Stephen O'Brien

  • Labor ‘out coaled’ in Upper Hunter

    The NSW Nationals’ narrow victory in the Upper Hunter byelection has saved the scandal-plagued government of Premier Gladys Berejiklian, writes Stephen O'Brien.

  • Community calls on Orica to close Kooragang Island

    Following the tragic ammonium nitrate explosion in Beirut, Stephen O'Brien writes that Orica needs to do more than issue reassurances that its stockpile of the explosive on Kooragang Island is safe. 

  • Hands join against seismic testing

    Hundreds of people gathered on northern Sydney, Central Coast and Hunter beaches to protest the resumption of seismic testing in early May.

  • Let’s let Venezuela pick its own leaders

    In 1996, when I was working in Nicaragua, I attended a conference in El Salvador and met a charismatic former army officer from Venezuela called Hugo Chávez. He explained how he was building an alliance between patriotic military officers and working people and that they were seeking to win the next elections and use the country’s oil wealth to improve the quality of life for the poor.

  • Key policy tests looming for NSW Labor MPs

    The inability of the Liberal Party to find candidates for Hunter seats for the March New South Wales state election suggests that even its party faithful recognise that Gladys Berejiklian’s Coalition government is headed for electoral defeat and, probably, a total wipe-out in the Hunter.

  • Bernie Sanders' election platform applies to Australia too

    During the early days of his campaign to be US president, Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders wondered if the crowds that he saw on the street were headed to a baseball game, only to be told: “Actually they are on the way to hear you”. This story illustrates how the Sanders message of free education, affordable health care, a $15 minimum wage, taxing the mega-rich and support for renewable energy has taken off. Young Americans — the millennials — facing unpayable student debts, unaffordable health care, low wages and climate change inaction, are flocking to his campaign.

  • The many lives of Margaret Henry

    Feminist, resident activist, popular educator, councillor, public transport campaigner, mother, academic, environmentalist and true democrat, Margaret Henry, who passed away late last year in Newcastle, had many sides to her wonderful life.

  • “Froth-mouthed, racist halfwits” in Newcastle

    Newcastle anti-racists are counter-mobilising again against Reclaim Australia, the anti-Muslim group, who are again attempting to establish a support base in the Hunter Region. The far-right racists are using a proposal by Newcastle's Muslim Association to build a mosque and small funeral parlour in Buchanan, in the Hunter Valley, as a pretext to attack the Muslim Community. Buchanan is a rural area just outside Kurri Kurri and close to the Hunter Expressway.

  • Newcastle disability workers rally

    Two hundred Public Service Association (PSA) members were joined by people with disabilities, their relatives, friends and other trade unionists in a protest in Newcastle on November 4, as part of a four-hour strike against the privatisation of disability services. The Baird government is using the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme as a cover to sack 13,000 workers in public disability services and gift state assets to private providers.