Analysis

The following speech was delivered by Pip Hinman, a member of Sydney’s Stop the War Coalition and the Socialist Alliance, to the September 8 “Stop Bush” protest in Sydney.

Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFUA) Victorian secretary Michele O’Neil was so furious when she heard the Labor Party’s reworking of its industrial relations policy that she penned an open letter to Labor leader Kevin Rudd and deputy leader Julia Gillard in protest [see page 8].

Established in December 2001, the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) was set up with the stated aim of regulating and promoting the teaching profession in Victoria.

Three-metre high security fences, heart-stopping tasers, a bone-smashing water cannon, mobile prison buses and — perhaps most disturbing of all — the threat of automatic incarceration for randomly abducted protesters? Welcome to the growing international phenomenon of “population control”. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum is in Sydney, and NSW security chiefs are telling you to follow orders, shut up and stay away. Prison cells are ready and waiting if you fail to heed the warning.

Sydney is to be shut down in the lead-up to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit from September 2. US warmonger-in-chief George Bush will be attending amid an unprecedented amount of money and effort being spent on security.

Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Brian Boyd spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Sue Bolton on August 20 about some Victorian unions’ plans for another mass mobilisation against the Work Choices legislation.

A leaked document outlining PM John Howard’s climate action plan for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit — to be held in Sydney on September 8 and 9 — once again confirms the Coalition’s dangerously cavalier approach to global warming.

The following open letter to federal ALP leader Kevin Rudd and ALP industrial relations spokesperson Julia Gillard was issue on August 29 by Michele O’Neil, national assistant secretary of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia (TCFUA).

A report released on August 30 by the Australia Council Of Social Services (ACOSS) shows that the number of Australians living in poverty has increased over the past 10 years. Using an international poverty line of 50% of median income, the numbers increased from 7.6% to 9.9% of the population between 1994 and 2004, or nearly 2 million Australians. This measure is used extensively in OECD countries. Using the same poverty line used in the UK and Ireland, 60% of median income, poverty has risen from 17.1% of the population in 1994 to 19.8%, or 3.8 million Australians, in 2004.

Climate change We're on the fast track to climate meltdown unless greenhouse gases are slashed 60% by 2050. We teeter on the edge of ghastly feedback loops, as the Arctic soils melt and threaten to spew trillions of tons of methane into the air.

Michael Barker’s reply (“Promoting ’democracy’ through civil disobedience”, GLW #722) to a letter-to-the-editor by Jack DuVall (GLW #718, online edition) contains some serious factual errors and misleading comments regarding the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), for which I serve as chair of the board of academic advisers.

Debra Jopson is an investigative reporter with a conscience and a very good record for exposing the crimes that continue to be committed against Indigenous people of Australia. Her latest expose, in a series of articles in the Sydney Morning Herald on August 21-22, was of a multi-million dollar robbery of funds allocated to address the Third World-like conditions of Indigenous Australians. And who was the robber? The Howard government.