Backpackers Ripoff - "The Market" at Work

Pic courtesy Bundaberg Newsmail

Rackets targeting backpackers working in rural and regional situations are inevitable.

They're a product of orchestrated attacks on organised labour, the encroaching cancer of marketism, and the flensing of institutions designed to protect workers.

We are, as a country, moving inexorably towards the US model labour market, characterised by a cohort of working poor, a declining middle class, and a rump of plutocrats who produce nothing and exploit everything.

Labour hire companies rival the real estate industry as the masters of parasitism.

It's interesting to examine the responses of both the horticultural and supermarket lobby when exposed to the corruption which has effectively colonised food production.

They blame it on "market forces".

When market forces produce exploitation, sexual abuse and theft in any industry, can I suggest it's time to give "the market" (whatever that is) the boot?

And it's time to jail those who shame our community. Backpackers have long memories.

I'd like to see membership of a union as a prerequisite to being granted a working visa. That would do something about restoring the power balance.

Stand by Me

Ben E. King (who died last week) had no intention of recording the song himself when he wrote it for The Drifters in 1961.

He did, in the end, and the rest is history.

One of my 7 RAR mates has said that the song always reminded him of Vietnam, as the "stand by me" sentiment was a fundamental value during our service. I'd agree with that, and can remember it being played on AFVN radio at the time, and am pretty sure it was The Drifters' version that was getting most of the air play.

Whatever.

It's a great song, and Tracey Chapman's version is stunning.