In 2001, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) published a pamphlet titled Who Owns Australia? There have been a lot of changes in Australia’s economy and the political situation in Australia and the world since 2001. The CPA (M-L) decided that it was time for an updated pamphlet to be produced.
From the Introduction...
This pamphlet exposes the basic economic workings of Australian society and looks at the ownership of the key sectors of the Australian economy by foreign multinational corporations and financial institutions who control the power in this country. They are the imperialist ruling class in Australia.
We hope that this new publication will help the Australian people in their struggles against the harmful effects of the multinationals’ domination and plunder of our country and for an independent and socialist Australia.
The economic domination by multinational corporations and financial institutions penetrates into all levels of Australian society — politically, economically, industrially, culturally and militarily. For example, Australia’s taxation system heavily favours big corporations avoiding paying taxes at the same time as wide-reaching cuts to community and welfare services are continuously rolled out. Big corporations like Glencore, Chevron, John Holland, and CIMIC are driving the oppressive anti-worker laws.
Australia’s indigenous people continue to be denied rights to ownership and control of their lands.
Manufacturing industries are re-structured to accommodate multinational weapons corporations and Australia’s “defence” policies and military are more deeply integrated into the US war machine. US stealth bombers and thousands of US troops rotate through Darwin and Australia continues to play host to US bases such as Pine Gap, which controls US spy satellites and is integral to its drone warfare program.
However, this small pamphlet will mainly concentrate on the economic domination. Key sections of Australia’s economy such as banking and finance, mining and resources, construction, media, and agriculture are in the hands of foreign corporate interests, predominately US owned. They exercise great influence over compliant federal and state governments through organisations such as the Business Council of Australia....
