Issue 550

  • Howard's attacks on construction workers must be defeated

    It is expected that during the current session of federal parliament, a range of new anti-union legislation will be introduced by Prime Minister John Howard's Coalition government, including legislation aimed at "reforming" the

  • Save the ABC!

    After the much-publicised $26.1 million cuts the Australian Broadcasting Corporation management made on August 5, federal communications minister Richard Alston has hinted at allowing it to raise funds through things like telethons

  • Fighting an 'outmoded view of pregnancy'

    HOBART — Socialist Alliance member Peter Cahill, a public servant in the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services, launched action with the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal (ADT) on July 29, seeking a declaration that the

  • Plagiarism cuts uni profits

    NEWCASTLE — The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has been called in to investigate procedure at Newcastle University, after 15 off-shore Malaysian students were accused of plagiarism whilst enrolled at the

  • Coalition wage war on free speech

    Attacking public media and people's access to voices other than its own is part of the Coalition government's systematic campaign of suppressing free speech and democratic rights. Example one: The new anti-terrorism laws are now

  • Write On: Letters to Green Left Weekly

    Bill Game replies As a show of evenhandedness, it would have been nice to be afforded the same opportunity by Green Left Weekly (issue #549) to contribute my thoughts on the present [WA CEPU/ETU] election bearing in mind I am held in high regard by

  • A woman's place is in the struggle: Hunting for Bambi

    After mud-wrestling, we didn't think it could get much worse. "Hunting for Bambi", the latest form of "adult entertainment" for some in the US, is a sadistic twist on the already sadistic sport skirmish (paintball). "Hunting for Bambi" involves

  • Howard's Pacific colonialism: Who benefits?

    Buoyed by its success in getting all 16 member-states in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) to support its colonial-style intervention into the Solomons Islands, Canberra is now pushing for the various "arms of government" among Pacific

  • UNITED STATES: How the media spread Bush's WMD lies

    NEW YORK — By the time the war against Iraq began, much of the media had been conditioned to believe, almost as an article of faith, that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was bulging with chemical and biological weapons, despite years of

  • The Socialist Alliance: No going back

    MELBOURNE — Three months after Socialist Alliance's second national conference, which decided that the alliance should move toward becoming a multitendency socialist party, Green Left Weekly's GRAHAM MATTHEWS, a Victorian co-convenor of the

  • Campaign for anti-war unity gains momentum

    SYDNEY — Following the decision by a wing of the Walk Against the War Coalition (WAWC) to initiate a new anti-war group — the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition (SPJC) — a campaign has begun in earnest to maintain a united,

News

  • CFMEU queries WA police industrial hit-squad

    PERTH — The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has written to Western Australian police minister Michelle Roberts seeking information about special training being given to six senior regional police

  • Tasmania's longest lock-out enters 21st week

    LAUNCESTON — The lockout of members of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU) employed at the Blue Ribbon Meatworks will enter its 21st week on August 18. It is the longest lockout in Tasmania's history,

  • Action updates

    Victory for student democracy BRISBANE — Students at the University of Queensland have voted decisively to reject changes to the UQ Union constitution, proposed by Liberal students. The no vote was victorious with a 62% majority of the almost

  • PSA members fight OIR staff cuts

    SYDNEY — On August 14, employees of the NSW government's Office of Industrial Relations (OIR), formerly the Department of Industrial Relations, began industrial action in protest at savage jobs cuts and restructuring, announced

  • Labor allows jailing of forest activist

    HOBART — Forest activist Neil Smith, known as "Hector the Protector" for his role in the 1998 campaign to save forest around Mother Cummings Peak in northern Tasmania, faces jail for refusing to pay a $5000 fine. Smith told

  • School teachers announce strike action

    PERTH — On August 11, the Australian Education Union's Western Australian branch executive announced that a half-day strike is to be held on September 17. The strike will intensify the AEU's industrial campaign to win a new

  • Loose cannons

    Moor killers "A row broke out in Spain yesterday after the country sent its first troops to patrol Iraq wearing on their shoulders the Cross of St James of Compostela — popularly known in Spain as 'the Moor Killer'. Patches bearing the cross, the

  • Community sector rallies against cuts by Bracks

    MELBOURNE — On August 12, 3000 people rallied outside the Treasury building to support the community services sector in the face of funding cuts proposed by Premier Steve Bracks' state Labor government. Disabled people were out

  • Victory for free speech

    MELBOURNE — Progressive activists won a victory on August 12, when the Sunshine Magistrates Court dismissed charges against Socialist Alliance activist Tony Iltis. Iltis was charged with distributing leaflets for an anti-war

  • Horror on Manus Island

    The Australian-funded detention centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island first opened on October 21, 2001. The first group of Iraqi asylum seekers to arrive there were dismayed to find they had been tricked into thinking they were being taken to Australia.

  • SCU staff reject dodgy deal

    LISMORE — In a victory for unionism in the higher-education sector, staff at Southern Cross University have decisively voted down a short-term enterprise bargaining agreement aimed at marginalising the National Tertiary Education

Analysis

  • No cooperation with Jakarta's terror gangs!

    Canberra's moves to resume military cooperation with Jakarta, especially with the quasi-state-terror gang Kopassus, in the name of the "war on terror", should strongly be opposed by all those who support the democratic rights of the workers and

World

  • CANADA: Troubling signs for organised labour

    TORONTO — Labour Day parades across Ontario and other parts of Canada will march under darkening clouds on September 1 — regardless of the weather. A number of trade unions are giving way as a rising tide of employer demands

  • SOUTH AFRICA: 'Dying to fight' for treatment

    DURBAN — On August 8, in a move described as a "backflip" by the mainstream press, South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) government announced that it had instructed the department of health to develop a plan to provide

  • FRANCE: 300,000 attend anti-globalisation festival

    More than 300,000 people attended demonstrations, forums, film showings and concerts in the Larzac plateau region of southern France on August 8-10. The Larzac Festival was held under the slogan, Le monde n'est pas une marchandise

  • VENEZUELA: Workers' movement debates way forward

    "Nationalise the banks!", "Take over enterprises that have shutdown and run them instead by workers!", "Refuse to pay the external debt and use the funds to create jobs!", "Reduce the work week to 36 hours!", "Create new

  • NEW ZEALAND: 'Self-determination for West Papua!'

    AUCKLAND — The international solidarity movement for West Papua met in Otara, Tamaki Makaurau, on August 8-10. The gathering called on the government leaders who constitute the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) to remember the unresolved

  • UNITED STATES: Iraq war opens ruling class divisions

    With Iraqi resistance fighters inflicting casualties on the US and British occupation troops almost daily, and with the US administration's justification for invading Iraq — its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction

Culture

  • On the box

    Actively Radical TV — Includes the Green Left news. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 9pm. Phone (02) 9564 1277. Visit <http://www.channel31.org&#062; for program details. Access News — Melbourne community TV, Channel 31, has excellent

  • Writers' festival goes beyond 'the storm'

    MELBOURNE — The 2003 Melbourne Writers Festival will open on August 21 with a keynote address by Tariq Ali, the radical London-based author of the anti-imperialist bestseller The Clash of Fundamentalisms. Ali's address, "War,

  • Forty days in world of the working poor

    REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON Hard Work: Life in Low-pay BritainBy Polly Toynbee Bloomsbury, 2003242 pages, $21 (pb) Polly Toynbee, one of Britain's most prestigious journalists, was bothered by a letter from the Church Action on Poverty group. "Would