Australia

  • John Pilger: 'No more looking on from the side'

    John Pilger, recipient of the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize, told a packed Opera House concert hall on November 5 that the time for “looking on from the side” had to end.John Pilger, recipient of the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize, told a packed Opera House concert hall on November 5 that the time for "looking on from the side" had to end. His wide-ranging lecture, "Breaking the Australian Silence", sharply criticised Western governments, and particularly the Australian government, for hypocrisy on war and the racist treatment of asylum seekers and Indigenous people.

  • Rudd's two-tiered health system

    If the rhetoric of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission’s report on Australia’s health system is taken at face value, health care in Australia will get an impressive overhaul courtesy of the federal government.

  • Refugees: targeted in transit, forgotten when they arrive

    More than three months after a fatal explosion on an asylum seeker boat, only one new detail has come to light: Northern Territory police still have not formally identified the five people killed from the blast, ABC Online said on July 18.

  • Don't flog a dead horse, bury it

    As the Australian Labor Party holds its 2009 national conference, there’s an old union saying that’s never been more apt: if you don’t fight, you lose.

  • ACTU job summit: Half measures and no real solutions

    The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) hosted a forum on the jobs crisis in Sydney on July 20. The Jobs Summit: Pathways to Recovery brought academics, economists and trade unions together to discuss the effects of the global financial downturn on working people, and solutions to the resulting jobs crisis.

  • More than songs for the dispossessed

    Phil Monsour is a singer/songwriter based in Brisbane. His songs reflect a passionate commitment to the struggles of ordinary people. But Monsour does more than just sing about the world. As part of a broader political engagement, he deploys his music as an organising tool.

  • Workers hit again in Wollongong

    WOLLONGONG — Poppets Schoolwear announced plans to sack 47 employees last week, almost two thirds of the workforce at its Fairy Meadow factory. It was more bad news for Wollongong workers. On the same day, an announcement was made the King Gee clothing factory had closed in the Wollongong suburb of Bellambi.

  • Qld teachers still prepared to strike

    The Queensland Teachers Union (QTU) is assessing a new pay offer put forward on July 24 in the Industrial Relations Commission by the Anna Bligh state Labor government.