Membership ballots to determine party policy and select party leadership — surely these measures guarantee party members' control over elected politicians? It seems not: the Australian Democrats have such a structure but have
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Democrats: Can the bastards survive?Public outrage at the goods and services tax deal was fuelled by the realisation that the Australian Democrats are just as prepared to do grubby deals as the "bastards" they are supposedly
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The opposition to the GST, 58% against according to opinion polls, is being reflected in the angry letters flooding newspapers condemning the deal between the Australian Democrats and the federal government. Newspaper editors appear
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"Crime against democracy" was how the Australian's May 15-16 editorial described Senator Brian Harradine's May 14 decision to reject the goods and services tax (GST) as "inherently regressive". Other newspaper editorials and
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After the goods and services tax (GST) was decisively rejected at the 1993 federal election, the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) helped resuscitate it. In 1996, ACOSS and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
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The fact that the current goods and services tax (GST) debate is posed as a choice between increasing compensation or exempting food demonstrates that all parties to the debate already know that the GST is intrinsically unfair. For
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Earlier this year, Australian tennis star Pat Cash received a lot of praise for donating a large sum of money to a charity for young people. Cash also chooses to avoid paying tax on his wealth by living outside Australia in a tax
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The federal and state governments are midway through a review of community legal centres (CLCs) throughout Australia. A key objective is to restrict CLCs' involvement in legal reform campaigns and prisoners' rights and force them to
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Is there a crime wave?The impression you get from listening to the politicians is that we are in the midst of a violent crime wave. Crime statistics contradict this picture. When the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research
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Prime Minister John Howard's campaign against the dangers of heroin has focussed almost exclusively on advocating tougher law and order policies rather than treating drug-use as a health issue. "Zero tolerance" policing is Howard's
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Heroin hypocrisy: why politicians punish the victimsThe 1997 United Nations' World Drug Report shows Australian government spending on policing drug use was 14 times that for drug treatment and more than eight times that for drug
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More cops + more jails = more injusticeIt has become predictable that state elections begin to resemble an auction, both major parties vying for the title of being the "toughest on crime". The New South Wales election campaign is