CUNNINGHAM NEWS Newsletter of the Federal Member for Cunningham, Michael Organ MP New Office - Globe Lane Wollongong Web - www.michaelorgan.org.au ISSUE 7 SEP 2004 ALPThe US-Australia Free TradeSELLS Agreement is a gigantic con job. OUTThe ALP’s so called protectionsON of the PBSFTA are manifestly This was one of the comments that I made as the ALP voted for inadequate. There has never been an independent assessment the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) last time the Parliament sat of the US- Australia FTA, so Australia is really flying blind in August. Only four MPs voted against the FTA in the House into a deal with the biggest economy on the planet. Worse still of Representatives (three Independent MPs and myself), and it was all rushed through to suit the electoral timetable of the we were left to face the combined weight of the ALP and the Prime Minister and to repair the leader of the Opposition’s Coalition who voted as one. standing with the White House. The FTA is not in Australia’s national interest. The ACTU decided that the FTA is a trade deal in the Labor’s decision to support it was a let down because the FTA immediate interest of US companies which will cost jobs is a threat to manufacturing industry jobs in the Illawarra. in the manufacturing industries. The South Coast Labour Unions say more than 30,000 jobs, particularly in the car Council agrees, with research suggesting the FTA will make component manufacturing sector which relies heavily on Australia $47 billion worse off. steel, are threatened under the FTA. The Opposition identified 43 problems with the FTA, but Labor’s cave-in also delivers the cost of prescription drugs nevertheless voted with the government to deliver a bad into the hands of the giant US pharmaceutical industry, as the deal for Australia, the consequences of which have not been recent Four Corners program graphically exposed. properly considered or scrutinised. Michael Organ & Independent MPs Bob Katter, Peter Andren and Tony Windsor face the combined force of the ALP and the Liberal/National Coalition to divide the House of Representatives on the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement, 13th August 2004. Bill Whiley 1927-2004 “If you don’t fight, you lose.” {The following testimonial was delivered to the House of Representatives on 12 August 2004} Mr ORGAN (Cunningham) (4.45 p.m.) — I rise today to speak in memory of my dear friend Bill Whiley, who passed away last Thursday evening, 5 August, at the age of 76, as a result of the onset of asbestos related mesothelioma. Bill was an inspiration to many in the community, an outstanding trade unionist and community activist and a great Australian. I came to know Bill on the Sandon Point community picket, set up in March 2001. Bill was an active supporter of the picket, and it remains in place as we speak due in large part to his efforts. Many an hour I sat there with Bill, listening and being educated about the way of the world and politics. Sandon Point was just one of the many union and community pickets he supported during his long life. Bill’s philosophy could best be summed up in the words: `If you don’t fight, you lose.’ He was a fighter for the ordinary Australian: a fighter to the death. William Morton Whiley was born on 26 August 1927 Bill Whiley (left) at the Save Medicare Rally, Wollongong, 1 October 2003. at Millthorpe, near Orange. His father was a farmer and then a railway worker, and his mother was a schoolteacher and former dux of Fort Street I remember Bill working on the Woonona booth at the last federal election, Girls High School. Bill trained with the cadets during World War II, but the in November 2001, handing out how-to-vote leaflets for the Greens war ended before he could be called up. He began his working life in 1947 candidate Carol Berry. He was in fine form that hot summer’s day, sweet as a shunter on the New South Wales railways, based in Broken Hill and talking and cracking jokes with all who came to vote, and using the line, working throughout the western districts of New South Wales. `Don’t go grey, go Green,’ as he pointed to the shining grey-white locks on his head. Bill joined the Greens around the time of my election to this According to a recent interview by Jenny Dennis published in the Illawarra place in October 2002, and the Cunningham result and rise of the Greens Mercury, an obituary by Paddy Gorman and material supplied by his family, throughout Australia in recent years had given him hope, he told me. Bill was radicalised by the 1949 coal strike. The following year, 1950, he got a job in the Broken Hill mines and joined the Communist Party because On 2 April this year he issued a press release on behalf of the Pensioners he was `fed up’ with the Labor party after it supported the jailing of Miners and Superannuants Association, entitled, `Luna Park smiles again—but Federation leaders. Bill visited Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and half a million Australians still waiting to get their teeth fixed’. A month later China in 1955, at a time when Australians were severely discouraged from he was diagnosed with mesothelioma and forced to come to terms with the doing so and were spied upon by their government when they did. His New fact that his days were nearing an end. Towards the end of July, Bill joined South Wales Police Special Branch file attests to that—it was active right a unique band of activists to be awarded life membership by the South up until 1994. Coast Labor Council in recognition of his long involvement in significant Along with his good mate and mentor Bill Flynn, Bill Whiley fought the industrial and political campaigns in the Illawarra. entrenched power of the ALP’s right wing on the Barrier Industrial Council I visited Bill at his home—a little cottage in amongst the bush on the side and was the last Communist Party of Australia councillor elected in Broken of the Illawarra escarpment at Wombarra—on Friday 30 July, just a week Hill. Bill was a long-term member of the Broken Hill Field Naturalists before his death. He took me aside. We slowly shuffled outside together Society and an early and strong advocate for conservation issues. and he told me how the frogs had returned to the little creek which runs by In 1975 Bill moved to the Illawarra and began his life as a coalminer at his house. He told me to keep fighting—for Medicare, for the poor and for Coalcliff, north of Wollongong. He quickly became involved with the local those who need help. He was lobbying me to the last, just as he had done union, and I understand that the manager was sacked because he hired when he was in this place last December as representative of pensioners him. Bill went on to become lodge president and was elected to the southern and superannuants across the nation. Bill was a warrior, a fighter, a great district board of management. In 1982 he was at the head of the hundreds bloke. We loved him and will miss him dearly. of miners and steelworkers from the Illawarra who stormed Old Parliament Bill is survived by his three children: Gregor, Andrew and Lyn. As Gregor House in Canberra. informed me: His retirement from the coal industry in August 1987 only meant one thing Bill was a rare individual who cared deeply about the lives of ordinary for Bill: more time to spend on industrial and community campaigns. In Australians and worked tirelessly at local, State and Federal levels to 1988 he stood on an Independent/Greens ticket with well-known unionist improve them. Bill was against unfairness, exploitation and inequality and environmentalist Jack Mundey for the New South Wales upper house. wherever it was found and Australians who knew Bill understood and In retirement, Bill served as the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division’s respected those qualities, and gave him their encouragement and support national returning officer. For the past few years Bill was secretary of the regardless of their political affiliations. Bill’s ideals of openness, inclusion New South Wales Retired Mineworkers Association and at the time of his and tolerance were the antithesis of modern `wedge’ politics, and stand as death he was secretary of the New South Wales Combined Pensioners an example to us all. and Superannuants Association, in which he played a leading role in the campaign to protect Medicare. I rise here today in honour of the late Bill Whiley. ALP Supports Government Increase in Cost of Medicines The recent backflip by ALP leader Mark Latham in deciding to support the Howard Government’s increase in the cost of prescriptions by $4.90 will savagely impact upon the lives of families in the Illawarra. The Greens were the only party to oppose this increase in the House of Representatives. The ALP’s support for raising the price of PBS medicines to the tune of $1.1 billion per year is nothing short of a disgraceful betrayal of working class people. The decision will most severely impact upon the poor, the sick, the unemployed, the elderly and those with young children - in other words, the most vulnerable and needy in our society. The Labor party hope to use the money to deliver tax cuts to the rich if they are elected to government in the near future.