By Graham Mathews NEWCASTLE — A capacity crowd of around 600 people packed Newcastle Town Hall on May 26 for a public meeting to "Save the Rail". The meeting was called by Newcastle community groups to protest against the decision of the
Issue 59
News
Court 'okays gay murder' By Pip Hinman MELBOURNE — Gay rights activists are protesting that a May 28 Supreme Court jury verdict sends a clear message to the community that it is allowable for a man to kill another man who makes sexual
Broad support for ban By Celeste Seymour PERTH — The WA construction industry union, the CMEU, has enlisted the support of well-known environmentalist and unionist Jack Mundey for the campaign against the redevelopment of the old brewery
Garema Place protest By Val Plumwood CANBERRA — Garema Place has become a major gathering place for poor and homeless children and teenagers. Those who gather there spend most of their waking life in the square or on the street. Many of
Nurses fight Kirner By Ray Fulcher MELBOURNE — Nurses here are fighting moves by the state government to cut staffing in the geriatric care area by 50%, reduce standards of care for the elderly and cut working conditions. The Kirner
Fun and info shared at festival By Drake Astrid BRISBANE — World Environment Day started on a high note with a discussion attended by two delegates from each school in the Brisbane area on June 5, and finished with a weekend information
Sustainability conference planned By Jo Ferreira BRISBANE — A conference on ecological sustainability, featuring well-known environmental speakers such as Ted Trainer and Bob Brown, will be held at Griffith University in July. The
Sand mining sparks protests By Michelle Foal and Bill Mason BRISBANE — "Save Shoalwater Bay, Time is running out!" was the cry as protesters marched through the city streets on June 11. Carrying huge hourglasses with sand trickling through
Story and photo by Michael Karadjis SYDNEY — Chanting "We want peace", "Stop the slaughter" and "Chetniks out" (referring to the Serbian monarcho-fascist militias who are responsible for much of the slaughter in Croatia and
By Ray Fulcher MELBOURNE — On June 13, 350 residents and workers rallied outside Premier Joan Kirner's office in Williamstown to oppose a proposed expansion of the Mobil oil refinery. The working-class western suburbs have long been a
Royal commission a failure, meeting told By Rod Pitty SYDNEY — The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was a failure, according to several speakers at a public meeting held at Leichhardt town hall on June 12. The meeting
Plan to break Bougainville blockade By Peter Boyle MELBOURNE — A group of solidarity activists plan to try to run the Papua New Guinea military's blockade of Bougainville later this year in a refurbished 90-year-old ketch called Flinders.
Members of the Public Sector Union employed by Telecom (AOTC) have begun a campaign against plans to slash 4400 jobs in the next year. Members of other affected unions are expected to meet within a week. Some unionists claim to have seen a
By Francesca Davidson MELBOURNE — An extremely successful World Environment Day rally was held in the city square on June 6. Weeks of hard work paid off as about 300 young people, mostly from high schools and on their first rally, turned up
By Michael Rafferty The WA Labor government has made a renewed attempt at developing the old brewery site on the Swan River near Kings Park in Perth. On June 2, it announced that a deal would soon be finalised with Multiplex Constructions to
By Ian Jamieson BURNIE — Capping a tumultuous week, striking Associated Pulp and Paper Mill workers voted on June 9 to return to work, ending for the time being a strike widely described as Tasmania's worst. The mass meeting endorsed a
Youth take message to UN By Nick Fredman SYDNEY — World Environment Day was celebrated here with a rally organised by Environmental Youth Alliance outside the United Nations office in York Street on June 5. Young people heard speakers
World
By Sally Low COPENHAGEN — By voting on June 2 to reject the Maastricht treaty on European political, economic and monetary union, the Danish people have thrown the whole treaty into question. Although the margin was narrow (1.4%), the vote
By Max Lane As expected, the Soeharto regime's GOLKAR party suffered a small drop in its vote in last week's election. Early counting shows GOLKAR dropping from 72% to 67%. The Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), which ran the closest thing to
By Irina Glushchenko MOSCOW — With price liberalisation and the advance of private ownership, Russians are periodically assured, their country is on course for the market. What is this market, and where is it to be found? People here who
By Peter Annear PRAGUE — By sending a majority of nationalist and left-of-centre candidates into the new federal parliament in June 5-6 elections, Czechoslovakia's voters signalled that the free- market economic reform program is far from
By Miriam Tramer in Israel While Israelis long for peace, they seem unwilling to yield anything for it. In the current election campaign, both Labour and Likud are adamant in rejecting an independent Palestinian state. While Labour, unlike
By Irina Glushchenko MOSCOW — Russia is now suffering from its worst demographic crisis of the postwar period. For the first time since 1945, deaths in November and December 1991 outnumbered births. For every 1000 residents of Moscow in
Helmi Fauzi, an activist in Indonesia's pro-democracy and environment movements, has been speaking to students and environmental activists in Australia about the political and economic situation in Indonesia. His tour was organised by AKSI
By Andrew Nette and Angela Savage BANGKOK — On May 18, we were close to Rajdamoen Avenue, where police and the military had opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators the night before, and where protesters were still holding out. The
ALEXANDER BUZGALIN is a professor of economics at Moscow State University and one of the leaders of the Party of Labour. BORIS SLAVIN is a political commentator for the newspaper Pravda and a member of the Russian Party of Communists. VADIM
Culture
Alienation Alien 3 Starring Sigourney Weaver Reviewed by Kath Tucker Take the most incredible scenario the movie makers can conjure up. So you've got the lead character struggling against all odds, on a planet with only 20 people on it.
AKA Grafitti Man John Trudell Rykodisc through Festival Records Available on CD and cassette Reviewed by Norm Dixon Poetry spoken to a beat is a very powerful medium for social and political comment. In the '70s and '80s this style was
Oh, Calcutta! City of Joy Patrick Swayze in a film by Roland Joffe Reviewed by Brian Brunton If you think of City of Joy as Hollywood's Salaam Bombay 2, you've got most of it. But not all. Because this is a movie that tells us almost as
A labour of love from the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Legends of the Blue Mountains By Jim Smith Drawings by Liz McCalpine Available for $12 from Jim Smith, 65 Fletcher St, Wentworth Falls 2782 Reviewed by Denis Kevans Another remarkable
By Tracy Sorensen SYDNEY — Garema Circuit doesn't exist in old street directories. It's a large new cul-de-sac in the heart of light industrial Kingsgrove, in Sydney's southern suburbs — a road that looks much smaller on the map in the new
Jump and Other Stories By Nadine Gordimer Bloomsbury. $34.95 Reviewed by Nicholas Southey With this new collection of 16 short stories, Nadine Gordimer, South Africa's 1991 Nobel Literature Prize winner, once again displays her marvellous
Editorial
A new tax slug In a piece of shabby demagogy, Victorian and NSW premiers Joan Kirner and Nick Greiner are trying to blame their latest round of tax rises on inequities in the distribution of federal funds among the states. The truth is, these
Desperate Kirner boycotts ALP By Peter Boyle MELBOURNE — Premier Joan Kirner's government is looking desperate. On June 12, her sub-faction in the Victorian ALP, had to organise a boycott of a meeting of the party's state administrative