By Angela Matheson Australia's social welfare system doesn't work. Long queues and deteriorating service for people on welfare, coupled with industrial action amongst overloaded Social Security staff, indicate the breakdown in social welfare.
Issue 1
News
By Peter Boyle The Australian government is deliberately misrepresenting the Palestine Liberation Organisation's position on the conflict in the Arab-Persian Gulf, according to Ali Kazak, the PLO representative in Australia and ambassador to
By Karen Fletcher BRISBANE — A historic alliance of conservationists, left parties, resident group activists and Australian Democrats has condemned the Liberal City Council's decision to place a massive land-fill dump in Rochedale, a residential
Young green campers plot to save planet By Patricia Corcoran SYDNEY — While military recruiting centres report an increase in unemployed young people seeking a career in the services and Dick Smith and Tandy are trying to interest young people
By David Mizon MELBOURNE — Of 74 maintenance and boiler house workers who struck for three months last year over health and safety issues and in support of their sacked shop steward, only 29 remained when maintenance workers at Hoechst's Altona
Most of the marches and rallies in International Women's Day will express opposition to the war in the Middle East. In Sydney, writes Margaret Mayhew, IWD promises to be the most angry and militant in years. Bush's war in the Gulf and the
By Peter Boyle Environmentalists have cautiously welcomed the draft report of the Resource Assessment Commission into the effects of the proposed gold-platinum-palladium mine at Coronation Hill in Kakadu national park. While the report, released
SYDNEY — Ten thousand boisterous protesters marched in bad weather on February 10 in a spirited demonstration organised by the Network for Peace in the Middle East. The march ended at the Domain with a rally chaired by journalist Jane Singleton,
SYDNEY — The New South Wales ALP machine ("Sussex Street") and local members Peter Baldwin (federal) and John Murray (state) have been led a very merry dance here in recent days by the party's Haberfield Branch. The fracas has been caused by the
By Dave Mizon MELBOURNE — As part of the settlement to the Hoechst dispute, a Health and Safety Review Committee was set up to investigate the problem of DCB (dichlorobenzene) contamination. The committee was made up of an independent consultant
By Robin Osborne Many Sydneysiders remain sceptical about how the NSW Water Board is handling the city's sewage disposal dilemma, with concerns focussing on just how clean the ocean will be after hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on
By Helen Jarvis SYDNEY — On January 25, Donna Burns died tragically, just three days before she was to leave for Cambodia on assignment for the trade union aid organisation APHEDA for which she worked as Asia Pacific project officer. Many
World
War fever is having a direct impact on Arabs throughout the Western world. In Britain, "national security" provisions have been activated which allow for the detaining and deportation of resident Arabs. More than 170 people, many of them opponents
By Tracy Sorensen PRAGUE — Before the invasion of Kuwait, Iraqi dissidents had for years tried to persuade world leaders and public opinion to end military assistance for the Iraqi regime. They were mostly ignored. Now, says Iraqi dissident and
By Tracy Sorensen PRAGUE — The news that war had broken out met with an instant response right through Europe. In Berlin in the early hours of the morning on January 17, hundreds of high school students ran through the streets shouting: "Wake
By Sally Low Three out of four Lithuanian voters on February 9-10 answered "Yes" to a referendum asking "Do you support the idea that Lithuania is an independent, democratic republic?" The vote for independence can only have been increased by the
By Will Firth BERLIN — Forty years of divergent development have produced two very different social systems in Germany. The words "East" and "West" are still used widely because, although there is now only one state, major differences in
ALEXANDER BUZGALIN is a lecturer in economics at Moscow State University and a central figure in the Marxist Platform tendency of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
East German students on the march By Kath Gelber BERLIN — "Westies and Easties interpret the Federal Republic of Germany in different ways; the point however is to change it." This banner paraphrasing Marx decorated the foyer of the Humboldt
Law No. 33/81 of the Cuban National Assembly of People's Power states: "... State agencies, businesses and their affiliates, farm cooperatives, political, social and mass organisations, and citizens themselves must develop a culture concerning the
By Peter Boyle "We don't support Saddam Hussein, and we are against his occupation of Kuwait, but we are also against the bombing of Baghdad and other cities and towns in Iraq because innocent children, women and men are being killed", Abu Salam, a
HELEN JARVIS spent 10 days in Cambodia in December, her third visit to that country. She describes the changes that had taken place since her last visit three years earlier, and an interview with the deputy foreign minister about the prospects for
During the recent coalition negotiations between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), one of the demands made by the FDP — and agreed to by the conservative parties — was that
By Tom Jordan At a press conference held in Jerusalem on February 6, a petition was presented which called for an immediate cease-fire and a negotiated end to the Gulf War. It was signed by 126 Israeli peace activist and public figures. A number of
Culture
Amongst Equals By Tom Zubrycki available on illegal video throughout Australia Reviewed by Barry Healy Tom Zubrycki has produced a revealing work about the Australian trade union movement. But it reveals more in what is passed over and in the
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Directed by Beeban Kidron Based on the novel by Jeanette Winterson Academy Twin Cinemas 1991 National Gay & Lesbian Film Festival Reviewed by Stephanie Miller Oranges is the witty, optimistic, sometimes sad
Sally Low reviews Boris Kagarlitsky's book, Farewell Perestroika: A Soviet Chronicle.
Coming soon Rory McLeod is back in Australia and is touring with Kev Carmody. A coming issue of Green Left will have an interview with Rory on folk music, politics and cultural dissent. Rory and Kev will be playing at Groome Park Hotel,
Editorial
Bob Hawke, watching cricket in Perth on February 2, decided to perform a major foreign policy somersault and campaign to have international sanctions against the South Africa's white-minority regime phased out. Labor has now openly joined forces with