Analysis

The dismissal on November 12 of the charges against alleged terrorist Izhar Ul-Haque after NSW Supreme Court judge Michael Adams ruled on November 2 that ASIO officers had “committed the criminal offences of false imprisonment and kidnapping at common law”, have led to calls for increased oversight over ASIO.
The Climate Change Coalition is a new political party. Green Left Weekly’s Zane Alcorn spoke to CCC candidate Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, who is running for the Senate in New South Wales.
A lot of workers would have been shocked to read the report in the November 14 Melbourne Age about the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) ordering construction companies to remove union posters and signs and anything with the Eureka flag on it.
What Women Want (Australia) is a new political party formed in April that obtained federal electoral registration in August. It currently has almost 780 members, women and men, and is standing 14 Senate candidates across every state and the ACT, plus lower-house candidates in Wakefield and Hindmarsh in South Australia, Gippsland in Victoria and Stirling in WA.
“We have a plan to withdraw from Iraq, while Mr Howard doesn’t” — with these words on October 14, ALP leader Kevin Rudd described the war on Iraq as one of five “critical areas where the difference [between Labor and the Coalition] couldn’t be clearer”. He then went on to virtually ignore the Iraq war throughout the rest of the election campaign.
Climate change is the challenge of our generation and we need to do everything we can to stop it. What is our role as young people? How can we be most effective? After the Walk Against Warming rallies around the country, where young people came together in youth contingents, where to next for the youth climate movement?
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) aims to bring together existing social justice and environment groups to work cooperatively on climate-change activism. The hope is that a coherent and united youth voice on climate change will emerge.
November 11’s national Walk Against Warming was an important initiative for the climate change movement. It was smaller than the 100,000 people organisers had hoped for, but the fact that tens of thousands joined the biggest political demonstration of the election period confirms the opinion poll findings that climate change is a grave concern for large numbers of people.
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. In the years following the revolution, its leaders initiated the formation of the Communist (Third) International (Comintern), an international grouping of communist parties. In Venezuela, the leadership of the country’s unfolding socialist revolution have issued a call for a new international of Latin American left parties. In this article, part of a series on the early years of the Comintern, John Riddell looks at the role of the International in developing revolutionary workers’ parties.
The headline that wasn't (1) "Inflation fears as profit growth rises". You didn't miss this headline on an article in a recent Australian Financial Review — though you may have read the actual article it should have been the headline of. In the
Although it was silent on the issue during the state elections, the NSW Labor government led by Premier Morris Iemma is canvassing plans to privatise large sections of state utilities including the rail network, the electricity grid and Sydney’s ferries. The privatisation scheme is necessary, according to the government, to raise funds in order to reduce the budget deficit and pay for improvements in NSW hospitals and schools, and upgrades to the Sydney highways, as well as produce greater efficiency in public transport.
Voting Howard out on November 24 will not be enough to defeat Work Choices. However, on the choice of alternative governments, it is important that we preference Labor ahead of the Coalition, to elect a Labor government. And if we vote for the Socialist Alliance first and the Greens second, we send the most powerful message that any vote can, that we want all of Howard’s IR laws abolished, not just tinkered with. But even the election of a Labor government will not be the end of it. If we are to finally bury Work Choices once and for all, we will have to continue the struggle.