Pip Hinman

  • Experts say budget leaves poor worse off

    The $7 billion of cuts in last year's federal budget were obviously going to have a worse impact on the poor. A study commissioned by the Australian Council for Social Service (ACOSS) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)

  • Greens protest funding cuts

    Greens protest funding cutsEnvironmental organisations and the Greens (WA) have condemned the Howard government's decision, announced on January 16, to cut funding to voluntary conservation groups. Greens (WA) Senator Dee Margetts

  • Australia, US ensure weak nuclear test treaty

    The Coalition government is attempting to squeeze maximum political mileage from the adoption of a resolution it submitted to the UN General Assembly on September 11. The resolution called for the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban

  • Cuts target the poor, vulnerable

    Welfare rights groups have criticised the budget, saying that more than 30% of the expenditure cuts unfairly target people on low incomes. Michael Raper, director of the NSW Welfare Rights Centre, described the new social security

  • ATSIC cuts: 'a tragedy in the making'

    The government's decision to slash the budget of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) is petty and racist. In national monetary terms, the government's "saving" of $400 million over the next

  • Coalition feigns anti-nuclear stand

    Coalition feigns anti-nuclear standIn an apparent about-face, the federal Coalition government has welcomed the report from the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. According to Alexander Downer, the report

  • India blamed, but US continues nuclear proliferation

    With negotiations over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty stalemated, India is being made out as the major obstacle to the world ridding itself of nuclear weapons. It would be far more accurate to blame the biggest nuclear power, the

  • Call for nuclear test ban treaty

    While China has said it will undertake a nuclear testing moratorium from July 30, nuclear disarmament campaigners in Australia warned that the July 29 nuclear test at Lop Nor may not be China's last and called on all nuclear weapons

  • Subsidising environmental destruction

    A report commissioned by the federal environment department in 1994 has revealed that taxpayers are subsidising industries that damage the environment to the tune of $5.7 billion a year. Subsidies to the Use of Natural Resources sheds

  • Australia a leading trader in toxic waste

    Investigations by Greenpeace and Indian environmental group Srishti have revealed that, in the last two years, Australia has exported 9034 tonnes of toxic waste to India. This makes Australia the second highest exporter of toxic zinc

  • ABC organises against the cuts

    The government is taking an axe to too popular an institution in its attacks on the ABC. PM Howard and Senator Richard Alston's announcement of an "independent review", to be headed by Bob Mansfield, former chief executive of the

  • New report warns of greenhouse health disaster

    Heatwaves and the spread of infectious diseases are likely to result from a business-as-usual approach to greenhouse gas emissions, a report by the world's leading health and climate experts has warned. "Climate Change and Human