Analysis

  • Treaty, yeah? Not yet

    Aboriginal delegates to the 2020 summit, chaired by PM Kevin Rudd, expressed anger that it failed to agree on a treaty between Black and white Australia. They are also dismayed that there was no clear recommendation to form a new Indigenous representative body to oversee government policy.

  • \'Clean\' coal fraud — renewables now!

    The recent decision by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Climate Institute to support carbon sequestration and storage (CCS) will set back Australia’s efforts to confront climate change, as well as increasing the costs of doing so.

  • Why unions should support Palestine

    This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian al Nakba (the Catastrophe) — the razing of up to 418 Palestinian villages and the driving of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes by Zionist forces to create the State of Israel.

  • Letters to the Editor

    Clothing and sexism Anne Horan (Write On, GLW #746) writes that in feminist circles it's a no-no to discuss what women wear and that feminists do not criticise women themselves for wearing skimpy clothing. She states that the argument that

  • Unions can grow stronger, say militant leaders

    “The union movement can fight back and grow overall in the next period”, Tim Gooden, secretary of the Geelong Trades Hall Council, told Green Left Weekly on April 18. He was responding to reports in the mainstream press highlighting figures indicating a further fall in national union membership last year.

  • G20 sentencing: upping the ante on the right to protest

    In an obvious attempt to silence political dissent, on April 14, 10 G20 protesters who had pleaded guilty to charges of common law riot, criminal damage and recklessly causing injury received severe sentences in Melbourne’s Magistrates court.

  • Capitalism versus the planet

    John Bellamy Foster, author of Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature and an editor of the prestigious US-based socialist journal Monthly Review (), was a featured speaker at Green Left Weekly’s April 11-13 Climate Change — Social Change conference in Sydney. He spoke to GLW’s Renfrey Clarke.

  • Green Left Weekly $250,000 Fighting Fund Appeal: Crisis, what crisis?

    For most of us here in wealthy and relatively insulated Australia, the word “crisis” sounds like an exaggeration. We hear about the global warming crisis, the world financial crisis and now the food crisis but these seem like abstractions to most of us. “Crisis, what crisis?” is a familiar rejoinder.

  • Ruth Coleman: last of a generation

    Ruth Coleman, veteran ALP senator and feisty leftist died peacefully of cancer in her home in Bassendean, Perth, on March 27. She was the last of a generation of left-wing ALP members whose example shames the current neoliberal crop of Laborites.

  • \'Unite to fight climate change\'

    Green Left Weekly caught up with some of the Climate Change — Social Change conference participants. Here’s what they had to say.

  • RBA governor: Green energy? Workers should pay

    Glenn Stevens, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, has argued that working people should be forced to absorb the cost of higher power bills when a carbon emissions trading scheme is introduced in 2010. Speaking to the April 5 Sydney Morning Herald, Stevens argued that “the policy would need to be well explained to consumers to head off calls for higher wages”.

  • The Patricks battle 10 years on

    This April is the 10th anniversary of the mass sacking of hundreds of waterside workers around Australia by the giant Patrick Stevedores. The drama surrounding this event stirred fierce passions, generated mass protests and polarised society on a scale seldom witnessed.