By Jorge Jorquera PERTH — The sight of Perth City railway station empty would usually be considered a disaster from the point of view of a regular Green Left Weekly seller. But on October 17, it was an inspiring sight as Western Australia was
Issue 208
News
DEET workers fight for job By Frances Berney Members of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) in the Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) have been involved in an ongoing dispute with DEET since they took strike action in
By Ben Courtice HOBART — "The Greens are going for government" and are "not some kind of ginger group" Australian Greens leader Bob Brown told a fundraising gathering here on October 14. A recent poll, commissioned by North Forest Products, showed
By Melanie Sjoberg ADELAIDE — A combined meeting of PSA/SAIT School Service Officers was held on October 19 to plan the next phase of a campaign to defend members jobs in this state. The meeting passed a motion calling on the Brown Liberal
By Bill Mason BRISBANE — Meatworkers, locked out of the Beaudesert plant of the Australian Meat Holdings Ltd (AMH) after they struck in opposition to a non-union enterprise agreement, are continuing their picket. The enterprise agreement involves a
By Sally Mitchell DARWIN — On October 12, Aboriginal people from four town camps in Katherine travelled to Darwin in a bus convoy to protest about housing shortages. Four new camps are urgently required to house 71 families now living with minimal
By Julia Perkins PERTH — Under the pressure of its ranks and one of the most influential militant minorities in the union movement nationwide, the WA Trades and Labour Council has launched itself into an industrial campaign with some bite.
By Bill Mason BRISBANE — The ACTU Queensland branch and the Goss government have finalised a deal to limit workers' access to common law actions over compensation claims. The ACTU had called on workers to march on Parliament House on October 18,
By Ray Fulcher MELBOURNE — More than 500 people packed into the North Melbourne Town Hall on October 20 to hear journalist and human rights campaigner John Pilger speak about East Timor's struggle for independence. The meeting was organised by
By Lucy Svejk According to Campaign Against Sexual Assault (CASA), early this year a woman was raped and another student sexually harassed by a lecturer at an Australian National University honours students camp. This lecturer remains the coordinator
By Craig Cormick CANBERRA — Local writers have responded to a call from the international writers' organisation, PEN, for writers to voice their protest against the French government's nuclear tests using their favourite medium — writing. On
Tarkine campaign gathers strengthBy Ben Courtice HOBART An extraordinary meeting of the state Liberal government's house committee looks set to ban protests from the grounds of Parliament House. This follows a vigil and rally to save the Tarkine
By Dave Wright and Nick Soudakoff SYDNEY — Following in the pattern of Labor and Liberal governments in other states, the NSW Carr Labor government slashed public sector jobs in its October 10 budget. This follows seven years of Liberal government
By Bernard Wunsch BRISBANE — About 300 high school students walked out of their classes on October 18 and rallied at the Roma Street Forum in protest against Australian uranium sales to France and French nuclear testing in the Pacific. The walkout
By Karen Fry NEWCASTLE — Fifty people protested outside the Department of Training and Education's regional office in Newcastle on October 16. The focus of the action was the Carr government's decision, announced in the October 9 state budget, to
By Stuart Martin CANBERRA — Since mid-September, Australian National University members of the National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU) and the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU), have been conducting industrial action to win a
By Tony Iltis CANBERRA — The history of the revolutionary socialist movement in Australia was the subject of the 1995 Jim Percy Memorial Lecture on October 18. Delivered by Democratic Socialist Party national secretary John Percy, the lecture
By Jennifer Thompson The release of Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures on October 12 showing an increase in unemployment (for the second month in a row) to 8.5% is bad news for federal Labor confronting an electorate which polls indicate
By Ben Alterman CASTLEMAINE — Inmates and staff at Victoria's Loddon and Pentridge prisons were informed on October 6, by the head of the Department of Health and Community Services Dr Graham-Rouch, that a recently released inmate had been
By Bill Mason BRISBANE — A Labor Party committee, chaired by former federal president Mick Young, has called for widespread internal reform. The report paints a picture of a party, run by a chosen few, ruling over a membership which believes the
By Tom Wilson SYDNEY — It's 7am, and across the city thousands of people are waking up to their clock radios, rubbing their eyes and preparing to go to work. But in the inner west suburb of Sydenham, residents are already out of bed and preparing
World
MOSCOW — Twenty activists of the international ecological group For Mother Earth were arrested in front of the French embassy on October 2 during a peaceful protest against the latest French nuclear test on Fangatufa. The activists, with blue Earth
The Irish famine, An Gorta Mor, was unparalleled. No famine ever claimed such a high percentage of a country's population. Only two famines in this century have claimed more lives. Below, MEADBH GALLAGHER looks behind the horror to the processes
By Renfrey Clarke MOSCOW — When voters in the city of Volgograd went to the polls on October 1 to elect a new local legislature, supporters of the Russian government were not expecting much comfort. Nevertheless, the results shocked them. Of 24
The world's largest manufacturer of passenger jets has been grounded. Boeing's 32,000 production workers in three US states downed tools on October 6 after members of the International Association of Machinists voted to reject a contract that
By Norm Dixon Human rights and peace movement activists are outraged that the ANC-led South African government has refused to support a ban on the production and export of landmines. Activists had high hopes that the ANC, whose members have
By Peter Montague In 1990, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funded the construction of an incinerator in a residential neighbourhood in Jacksonville, Arkansas, to destroy dioxin-contaminated chemical-warfare wastes. At the time, EPA's
By Eva Cheng Late last month, the 200 or so individuals who control China adopted a blueprint steer the country for the next 15 years. The resolutions of the 14th central committee of the Communist Party of China (CCP) at its fifth plenum in Beijing
By Chow Wei Cheng JOHANNESBURG — Over the weekend of October 6-8, hundreds of delegates from around Southern Africa converged in Johannesburg for the first Cuba — Southern Africa Solidarity Conference. The conference was organised by various Cuba
A preliminary agreement between Croatian and Serb negotiators and UN and US mediators in Erdut in eastern Slavonia on October 3, provides for a two year transition before the region returns to Croatian control. The land is rich agricultural land and
The Center for Women's Global Leadership has called a "16 days of activism against gender violence" campaign, culminating in an International Day Against Violence Against Women on November 25. The first such campaign was held in 1991. The centre
Jennifer Thompson A report on the human rights situation in the Kosovo region since 1994 has revealed that Serbian police are continuing to repress the Albanian majority. Kosovo was an autonomous province of Serbia until 1989 when Serb nationalist
SEUMAS MILNE, labour editor of the Guardian, is the author of a book about the operations of the British secret services against the National Union of Mineworkers (The Enemy Within, London, Verso, 1995). He was interviewed by LÁSZLÓ
By Allen Myers PHNOM PENH — Guests arriving for a French commercial promotion at the Hotel Cambodiana on October 16 were met by several dozen demonstrators wearing T-shirts which demanded an end to French nuclear tests in the Pacific and handing
Culture
Programs of interest on Sydney Community TV (UHF 31) — Perleeka, indigenous Australians' program, nightly, 7pm. Art Experimenta, Mondays, 8pm and 11.30pm, and Tuesdays, 3am and 6.30am. Bent TV, Gay and lesbian program, Thursdays, 10.30pm and
I enjoyed this book, but I won't tell you to rush out and buy it. If you tried to do so, you wouldn't succeed. In the '70s and '80s, dissident writers in the Soviet Union invented samizdat — "self publishing" — the distribution of manuscripts by
Based on highly reliable international contacts, leaked documents and horoscopes from several TV magazines, Nostradamus' Media Watch presents a highly accurate forecast of political events across the globe. Bosnian war crime trials begin Before the
A Walk in the CloudsStarring Keanu Reeves, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Anthony Quinn and Giancarlo GianniniDirected by Alfonso ArauReviewed by Barry Healy Magic Realism, the heady mix of gritty emotion and surreal dreaminess, has started to seep out of
Student underground papers: 1968-6 Secondary students in dissent Student underground papers: 1968-6 By Natasha Simons "This news sheet ... is an attempt to make students realise that there is another attitude to the [Vietnam] war besides that of the
At the Barricades (1981) Radical Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett's autobiography covers the high spots of politics from the 1930s to the end of the 1970s. A reporter during World War II, Burchett was the first western journalist to report on
The SeparationDirected by Christian VincentScreening at Cinema Como in South YarraOpens in Sydney on November 16 at Verona Cinemas, PaddingtonReviewed by Margaret Allan. The Separation is a very good French film about the deteriorating relationship
Women in the Age of Economic TransformationEdited by Nahid Aslanbeigui, Steven Pressman & Gale SummerfieldRoutledge, 1994, 232 pp.Reviewed by Carla Gorton Does privatisation marginalise women? How are women affected by the development process? Are
Trotsky as AlternativeBy Ernest MandelVerso, 1995, 186 pp., $44.95 (pb)Reviewed by Phil Shannon Leon Trotsky has defied the efforts of enemies and friends alike to wilfully or inadvertently blacken the political heritage of one of the twentieth
River out of Eden:A Darwinian View of LifeBy Richard DawkinsWeidenfeld & NicholsonScience Masters Series1995, $19.95Reviewed by Dot Tumney This river is a river of DNA flowing through time. Genetic information flows through living things in the
GarbageGarbageWhite Records through MushroomReviewed by Jen Crothers One person's garbage is another person's treasure, to paraphrase an old saying. That's how the name of this new band originated. On hearing some early material, one musician's
Editorial
The Keating Labor government continues to try to stall international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. On October 14, scientists, economists and politicians from 100 countries finalised a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate