By Lisa Macdonald
SYDNEY — The defence of wages, conditions and trade union rights are the themes of a number of public actions being planned around the ACTU Congress to be held in Sydney from August 30 to September 3 this year.
The
Issue 111
News
Victorian plan to scrap civil juries
By Alex Cooper
MELBOURNE — The Kennett government is considering plans to scrap juries in civil cases. Draft legislation has been produced by the attorney general's department and will be considered
By Maurice Sibelle
BRISBANE — Opposition to the proposed state government cutbacks in education is growing following the largest strike of teachers in Queensland on August 4.
At a meeting between the Queensland Council of Parents and
By Melanie Sjoberg
ADELAIDE — There's a joke going around that says Mabo stands for "Money Available for Barristers Only", Kathy Whimp, project officer with the Aboriginal Legal Rights Service told a Politics in the Pub forum attended by
By Ray Fulcher
MELBOURNE — The new leadership of the State Public Services Federation (Victoria) has accepted the Kennett government's industrial program of individual contracts. The move was welcomed by Premier Jeff Kennett and Trades Hall
South African Women's Day celebrated
By Jane White
PERTH — Working together, with much laughter and harmony, the ANC Support Group and Campaign Against Racial Exploitation (WACARE) women's day committee welcomed over 120 comrades and
By Karen Fredericks
Students across Australia participated in a National Day of Action called by the National Union of Students (NUS) on August 10 to protest the increases in tertiary education charges foreshadowed for the upcoming federal
By Liz McMurrich
PERTH — More than 3000 Aborigines and non-Aboriginal people marched and rallied on here August 13 to demand recognition of Aboriginal land rights.
Speakers included Aboriginal activists Ted Wilkes, Clarrie Issacs,
'Boat people' win release
By Stephen Robson
PERTH — A Federal Court ruling led to the release of 26 Chinese "boat people" in Port Hedland on August 13.
The decision was the first test of federal government legislation enacted in
Prison campaign continues
By Bronwen Beechey
MELBOURNE — An inquiry by the Victorian Equal Opportunity Board into discrimination against women prisoners is to go ahead despite the failure of an injunction aimed at preventing the removal
By Dione Green
BRISBANE — On Friday August 13, 300 high-school students attended a rally in King George Square to protest against the Queensland government's cuts to the education budget. Students from 17 high schools walked out of their
World
By Cipto R.
JAKARTA — On August 30, Indonesia's second biggest city, Surabaya, was brought to a halt when drivers of the huge numbers of public transport small vehicles went on strike. Indonesia's public transport system relies on various
By Catherine S. Beacham
When US naval personnel formally withdrew from their Philippine base at Subic Bay last November, they left behind far more than the unsightly neocolonial infrastructure of their postwar militarisation policies.
By Karen Fredericks
The existence of an armed conflict in Bougainville has been raised formally for the first time in the South Apcific Forum at the forum's 24th summit meeting which ended on Nauru last week.
During the summit New Zealand
Franc falls, is US dollar far behind?
By Stephen Millies
NEW YORK — "Money does not smell", wrote the Roman historian Tacitus nearly 20 centuries ago. Whether or not this is true, money has to represent value. This is the root of the
The following speech given by Cuban President Fidel Castro to the Third Ibero-American Summit held July 13-16 in Salvador, Brazil.
We are meeting at a time of world crisis and conflicts of every kind. The hopes for peace, stability and
It's rare that the International Monetary Fund does makes the front page of the New York Times. When it does, it's probably an exception that proves a rule. On May 20, the newspaper's Steven Greenhouse reported that in a "long overdue"
Culture
Surrealism: Revolution by Night
Art Gallery of NSW
July 30 to September 19
Reviewed by Zanny Begg
Salvador Dali's famous utterance "the only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad" seems, in a peculiar way, to define
The birth of McCarthyism
Timewatch: The Un-Americans
SBS Television
Three-part series beginning Monday, August 23, 7.30 p.m. (7.00 in Adelaide)
Reviewed by Allen Myers
"Are Communists People?". It sounds like a joke today, but that
Bloodlines
Kev Carmody
Festival Records
Reviewed by Ignatius Kim
The journey that Kev Carmody embarked on early this year with the EP Streetbeat is continued with his third album, Bloodlines.
Originally a journey through
Blackfellas
Starring John Moore, David Ngoombujarra, Jaylene Riley, Lisa Kinchela and John Hargreaves
Written and directed by James Ricketson
Opening in Melbourne and at Valhalla Cinema in Sydney on August 26, Perth on September 2 with other
The Piano
Written and Directed by Jane Campion
Starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin
Reviewed by Noel Hester
Who says that Australia doesn't have aspirations to be a regional colonial power? First, they plundered
Melbourne's Westscapes
By Peter Boyle
MELBOURNE — For most of the life of this city — spawned of the 1850s gold rush — its western suburbs have been considered too ugly to feature as a subject artists. These working- class suburbs
Friends on the Road
Bhundu Boys
Cooking Vinyl through Festival
Victims
Lucky Dube
Dolphin through BMG
Reviewed by Norm Dixon
Over the past five years, African music has become increasingly popular in this country. Two of the
The Genetic Engineer
By Geoff Francis and Peter Hicks
There's no better career
Than a genetic engineer,
Shaping the next generation to come.
What nature still gets wrong
I can improve on,
The whole world will thank me when I'm
Jimmy Cliff: 'No peace without justice'
By Norm Dixon
Jimmy Cliff is today the standard bearer of politically conscious Jamaican reggae. He came to fame as part of the classic generation of reggae freedom fighters led by the now-deified
Editorial
US/UN out of Somalia!
The United Nations/United States "peacekeeping" mission in Somalia stands exposed for the grisly farce it is.
In a joint statement addressed last week to the UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 26