Members of the United Workers Union employed across six essential workplace sites in New South Wales and Victoria are on strike, reports Jim McIlroy.
Issue 1332
News
Several candidates running in the February 12 byelection for the former Liberal premier Gladys Berejiklian’s seat of Willoughby are outspoken opponents of the tollway tunnel projects. Peter Boyle reports.
The Refugee Action Collective (Victoria) discussed the “God” powers of the immigration minister, so named because of their unlimited nature. Chris Slee reports.
Nurses and midwives across Western Sydney are protesting the lack of staff which leads to extreme strain and unsafe work conditions. Viv Miley reports.
The Maritime Union of Australia is fighting Patrick Terminals' attempt to cut maritime workers' pay by 50%. Jim McIlroy reports.
Socialist Alliance candidate Sue Bull says the federal government hand-out to aged care workers won’t solve the mounting pandemic death toll among the aged. Sarah Hathway reports.
Kuku Yalanji woman Pat O'Shane has criticised the federal government's Great Barrier Reef funding election promise, reports Alex Bainbridge.
Analysis
We do not need to become scientists to understand that some human behaviour is killing the only precious thing we need — a functioning planet, writes Pat O'Shane.
Grace Tame signalled that women are not happy with the system, bravely pulling off her widely acclaimed, and criticised, protest. Markela Panegyres argues women have a lot to be angry about.
More than half of the population of Afghanistan is facing starvation since the US-led occupation forces withdrew last August. Pip Hinman comments on the ongoing crisis.
Since the pandemic began a new billionaire has been created every 26 hours, according to Oxfam. Jessie de Waal reports.
PM Scott Morrison said Australia would achieve net zero by 2050 ‘the Australian way’. It is pure spin, argues Petrina Harley.
NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge spoke to Suzanne Jenkins about the Greens push for a second Senator in South Australia, NSW and Queensland.
There was no altruism in the speed in which pharmaceutical companies developed successful vaccines. The very future of capitalism relied on science’s ability to keep the wheels turning, argues William Briggs.
Former sex discrimination commissioner Pru Goward claims that Grace Tame represents a failed generational baton-change for the women’s movement. She’s dead wrong, argues Pip Hinman.
The concerning number of new buildings with defects in Sydney is a result of the privatisation of the building certification process, developer greed and the neoliberal approach to planning in New South Wales, writes Ben Radford.
World
The Israeli state is pulling out all stops to delegitimise international organisations that dare use the term "apartheid" to describe its decades-long brutal occupation of Palestine, writes Vijay Prashad.
Kurdish journalists continue to be killed or jailed simply for reporting the news, reports Steve Sweeney.
A mass mobilisation of far-right forces across Canada took place at the end of January and early February, reports Jeff Shantz, as thousands descended on Ottawa to culminate the “Freedom Convoy 2022”.
The recent Islamic State (ISIS) attack on the al-Sina’a prison in Hesekê, northeast Syria, made headlines around the world, reports Peter Boyle.
In Colombia, former guerrilla Gustavo Petro leads in the presidential polls. Petro is the lead candidate for a coalition of left political parties called Pacto Historico (Historic Pact), reports Ben Gilvar-Parke.
A new report exposes the drug trials and other medical experiments conducted without consent and with the backing of United States government intelligence agencies, reports Binoy Kampmark.
Since the coup last October, the military have been sweeping away any hope of justice in Sudan, reports Gwenaëlle Lenoir.
Climate Justice puts the people most affected by the crisis at the centre of the solution. Health Justice must do the same, argues Rehad Desai.
Culture
Alex Miller reviews a new booklet from the Scottish Socialist Party that makes the case for a socialist green new deal.
Time of Pandemics didn’t start out as a film about COVID-19, but only months into the project, the global pandemic began, writes Susan Price.
Silent Earth describes the crisis of declining insect populations, but Ben Courtice writes that it falls short on the solutions required to turn this around.
Mat Ward looks back at January's political news and the best new music that related to it.