Former federal court chief justice Murray Wilcox has been commissioned by deputy PM Julia Gillard to prepare a review of the powers of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) and its integration as a specialist division into Labor’s proposed industrial relations umbrella, Fair Work Australia (FWA), in 2010.
Analysis
“This strategy is designed to help pensioners, carers and families, and first home buyers”, declared Australia’s Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his October 14 address to the nation. Rudd was announcing a $10.4 billion “economic security strategy” in response to the global financial crisis.
Our addiction to coal is not only killing our planet but also those who mine it, burn it and live around it, a Perth climate activist has claimed.
The Reserve Bank (RBA) of Australia announced on October 7 that they would cut the official interest rate by 1% — the largest single cut since 1992 — in response to the US financial crisis.
There has been intense media speculation on the fate of New South Wales infrastructure plans following the “discovery” of a supposed $20 billion dollar “black hole” in the NSW budget, announced by departing treasurer Michael Costa on September 5.
The campaign against the jailing of tramways union leader Clarrie O’Shea, in Melbourne in May 1969, for refusing to pay fines imposed under the infamous anti-union penal powers of the time is rich with lessons for today’s campaign against the Australian Building and Construction Commission’s (ABCC) witch hunt of construction unionists.
Millions of tonnes of the potent greenhouse gas methane have apparently begun leaking from the seabed beneath wide areas of the Arctic Ocean, the British Independent reported on September 23.
A dangerous precedent for an ambiguous anti-terrorism law has been set by the conviction of a majority of the 12 Melbourne Muslim men accused of constituting a terrorist cell. Almost all the charges were based on a law that turned on the definition of a terrorist organisation.
On September 24, Greens Senator Rachel Siewert tabled legislation that would establish a fund to compensate members and families of the Stolen Generations, but the Rudd Labor government is unlikely to support it.
The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, has threatened that Catholic hospitals could be forced to close emergency and maternity wards if a proposed bill to decriminalise abortion is passed.
To lobby or not to lobby? Fortunately for the Australian union movement our forebears in the union leaderships didnt spend much time trying to answer this question. Campaigns were more direct and more successful than todays so-called strategies of boxing smart and keeping your powder dry.
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