Analysis

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.

Anti-union culture in Centrelink Union activists working at Centrelink have traditionally distributed printed material on workmates’ desks as a primary means of communication about workplace issues. This practice has now been prohibited by Centrelink management. This is not a consistent policy across government agencies.

“Rich people got it good in this country”, said African-American comedian Wanda Sykes on the September 24 Tonight Show with Jay Leno. “We refuse to let them not be rich. Think about it. Broke people are about to bailout rich people. This is what is going on.”

“I’m a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention”, affirmed US President George W. Bush, in his September 24 television speech to promote the biggest corporate bailout plan since the Great Depression. “I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business.”

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 Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) had egg on its face when all criminal charges against Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) member Brian Shearer were officially withdrawn by the Department of Public Prosecution on September 22.

On September 17, federal IR minister Julia Gillard unveiled Labor’s “new” industrial relations system based on the IR policy it took to the federal election, Forward with Fairness (FwF). But rather than “tear up” Work Choices, Labor’s pre-election promise, its replacement IR system largely preserves it.

Residents of Caroona, in the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales, are in their 11th week of a blockade that has stopped BHP Billiton from carrying out coal exploration on their land.

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”.

To lobby or not to lobby? Fortunately for the Australian union movement our forebears in the union leaderships didn’t spend much time trying to answer this question. Campaigns were more direct and more successful than today’s so-called strategies of “boxing smart” and “keeping your powder dry”.

Whether or not US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson’s rescue scheme works, one thing is already crystal clear: The capitalist system has failed spectacularly. The following editorial was published by the US Socialist Worker on September 25.

In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided and conquered. Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provided detailed critiques of corporate looting.