The following articles were published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, March 28th, 2001. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** BHP-BILLITON. NATIONAL SELL-OUT BHP and Billiton are made for each other. One created from the exploitation of apartheid, the other from the dispossession of the Aboriginal people under the myth of "terra nullius". From a shared history of genocide, into a future of global exploitation. This is a marriage made in hell, as a huge transnational is being created to make even bigger profits globally. by Paul Matters The $57 billion Billiton takeover of BHP marks a new stage in the domination of global capital in Australia. A huge transnational corporation has been created which will be the world's biggest mining company, the biggest coal producer and the third biggest iron ore company. It will be the second largest resource producer, only slightly smaller than US aluminium giant Alcoa. It will be listed on the London Stock Exchange to maximise profitability and the distribution of wealth, especially to its South African shareholders. Capitalism is an inevitably expanding system. Capitalism today is typified by the creation of huge transnational corporations dominated by volatile global financial markets. Out of apartheid BHP needs no introduction. To the Australian working class BHP is a notorious exploiter, with an atrocious social and environmental record. However, its new "partner" Billiton does need an introduction. It has a record possibly worse than BHP's, if that could be possible. Billiton's history shows that capital has no nationality or morality. Originally a Dutch mining and smelting company, it was taken over by Shell in 1970. In 1994 Shell sold Billiton to Glencor, the second largest South African mining company after Anglo-American, the diamond and gold mining giant. A South African financial analyst James Allen described Glencor as having "a very Afrikaner, nationalist type image". Apartheid was defeated in South Africa but capital did not surrender. The "Sydney Morning Herald's" Johannesburg's correspondent Ed O'Laughlin explained it well when he wrote: "Globalisation, meanwhile is tacitly seen by white business people as a safeguard against the supposedly socialistic, demagogic instincts of the black majority." In 1997 the assets in Glencor were transferred to Billiton, which was listed on the London Stock Exchange. As a South African company Glencor was subject to the new economic controls to prevent the flight of white-owned capital after the defeat of apartheid - by no means an easy task. This situation was described in the "Australian Financial Review": "After apartheid's collapse, wealthy white South Africans wanted a nest egg outside the country but could not have one because of exchange controls." The Glencor-Billington pea and thimble trick almost trebled the wealth of their shareholders overnight. Billiton went on a global takeover buying spree. Glencor now has two workers left in South Africa. It is estimated that the switch gave the white South African owners access to almost $10 billion, and most importantly, where they could get their hands on it, in London. Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man The "corporate genius" credited with this piece of financial wizardry is the CEO of Billiton, Brian Gilbertson. He is described by an admiring capitalist financial media as a "quick learner". A maths and physics graduate in South Africa, he worked as a bomb and missile designer in the apartheid government's National Institute for Defence Research. Without any apparent irony the "Financial Review" gushed that: "In 1970, he switched from building bombs to finance." When the current head of BHP, Paul Anderson leaves Australia with an estimated $47 million in stock options, bonus and deferred payments, as he must in 2002 to take advantage of the Howard Government's generous tax rates for foreign executives, Gilbertson will run BHP-Billiton. The takeover will then be complete. The Australian steel industry will, unless the trade union movement, steel communities and the Australian people resist, be sold off, probably to a Japanese based multinational. Then after only a few years, the economies of scale of globalised steel production will sound the death knell of a steel industry in this country. Howard and the capitalist financial media dutifully applauded the takeover, calling it a perfect fit. There was not a word of concern for the thousands of workers whose jobs are at stake in the takeover. The struggle is on here, now None of this is inevitable. There is an alternative. The big Australian corporations and their richest shareholders who comprise only one percent of the population, having made billions from the exploitation of Australian miners and steel workers, are looking to make their profits elsewhere. It is time for the Australian people, the 99 percent, to take back what is now not wanted by the big transnational corporations. The question of democratic control of our society, our work and our lives is now squarely before us. Those who advocated co-operation with capital and a happy marriage between workers and the bosses of BHP are left now without a credible strategy. Who will we co-operate with now -- Gilbertson? Are we to trust some other multinational yet to emerge to take over more mines and our steel industry? Public ownership and control of our mining and steel industries is not some utopian dream. Nor is it old hat and obsolete. It is an absolute necessity if we as workers and as a people are to have any control over our lives and the economic and political future of our country. -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: BHP-BILLITON. NATIONAL SELL-OUT
Communist Party of Australia Thu, 29 Mar 2001 04:06:19 -0800
