farms that bear the brunt of 
the hardships. For the big pastoral companies with their billions in 
profits, tax breaks and government handouts, it's business as usual.

A look at those behind the push for a free trade agreement with the US 
reveals a who's-who of globalisation's corporate promoters. The Australia-
USA Free Trade Agreement Business Group has a long list of members.

They include mining companies Alcoa, BHP, Esso, the Minerals Council of 
Australia, Mobil and Western Mining. Also the Australian Dairy Corporation, 
Bonlac Foods, Kellogs, the Australian Food and Grocery Council, News Ltd 
and Telstra.

These monopolies back to the hilt the World Trade Organisation's plans for 
a global agriculture free-for-all which include as a central goal the 
elimination of government subsidies and protection.

They're the ones pushing farms deeper into crisis and who are actually 
being given cover by the Farmhand campaign to get on with their dirty 
business.