By Leon Harrison and Anne Pavy PERTH — For the second time in three years, the mayor of Perth, Dr Peter Nattrass, has been accused of homophobia. In 1992 Nattrass and five other Perth councillors were found by the Equal Opportunity Tribunal to have
Issue 210
News
By Lisa Macdonald SYDNEY — Seventeen Christian churches and organisations in Australia last week announced their intention to provide sanctuary for East Timorese refugees under threat of deportation by the federal Labor government. The newly formed
By Stan Thompson ADELAIDE — One thousand nurses held an angry march and rally on October 30 to protest against cuts to the health budget. In the last two years, the Liberal state government has cut $61 million dollars from the health budget which
By Tom Flanagan DARWIN — After five days of sustained campaigning community activists, trade unionists and Greenpeace failed to stop 20 containers of uranium ore (yellowcake) from leaving here on November 2. However, Energy Resources Australia
By Lisa Macdonald On April 20 the High Court rejected an application by Yaluritja (Clarrie Isaacs) to appeal against a Supreme Court of WA decision to allow the issuing of six liquor licences at the indigenous people's sacred site of "Goonininup"
By Bernie Rosen The death of Charlie King, a Rationalist speaker at the Sydney Domain for nearly 34 years, leaves a gap in the intellectual life of our community that will be hard to fill. Charlie took over the platform from his illustrious
By Bill Mason BRISBANE The struggle between Comalco and 78 unionists on strike over wages at the bauxite mining town of Weipa is the first embryonic approach by employers to de-unionise the work force, according to ACTU (Qld) assistant secretary Tim
By Kim Comerford BRISBANE — About 60 people attended the Women's Liberation Conference organised by the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and Resistance on October 29. The conference was the first of its kind here. The conference panels focussed on
By Dan Kelly In September, Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) members responded to inadequate staffing of Student Assistance Centres (SACs) around the country with restrictions on public contact hours and bans on processing Austudy eligibility
By Kath Gelber SYDNEY — Following the First National Conference on Violence Against Gay Men and Lesbians held here on October 28 and 29, organised by the Australian Institute of Criminology, the Australian Council of Lesbian and Gay Rights (ACLGR)
By Tom Flanagan DARWIN — Two visitors from Texas, US gave unexpected support to local protesters against the ERA uranium shipment on November 2. When George and Dora Mower, aged 68 and 71, bought two of the nine passenger tickets for a round the
By Ben Courtice HOBART — Some members of the state Labor Opposition want to leave open the option of entering a new alliance with the Green Party after the next state election, due in February 1996. However, Opposition leader Michael Field insists
Dodie McGuinness, a national executive member of Sinn Féin and a member of the Six County executive of Sinn Féin for six years, will be touring the eastern states from November 8-23. A native of Derry, McGuinness is has been active in
By Bill Mason BRISBANE — Australian Meat Holdings and the meatworkers' union have agreed to re-open three Queensland abattoirs closed for almost a month by a dispute over enterprise bargaining. More than 1700 meatworkers returned to work under
Tom Flanagan DARWIN — The actions of trade unions played a decisive role in the delay, and eventual success, of ERA's efforts to export a shipment of uranium from Fort Hill Wharf last week. The threat of union bans was one of the factors that led
By Peter Boyle If you were to judge from the front page headlines of Australia's daily newspapers, you'd believe that on October 30 — the first day of the International Court of Justice hearing in The Hague on the legality of nuclear weapons —
By Karen Fletcher and Chris Spindler SYDNEY — Around 400 nurses and patients gathered outside St Vincent's public hospital in Darlinghurst on November 1 to protest against the loss of at least 70 beds and several vital services as a result of
By Ben Courtice HOBART — After three years of negotiations the Liberal state government has passed legislation to hand 12 sacred sites back to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. While both the government and Tasmanian Aboriginal Council
By Bill Mason BRISBANE — A proposed alliance between parties like the Greens, the Democrats and the Women's Party could pose a threat to the major parties, according to Queensland Greens spokesperson Drew Hutton. Hutton delivered a talk at the
World
By Norm Dixon Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel prize for literature and a prominent democracy campaigner, has called on the international community to take decisive action against the military regime that rules Nigeria. Soyinka, who lives in
By Doug Lorimer Confronted by a massive campaign of chauvinist propaganda and economic blackmail by the Canadian ruling class and its parties, a narrow majority of Québec voters on October 30 rejected a proposal for Québec
By Jennifer Thompson A member of the Kurdistan organisation of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (WPCI) has been issued with a death threat by an Islamic Revolutionary Hizbollah leader. The fatwa (religious order), repartedly issued by Islamic
By Norm Dixon The announcement in late October by the South African safety and security minister, Sydney Mufamadi, that former apartheid regime defence minister General Magnus Malan and ten senior defence officers are to be charged with murder in
By Norm Dixon Ken Saro-Wiwa, president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), and 14 other opponents of the brutal Nigerian regime was sentenced to death by a military tribunal on October 31. Saro-Wiwa has led the battle
NGOs continue anti land mine campaign The United Nations conference to review the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons met in Vienna from September 25 to October 13. The major focus of its discussion was landmines. In a message to the conference,
By Renfrey Clarke MOSCOW — Of some 200 reserve officers due to be drafted into military service after graduating this year from Moscow higher education institutions, the military authorities succeeded in enlisting only 13 between May and August. Of
By Eva Cheng Preparatory meetings in the lead-up to the Asia-Pacifc Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference scheduled for Osaka, Japan later this month, indicate that the 18 member nations will be unlikely to agree on the timing of the removal of
Four leading members of Mexico's ruling elite have been assassinated over the past two years. Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo of Guadalajara, Jalisco, and six other people died in a gun battle at Guadalajara's Miguel Hidalgo international airport
Culture
Telling — East Timor: Personal Testimonies 1942-1992By Michele TurnerUniversity of NSW Press, 1992. 218 pp., $19.95Reviewed by Wendy Lowenstein This is a superb book; the best oral history I have read. It is moving and passionate, and above all
Australian Options — Left discussions for social justice and political changeAustralian Options Publishing Inc.Reviewed by Melanie Sjoberg The second issue of a new quarterly journal, Australian Options, is now available. The journal aims to
Bulletproof Diva: Tales of Race, Sex and HairBy Lisa JonesPenguin Books, 1994. 306 pp., $14.95 (pb)Reviewed by Carla Gorton Bulletproof Diva is a collection of street-wise, straight talking and opinionated articles by Lisa Jones. Jones is a staff
The Struggle for Australian Industrial RelationsBy Braham DabscheckOxford University Press, 1995. 194 pp., $26.95 (pb)Reviewed by Phil Shannon As Keating and Howard obscenely compete for the votes of working class "battlers", we should remind
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. Young Liberal's march Inspired by the
By Nikki Ulasowski WOLLONGONG — "Cuba is facing the hardest time ever since the revolution. The government of the United States has tried to isolate Cuba. One side of the counter revolutionaries want to tighten the blockade, they want
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
[This poem is about Harry Connell, long time activist and founder member of the Builders Labourers Rank and File Committee in the early 1950s.] Harry, they're workin' in the rain, Harry, mate, they're workin' in the rain, Down in George St., mate,
Wall of TestimonyWritten by Jose Casimiro and Maria Alice Casimiro BrancoPerformed by the Lafaek East Timor AssociationReviewed by Sally Mitchell and Tim E. Stewart Wall of Testimony — the latest play by the Lafaek East Timor Association — made
Reinventing Darwin — The Great Evolutionary DebateBy Niles EldredgeWeidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995 Reviewed by Adam Hanieh The writings of evolutionary biologist and palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould have an enormously popular following. So it was
Back of BeyondDirected by Michael RobertsonStarring Paul Mercurio and Colin FrielsScreening at Hoyts cinemasReviewed by Margaret Allan The promotional material for this film promises, "Back of Beyond — a journey you never imagined". Quite frankly
The Box Seat: Seamus Heaney — Heaney was born in 1939 in County Derry, in British-occupied northern Ireland. He now both a professor of rhetoric at Harvard and a professor of poetry at Oxford. His works are richly physical in their depiction of
Editorial
The November 1 Federal Court ruling against a claim for native title by the Waanyi people of north-west Queensland is a victory for big mining interests. It shows the real colours of a judicial system designed to protect big business "rights" to