Collective amnesia is a central component of every day existence in a community that has no time for the past. Life is all about now, unfortunately for societies like Australia, the past fashions the present. I'm not going to bore you with the significant crack that has developed in the Australian colonisation myth. The national confusion surrounding Australia / Invasion Day is slowly, very slowly (like a man moving a mountain with a spoon) seeping into the minds of an increasing number of Australians.
I’m more concerned about the corporate engineered collective amnesia that exists in Australia about all those rights we have enjoyed at work that have been eroded away during the corporatisation, globalisation, deregulation, privatisation revolution that has swept the country over the past four decades.
The disinformation campaign has been so successful, the public mind has been so poisoned that membership of a union is considered by many Australians to be membership of a criminal organisation. The laws that protected worker’s rights and conditions have been transformed into instruments of workplace terror. It’s illegal in this country for workers to withdraw their labour outside an enterprise bargaining period. Workers in Australia have fewer rights than somebody charged with importing 100 kilos of cocaine or manufacturing a batch of crystal meth.
Workers are denied the right to remain silent and can be fined up to $10,000 a day for refusing to answer questions. If that doesn’t frighten them they can be jailed indefinitely until they answer questions. A worker can be jailed for up to 20 years for taking part in a workplace occupation.
People have forgotten that during the early part of the 19th century, 4 year old children were working in mines. They’ve forgotten the sacrifices made by millions of workers who followed the example of Tolpuddle Martyrs who were sent to Australian convict settlements for 7 years for having the audacity as agricultural workers to swear an oath they would work together to improve their lot in life. We seem to have conveniently forgotten every right and liberty we enjoy today was achieved at a great personal cost to those involved in campaigns to improve their pay and conditions.
Nothing was ever achieved by begging and beseeching for a better life.
The lesson you have to struggle and fight to achieve social, political and community change is not taught in universities and schools. The history of those struggles is never mentioned in the corporate owned media and hardly ever mentioned in the government gelded ABC. Monuments to those who achieved these rights and liberties are few and far between. The historical record is unknown to most Australians, that’s why so many Australians are beginning to find rights and liberties that were chiselled in stone have been sandpapered off the polluted landscape.
Collective amnesia is a 21st century cancer that must be eradicated.
Dr. Joseph Toscano