Brewery struggle continues
Perth — The struggle to halt redevelopment of the old Swan Brewery site has entered another year and shows no sign of abating, despite the actions of WA government-backed developer Multiplex.
The company used
Issue 84
News
Bleak prospects for Tasmania
By Ben Courtice
HOBART — Unemployment in Tasmania reached 12.6% according to seasonally adjusted figures released on January 14.
This is the highest figure recorded in Australia since monthly surveys
Toxic dump cover-up revealed
By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — Conservationists and the Queensland Greens have called for a full inquiry into the Gurulmundi toxic waste dump after a government expert revealed tight restrictions had been placed
Summer of protests in Tasmania
By Natasha Simons
HOBART — The Wilderness Society's "long hot summer" campaign of national forest protests began in Tasmania on January 11. TWS national director Karenne Jurd says 150 volunteers have
SA Liberals threaten to privatise transport
By Melanie Sjoberg
ADELAIDE — Proposals from the state Liberal Party demonstrate that this city's already debilitated public transport system is going to be further eroded following a change
By Frank Noakes
SYDNEY — The Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance Activist Education conference, held here January 2-6, attracted 275 people from around Australia and overseas. Under the banner "Socialism Now More Than Ever",
'Commonwealth should save rail services'
Independent Senator Janet Powell has called on the federal government to save rail services targeted for closure by the Victorian government of Jeff Kennett.
Powell says the government should
Austudy changes increase student debts
By Jim Allen
Students receiving the Austudy allowance lost a week's payment at the beginning of this year. Austudy last year was paid one week in advance and one week in arrears. In a cost cutting
N-waste plan condemned
Aboriginal groups, Greenpeace and Democrat Senator John Coulter are among many who have condemned a federal government plan to transfer 2000 cubic metres of radioactive waste from Sydney to the Woomera rocket range in
Green Left fund off to a great start
By Michael Compton
SYDNEY — The Green Left Weekly 1993 fund drive got off to a marvellous start at the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance Activist-Education conference, when $49,000 was
By Garry Walters
and Alex Cooper
MELBOURNE — Sweeping cuts to Victoria's public transport system are being denounced as socially and environmentally irresponsible. Of 14 suburban rail lines, only four appear to have escaped severe
By Rurik Davidson
PERTH — Western Australian voters will have a choice of more than just Labor-Liberal in the state election on February 6. Greens, socialists and independents will be among the candidates.
"There needs to be an
Submarine in accident
By Ben Courtice
HOBART — The US nuclear submarine USS Topeka had its departure from Hobart delayed by an accident involving its anchor. According to the State Emergency Service, the delay was to ensure that the
Socialist campaign launched
By Frank Noakes
SYDNEY — The Democratic Socialist Electoral League 1993 federal election campaign was launched here on January 3 with a panel of candidates outlining some of the basic issues central to
By Francesca Davidson
MELBOURNE — The Victorian government began its public sector cutbacks last year by slashing 9300 jobs, closing 52 schools and four campuses. Education has been worst hit with 3700 cleaners, 2175 teachers, 500 public
By Alex Bainbridge
WICKHAM, WA — Robe River unionists have condemned ACTU president Martin Ferguson for mishandling the dispute currently under way at Robe River and have called for his resignation unless he reverses his position and begins
By Vivienne Porzsolt
and Tom Jordan
About 30 boats of the Sydney Peace Squadron took to Sydney Harbour at 7 a.m. on January 9, to protest against the arrival of the giant US aircraft carrier Ranger, with its four companion ships.
Three
Snouts in the trough
By Peter Boyle
MELBOURNE — Under Jeff Kennett's new order, austerity is the watchword in the public sector. To underline the point that all are to be hit equally, the premier says that he will do nothing to help
Protest at deportation of Palestinians
Story and photo
by Miriam Tramer
Jewish, Arab and other Australians joined forces in a protest picket against the Israeli deportation of 415 Palestinians into Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon.
By Win Childs
"Reworking Australia" is a new campaign focusing on the unemployment crisis with its threat of the disintegration of community cohesion and the poverty and despair of more than a million Australians and their families.
The
World
By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — After the stirring events of mid-December, when the Congress of People's Deputies managed to sack acting Premier Yegor Gaidar despite Boris Yeltsin's desire to keep him in office, few Russians were expecting
By Catherine Brown
DUBLIN — Just before Ireland voted on the three-part abortion referendum on November 25, Anne Speed, a trade union organiser and Sinn Fein candidate in the previous election, talked to Green Left Weekly about the last 10
MANRICO MORO came to Australia from his native Italy 17 years ago. Before that, he used regularly to visit Yugoslavia. He "remembered Yugoslavia as a nice place for holidays, a bit poorer than Italy, but much cheaper, and much more orderly". When
Old structures, new conditions
The Ukraine is facing a "protracted crisis of stagnation", with drawn-out struggles both among and within the former republics of the USSR as "the old bureaucracy and the emerging bourgeoisie" wrestle for the
By Frank Noakes
LONDON — As Prime Minister John Major celebrates two years in number 10 Downing Street, his government is beset by recurring crises. Not the least of these is an economy plunging towards depression, with the government doing
By Harry Blutstein
Jean-Franois is the third generation of Ethiers producing maple syrup from around Mirabel, 50 kilometres north-east of Montreal. The farm was started by his grandfather Henri in 1920.
The family sells maple syrup from
By Gina Rogers
The Hague — A continuing dispute between a Dutch multinational and British workers has alarmed trade unionists on both sides of the channel. Many of those involved see the case as an indicator of the future weakening of trade
By Elle Morrell
AUCKLAND — When the New Zealand Labour government was turned out of office in 1990, the party was at an all-time low in popularity. Then, within months of being elected in a landslide, the incoming National Party government
Polish bill curtails right to abortion
WARSAW — The Polish parliament on January 7 approved a modified anti-abortion bill that permits the termination of pregnancies in certain circumstances, but ends the abortion-on-demand policy of the
By Peter Boyle
Confined for six years in a tiny cell, Mordechai Vanunu, who exposed Israel's secret nuclear weapons program, is being subjected to systematic ill-treatment which threatens his mental stability, says Gideon Spiro, an Israeli
Born amid confusion and uncertainty in December 1991, the independent Ukraine has faced a difficult first year of life, and it seems there is more of the same to come, writes POUL FUNDER LARSEN.
The Ukraine's December 1991 referendum on
By Sean Malloy
More than 110 warplanes, from the United States, France and Britain, were involved in the January 14 attack which bombed at least five places in southern Iraq in half an hour.
The majority of Australian daily newspapers
Guatemala: human rights violations
MEXICO CITY — A total of 1516 human rights violations — an average of four every day — were committed in Guatemala in 1992, according to the latest annual report by the independent Human Rights
Culture
Fairfield prepares for Carnivale
SYDNEY — Multicultural Fairfield in western Sydney is preparing for a range of activities during Carnivale, January 22 to February 6. Cabravale Park and Freedom Plaza, Cabramatta, will come alive for the
See Ya Next Century
Chrissie Parrot Dance Company and Robyn Archer
Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, until January 23
Phone 699 3444 or festival Ticketek
Reviewed by Anne O'Grady
The performance of this "funny bitter cabaret" is
Colours
Colours is an exhilarating presentation of two distinct pieces by the Aboriginal Islander Dance Company. The first is traditional dance with guest artists from the Tiwi people of Bathurst Island and Murray Island in the Torres
Dracula
A Francis Ford Coppola film
Reviewed by Ian Bolas
The originality of Coppola's Dracula lies in his decision to film the sub-text of Stoker's novel, its real as well as its surface content.
The dark eroticism he creates is not
Indochine
Directed by Regis Wargnier
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez, Linh Dan Pham, Jean Yanne
Reviewed by Steve Painter
I'd like to be able to say something nice about Indochine, a film coming up for commercial release off
A short story by Craig Cormick
The first Ern Ahearn heard of the planned flying machine was from his cousin Wal, one sunny Sunday afternoon on the verandah of the Ballarat Empire Club.
"What? A flying machine?", he said, between sips of a
A classy whodunit
Under suspicion (M)
Writer-director Simon Moore
Starring Laura San Giacomo, Liam Neeson
Reviewed by Mario Giorgetti
In England during the late 1950s, where vicious criminals were still likely to be sentenced to
By Norm Dixon
One of modern music's greatest innovators and best-loved characters, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, 75, died quietly in his sleep on January 6. Playing his trademark tilted-bell trumpet, he became one of the most influential jazz
Moulding the minds of Israeli children
By Miriam Tramer
Izkor (Slaves of Memory), shown at the Israeli film festival at the end of last year, is a film about the way the Israeli education system moulds the minds of young people to
Editorial
'Mad Dog' Kennett, Labor and elections
After a decade in office the Western Australian Labor government, with absolutely nothing to recommend it, goes to the polls on February 6. It won't campaign on the basis of a dynamic record of