Analysis

In the year to May, manufacturing employers shed more than 68,000 jobs due to reduced demand emerging from the economic crisis, said the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

If we are going to meet the crisis posed by global warming, governments must take strong and urgent measures to cut emissions now. We need to build a sustainable economy and we need to do it fast. Delay will result in dangerous and unstoppable climate change.

A chill wind was blowing early last Thursday outside my local train station. Commuters had their collars turned up and their arms folded as they hurried into the station. Dave, the suburb's iconic Big Issue seller in his red wheelchair, and I with the latest Green Left Weekly, were trying to attract those with windproof consciences.

If the rhetoric of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission’s report on Australia’s health system is taken at face value, health care in Australia will get an impressive overhaul courtesy of the federal government.

More than 200 council workers and their supporters joined sacked council workers Mick Van Beek and Peter Anderson in Johnston Park, Geelong on the morning of July 28.

“We've had the gun at our head.” This is what William Tilmouth, Tangentyere Council CEO, said in response to Aboriginal affairs minister Jenny Macklin's triumphant July 29 announcement that the council had agreed to lease Alice Springs town camps to the federal government for 40 years in exchange for $135 million in housing upgrades

Former Queensland Labor cabinet minister Gordon Nuttall was sentenced to seven years jail on July 17. He was found guilty of corruptly receiving secret payments from two Queensland businessmen.

Canice Lynch was sacked from his job at the West Gate Bridge strengthening project on July 24. Lynch was the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) shop steward at the site.

“If you are still in the Labor Party today, you should be ashamed of yourself”, 71-year-old Aboriginal activist Pat Eatock called out to delegates entering the stage-managed proceedings of the first day of the ALP national conference.

Five Filipino workers holding 457 visas, who were employed at a Fletcher International abattoir near Albany, were made redundant and given 10 weeks’ entitlement pay on June 2.

Construction giant John Holland was the first employer to lodge an application with Labor’s new Fair Work Australia industrial umpire. It asked FWA to rule on which union has coverage at its controversial West Gate Bridge site in Melbourne.

Australian Coal Association (ACA) executive director Ralph Hillman believes the industry doesn’t want special treatment from the Rudd Labor government. It just wants the same “fair treatment” given to other big polluters under the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).