BY SHANE BENTLEY
SYDNEY — The New South Wales branch of the National Union of Workers has severed its ties with the NSW Labor Party in protest against the ALP state government's refusal to help the union in its legal battle with Davids Holdings.
Issue 409
News
"Get sorry today, unchain John Howard's heart" was the message on one banner amongst a sea of support for reconciliation and justice for Aborigines at marches in Adelaide and Brisbane, which followed the example of the May 28 half-million people
Salmat strike ends
SYDNEY â Ninety members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union's
printing division, employed at Salmat Laser Printing Services in Chester
Hill, returned to work on June 5 after nine days on strike.
The
Student union refuses affiliation to political clubs
BY RUTH RATCLIFFE
CANBERRA â Citing its policy of refusing to affiliate any club deemed
political, the University of Canberra Union n(UCU) has rejected an application
for
Honeymoon mine assessment begins
BY JIM GREEN
Canadian company Southern Cross Resources has released its environment
impact statement for the proposed Honeymoon uranium mine in north-east
South Australia.
The operation involves
BY LESLIE RICHMOND
ADELAIDE â Five hundred people marched on Glenelg's Grand Hotel
on June 4 to denounce an official government World Environment Day conference.
Rally organisers called Adelaide's official host city status a farce
BY CAROLYNE BANADOS
SYDNEY â Rallying under the banner Quality service deserves quality
pay, community and social workers will strike and rally on June 23, closing
down welfare services and agencies, most of them recipients of state
Nike admits guilt
BY BRIAN TUPP
MELBOURNE — Unionists and anti-outwork campaigners have described as a victory an admission by clothing and footwear giant Nike, in Melbourne's Federal Court on June 6, that it had failed to comply with the
BY CHRIS SPINDLER
MELBOURNE — Some three weeks after winning the ballot, Craig Johnston was on June 9 confirmed as the new Victorian state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. Johnston was delayed from taking office by court
BY ANTHONY BENBOW
PERTH â Kierath says our existence is a 'planning mistake'. We've
been here at Wattleup four decades, Hope Valley a century â that's long
before the heavy industry at Kwinana. So which one is the 'planning mistake'?
Abandoned Kakadu mines are still radioactive
BY BRIAN TUPP
A memo from the Office of the Supervising Scientist, leaked to environmentalists
on June 6, has confirmed that abandoned South Alligator uranium mines are
posing a radiation
New DSP branch warms up for Olympic protests
BY DANIEL JARDINE
SYDNEY â Given mainstream media hype seeking to convince Sydneysiders
that the Olympics would be a golden time for everyone, a forum on Why
the Olympics won't benefit
Teachers strike, plan more action
BY ALEX ROBINSON
BRISBANE — Queensland's teachers struck for 24 hours on June 14 in support of demands by the Queensland Teachers Union for an 8% per year pay rise, decreased class sizes and more resources for
Asbestos scare in Parramatta
BY OWEN RICHARDS
SYDNEY — The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union has banned construction work on the old David Jones site in Parramatta here after discovering asbestos. CFMEU state secretary Andrew
Tax staff reject pay offer
BY CHRIS SLEE
Australian Tax Office staff have narrowly rejected a new agency agreement
proposed by management. Their union described the offer as inadequate and
paltry.
ATO management offered a pay rise
BY SUSAN AUSTIN
BRISBANE â Twelve health unions, led by the Queensland Nurses Union,
are planning to step up industrial action in response to Queensland Health's
refusal to budge in negotiations on a new enterprise agreement.
Work
Western Mining present eviction notice to Arabunna
BY JOHN NEBAUER
ADELAIDE â Western Mining Corporation has handed an eviction notice
to Arabunna traditional landowners camped near Lake Eyre in protest at
the company's uranium mining
Darwin protests against APEC
BY LARISA FREIVERTS
DARWIN — Media mongrels, APEC staffers and plainclothes police watched
guardedly as 60 people gathered in Raintree Park on June 7 in a lively
protest action against the Asia Pacific
Fijian community leader calls for democracy's restoration
BY GRAHAM MATTHEWS
BRISBANE â Fifty two homes have been broken into. Families are
fleeing into the bush. Cattle are being slaughtered and police vehicles
are being used for
World
BY MELANIE GILLBANK
The Peoples' Forum 2000 and the mass protests which followed, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in early May, were born of suffering, anger and betrayal. Twelve hundred people attended the forum to share their stories of hardship and
"The only solution I can see is to hold a series of long and costly
negotiations in exotic locations, in order to put off finding a solution",
reads the caption of a Climate Action Network (CAN) cartoon lampooning
the 12th session of the
UNITED STATES: Left internet site censored
Since 1993, the Burn! internet site has been an important source
of solidarity for militant liberation movements. Burn! hosts the
web sites of groups in the front line of struggles in Chiapas
MANILA â On June 9, some 3000 Moros (an ethnic group in the Philippines)
from 45 villages in Metro Manila held a prayer-rally at the Maharlika village
in Taguig. The rally was hosted by the Pagragn National Movement, a new
coalition of Moro
Fikile Majola, general secretary of the National Education, Health and
Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU), on June 7 called on university workers and
students around the world to offer urgent solidarity to the workers of
the University of the
DILI â This city has been rocked by snap public transport stoppages
since June 2 in response to a rise in the price of fuel. Small minibuses,
mikrolets, that provide cheap public transport around Dili, and private
taxis have all taken part,
SEOUL — The May 31 to June 4 general strike by South Korean workers has deepened differences between the reformist Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and militants seeking to build a counter-offensive against President Kim Dae Jung's neo-liberal
The following speech was presented by world renowned playwright HAROLD
PINTER at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on April 18.
I am deeply honoured to receive this degree from Aristotle University.
I have always felt a strong
Forum: Sri Lanka bans 'talk of peace'
BY JAMES VASSILOPOULOS
CANBERRA â Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has banned
talk of peace and for the first time in Sri Lankan history if you criticise
the president, laws are used
On June 13, the general strike that began a week earlier forced the
Nigerian federal government to all but reverse fuel price increases it
had announced earlier. On June 1, the government of President Olusegun
Obasanjo had announced a surprise
SERBIA: Students lead anti-Milosevic protests
Isolation, skyrocketing poverty, unemployment rates of almost 70% and
an infrastructure devastated by NATO's bombing last year has left Serbia
in a worse state than its notoriously poor neighbour
LAHORE â The leader of Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) and Labour Unity
Rawalpindi, Bashir Botter, who was arrested on May 26, has been released
on bail. However, the charges against him â organising illegal strikes
and demonstrations,
WINDSOR, Ontario â On June 4, 3000 people demonstrated against a meeting
of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Windsor, Ontario.
The OAS, which is based in Washington, involves the heads of state
of all countries in the
DENIS HALLIDAY worked for the United Nations for 34 years as a specialist in Third World development. In August 1997 he was appointed the UN's chief relief coordinator in Iraq where he supervised the "oil-for-food" program until his very public
HANOVER, Germany â Scientists have found evidence that genes used to
modify crops can jump the species barrier and cause bacteria and even fungi
to mutate.
One aim of Expo 2000 in Hanover last month was to popularise GM (genetic
AMSTERDAM - "The policy demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in exchange for loans leads to an increase in poverty. Subsidies on electricity, education and public transport are being cut ... There's already 80 million Indonesian people
World Bank gives go-ahead
The World Bank board on June 6 approved a controversial plan to build
an oil and gas pipeline from southern Chad, in central Africa, to the coast
of Cameroon. The pipeline is a joint venture between oil
'Stop the war!'
The Eritrean community rallied in Brisbane on June 6 chanting "We want peace, stop the war!" and demanding humanitarian assistance from the federal government for those suffering in Eritrea. Since Ethiopia began a massive military
Culture
Springsteen upsets cops with Diallo song
By Norm Dixon
"Standing on the stage at Madison Square Garden momentarily shrouded in darkness, Bruce Springsteen sang the words '41 shots' nine times last night. The words begin his new song deploring the
By Bill Nevins
"Los ojos de me memoria. Minds eye dances. They can only take your soul if you let them." — Priscilla Baca y Candelaria "Poetry is the sacred way to touch the fabric of peoples' souls in a way that lets them take the stage and
Kumarangk 'Karaoke and Kake'
ADELAIDE â Once upon a time, a large number of people who spoke out against
a proposed bridge to Kumarangk (Hindmarsh Island) were sued by the developers
of a marina on the island. Defamation Magic turned them
A Month in the CountryBy Brian Friel, after TurgenevSydney Theatre CompanyDrama Theatre at the Opera HouseUntil July 15 Review by Mark Stoyich
Three examples of recent translations of foreign classics have given Sydney audiences a chance to see how
By Sibylle Kaczorek
DARWIN â On June 2, artist Dadang Christanto's exhibition titled
Reconciliation was opened with a powerful performance and installation.
Christanto, who was born in Indonesia in the late 1950s, uses simple
Review by Marina Carman
Elite transition: from Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa
By Patrick Bond
Pluto Press, London, 2000
318pp, $47.95
For anyone disappointed with the fruits of the post-apartheid period
in South Africa
And pigs might fly
It was crisis day in the parliament
The house was hushed and still.
A member rose with a question
Are we doomed to go downhill?
I am confident of an upturn,
The PM made reply.
If workers pay is held at bay,
Editorial
War drums in the Pacific
Coming hard on the heels of George Speight's terrorist coup in Fiji, the
Australian capitalist media's battalion of analysts were quick to pronounce
the Malaita Eagle Force's (MEF) June 5 seizure of Solomon
General
Green Left Weekly and the GST
With the introduction of the GST on July 1, we will be forced to increase
the price of Green Left Weekly. This will be the first price increase
for GLW since August 1995.
Through the GST, the government