Graham Matthews

  • Grammar hall 'monument to extravagance'

    Greens NSW MLC John Kaye has highlighted the massive inequity in school funding, citing the submission by Sydney Grammar School — one of Australia’s wealthiest schools — of plans to build a new $23.5 million assembly hall.

  • $42 billion to stimulate profits

    On February 3, the federal government launched its second economic stimulus package of $42 billion, to be spent on special grants to individuals, businesses and schools.

  • Government deserts unemployed, poor

    On January 27, a day before heading off to the exclusive Swiss ski-resort of Davos for the World Economic Forum, deputy PM Julia Gillard met with representatives of charities and social service providers to discuss improving government support for the unemployed.

  • Who pays for the recession?

    On January 19, Access Economics interrupted the rosy consensus among economists that the Australian economy may avoid recession, arguing that the economy was already contracting and would fall into recession within the first three months of 2009.

  • Redefining 'fair': Labor's new IR law

    “Work Choices is tantalisingly close to being gone forever”, Labor’s workplace minister Julia Gillard said as she introduced the Fair Work Bill (FWB) on November 25.

  • Noel Washington: Defend unions, abolish the ABCC

    Noel Washington is a senior vice-president of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) in Victoria. He has been a union organiser for 27 years. On December 2, simply for doing his job well, he faces a possible jail sentence under laws supported by the federal Labor government.

  • Watch the worms squirm

    The Howard Years
    Series producer Deborah Masters
    Interviewer/Narrator Fran Kelly
    ABC, Monday 8.30pm

  • Kmart locks out workers

    SYDNEY — Workers at Kmart’s Huntingwood distribution centre in Sydney’s west were locked out by the company for two days from November 10. The workers — members of the National Union of Workers (NUW) — had just completed a four-day strike in pursuit of a new enterprise bargain.

  • Jobs and services slashed in NSW mini-budget

    The global financial crisis is, again, showing up the savagery of the unfettered rule of the market. Governments are responding by increasing financial regulation, nationalising parts of the economy, and spending big on public infrastructure programs to pump-prime a stagnating capitalist economy. Not in NSW.

  • TAFE to be privatised?

    The Rudd government is proposing to make funding for vocational training “contestable”, the Sydney Morning Herald revealed on October 29. The proposal, effectively a privatisation of TAFE colleges, was drafted by state and federal bureaucrats and will be discussed at the November 17 Council of Australian Governments meeting.

  • Working Lives: More work, less security

    Workers across Australia are working longer hours, for less pay and with more job insecurity. These are the findings of a report released on October 29 and prepared by the Workplace Research Centre at the University of Sydney.