Jonathan Strauss

Jonathan Strauss argues that organisation and unity will assist the struggle to create a different life to corporate Australia’s version of the “new normal”.

Many are doubtful that the National Tertiary Education Union national executive's jobs protection plan sets out to do what it claims to, writes Jonathan Strauss.

Jonathan Strauss writes that many university workers are questioning the National Tertiary Education Union's leadership during the COVID-19 crisis, sparking a debate among members about the union's strategy to protect workers' conditions.

Other than those held in detention, refugees and asylum seekers living in communities across Australia are probably the most vulnerable to COVID-19, writes Jonathan Strauss.

An Extinction Rebellion protest in Melbourne in October.

In response to the climate emergency and growing social inequality, socialist parties and campaigns in Europe and North America have proposed socially transformative green new deals. But what could one for Australia look like?

A placard at a refugee rights rally in Sydney on July 21.

The government's treatment of refugees reads like something out of George Orwell’s seminal work, 1984. Fortunately, 1984 is fiction and we can force them to change.

Politics in Britain is in turmoil. An early election will most likely happen as soon as December, or at the latest within a few months — the second early election since 2017.

This election will pit the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party against various parties representing the interests of the 1%, including the governing Conservative party (Tories), the Liberal Democrats and the recently-formed, far right, Brexit Party.

Jonathan Strauss joined the September 1 vigil in Cairns for the Biloela family of Priya, Nades and their two children and writes about the growing impact of the refugee rights mvement.

Mainstream talk of Queenslanders embracing the Coalition at the federal elections is louder than ever but the facts are otherwise, writes Jonathan Strauss.

Populism Now! The Case for Progressive Populism
David McKnight
New South, 2018
177 pages, rrp $29.99

David McKnight’s Populism Now! catches a wave of discussion about the chances for a progressive “populism”, writes Jonathan Strauss.

Also in the spray, for example, is a June Quarterly Essay piece by the Australia Institute’s Richard Denniss “Dead Right: how neoliberalism ate itself and what comes next” and the previously post-whatever Chantal Mouffe’s musings on “left populism”.

Staff and student rally against the cuts.

Staff and students at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville and Cairns have refused to accept course and job cuts proposed by the university’s management.

The highlight of the campaign was a 120-strong student-led rally on April 30 at the Cairns campus, the largest student protest action in more than a decade at JCU. Students also joined the community protests called by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) branch on April 27.

Staff at James Cook University in northern Queensland — at least half of whom are employed casually, and often infrequently — have rejected a management proposal for an enterprise agreement at the university. Of the 54% of staff who voted, 58% voted against the proposal in the non-union ballot held over September 13–15.

National Tertiary Education Union members mobilised in the brief one-week consultation and balloting period to secure a vote nearly three times their own numbers.