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A food crisis, caused largely by skyrocketing prices, has hit dozens of countries across the Third World, while an April 14 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) argues that increasing production of “agrofuels” (the large-scale production of biofuels, using food crops to create fuels such as ethanol) further threatens the world’s poor with hunger.

Glenn Stevens, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, has argued that working people should be forced to absorb the cost of higher power bills when a carbon emissions trading scheme is introduced in 2010. Speaking to the April 5 Sydney Morning Herald, Stevens argued that “the policy would need to be well explained to consumers to head off calls for higher wages”.

For most of us here in wealthy and relatively insulated Australia, the word “crisis” sounds like an exaggeration. We hear about the global warming crisis, the world financial crisis and now the food crisis but these seem like abstractions to most of us. “Crisis, what crisis?” is a familiar rejoinder.

Approximately 20,000 votes were submitted across NSW by teachers who attended stop-work Sky Channel meetings on April 8. Teachers went on strike over the state Labor government’s refusal to negotiate a new staffing scheme that would ensure transfer rights for all teachers and guarantee qualified and trained teachers for all students in NSW public schools.

Adverse financial conditions “The financial market crisis that erupted in August 2007 has developed into the largest financial shock since the Great Depression… Adverse financial conditions are likely to have a continuing negative impact on activity in the United States… The United States remains plagued by profound errors in risk management.” — From the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook survey, released April 9.