Peter Boyle

  • Pauline Hanson: the stalking horse that got away?

    Queensland Premier Rob Borbidge has demanded of Prime Minister John Howard: totally extinguish native title on pastoral leases, or face a rash of Hanson-type independents around the country. This blackmail may benefit Howard, who

  • Who is behind Pauline Hanson's racist offensive?

    After a few months of media-driven celebrity last year, Pauline Hanson, the independent member for Oxley, seemed to drop from the limelight. But now she's back on the front pages as she tours the country promoting her new party,

  • Arguments for socialism: Hired guns

    Hired guns@column head = Hired gunsThere is a growing market out there for hired guns, helicopter gunships, fighter jets and tanks, and the "professionals" who will use these lethal instruments for a fee. When it

  • How the rich invented racism

    Racism is often presented as a deep-seated and "ancient" suspicion and hostility between people of different races — a "natural" if mistaken prejudice that is hard to eradicate but will eventually be banished through

  • Arguments for socialism: Winners and losers

    Winners and losersAccording to the Daily Telegraph, media mogul Kerry Packer won $7.5 million dollars in 20 hands of baccarat in a Las Vegas casino recently. While Packer plays with millions, every year 17 million people die from

  • Migrants don't cost jobs

    If recent polls are to be believed, a majority of Australians are in favour stopping immigration at least in the short term. According to a November 2-3 AGB-McNair poll, 62% are in favour of a "short term freeze", and a Bulletin

  • Asian Australians Against Further Intimidation launched

    Asian Australians Against Further Intimidation (AAAFI) was launched on October 11, 1996 to counter the racist views promoted by right-wing organisations, such as Australians Against Further Immigration (AAFI) and Oxley MP Pauline

  • The ALP in opposition

    Australian Labor Party in governments in the 1980s and 1990s — state or federal — were decidedly conservative. Like all other old social democratic parties, the ALP has moved to the right and adopted the capitalists' neo-liberal

  • Racism: The Howard-Hanson connection

    Just over a week after the independent member for Oxley, Pauline Hanson, made the most nakedly racist speech heard in an Australian parliament for decades, Prime Minister John Howard boasted that since his government was elected,

  • How the media hyped the 'siege' of Parliament House

    The August 19 "siege" of Parliament House prompted a torrent of hypocrisy from the establishment media. Television and radio "news" reports and page one stories in the dailies all seemed to be based on the same cliché-ridden,

  • Canberra, August 19: how the tap came off in their hands

    Canberra, August 19: how the tap came off in their handsThe August 19 rallies called by the ACTU were meant to be a controlled demonstration of union and community support for the ALP's plan to amend the Howard government's

  • Suharto dictatorship 'entering political crisis'

    Suharto dictatorship 'entering political crisis'SYDNEY — According to Astika Anom, one of several Indonesian democratic activists attending the June 21-24 "East Timor: Its Future in the Asia Pacific"