Thanks to Melbourne Radio 3CR Stick Together program for recording Don Sutherland’s speech for the LIFE campaign at Melbourne May Day. Listen between 18:25 mins and 27:20 mins on the recording.

Snippets from the speech

 “Imagine this. Members of the working class who are relatively impoverished in 3 electorates in Australia cannot go shopping without a government imposed cashless welfare card and when they go shopping meant to spend their income in a specific way defined by the government to the great advantage of food corporations coles and Woolworths think about that. Because right now the government wants to extend that to other forms welfare. Think of you at those of you here at the pension age or heading towards it.  The government wants you and your brothers and sisters to be forced to spend your money according to the dictates of the government.”

“We say the right things about Unity and solidarity every now and again but rarely work to build a combined movement.  The Living Incomes For Everyone campaign is slowly working with great determination to pull together the connections to build a movement that can inflict pain on those right wing governments and corporations they serve.”

“We are acting in solidarity with unions who are fair dinkum about winning these demands, and lifting the minimum wage.”

 “This is our program, to break the poverty machine.”

“The downward pressure on the social wage  is a wage cut for those are on the industrial wage.  The penal powers of the Fair Work Act are putting downward pressure on the industrial wage.  Forty three dollars a day unemployment rate – who can live on that? So the unemployed turn to the most generous people in the population, working class people who contribute in dollars to help them out , or with a bed, at home.  This is how it works. The social wage and the industrial wage are deeply interrelated. It is socialist political party, and socialist unionism business to restore the struggle for both at the same time.”

“We urge you all to face up to the reality our sectional politics is a dead-end. It’s at least 50% why we have 43 bucks a day for the unemployed “

“Long live May Day and let’s make next year’s at least twice as big and let’s make next year’s more united for real not just in slogans.”

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