Analysis

  • Global warming shows system must be changed

    In his excellent discussion piece in the lead up to the recent Climate Action Summit in Sydney, climate activist David Spratt concluded: “The problem is now so big, and the scale and urgency of the solutions required so great, that it is impossible to talk about them within the current public policy frame. “The business and political spheres have horizons too narrow and too limited in time to be able to deal with the challenges and complexities of global warming.”

  • Labor’s budget 2012: ‘Good economic management’ for who?

    For weeks, Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard and treasurer Wayne Swan have focused on one thing: using the coming federal budget to prove that they are “good economic managers”. But good managers for who? The Labor government is determined to deliver a surplus and cut public debt at the cost of more public sector jobs, services and cuts even to the meagre welfare support for single parents.

  • Join Jackie Kriz and Green Left Weekly in a May Day celebration

    Jackie Kriz, an Australian Nurses Federation delegate from Geelong, will be the special guest speaker at Sydney’s annual Green Left Weekly May Day dinner, where she will share her experiences of the Victorian nurses’ remarkable victorious campaign and some of the lessons we can learn from it.

  • 1% News: Twiggy could dodge tax for 5 more years

    Twiggy could dodge tax for five more years Billionaire Australian mining tycoon Andrew Forrest boasted on May 3 that he may pay nothing in tax for the first five years of the federal Labor government’s new Mining Resources Rent Tax (MRRT), which comes into effect in July.

  • Religious right has lost the marriage equality fight

    Historians will look back at this year’s two parliamentary inquiries into marriage equality as the beginning of the end of the religious right’s disproportionate influence on Australian politics. On April 13, the Senate marriage equality inquiry announced it had received 75,000 submissions with 44,000 or almost 60% in favour.

  • Vic government sacks public servants despite budget surplus

    The Victorian Liberal government has taken to the state’s public sector with a razor blade and announced huge cuts in the 2012 budget. Victorian TAFE institutes in particular will be hard hit. GippsTAFE chief executive officer Peter Whitely told ABC Radio that his institute faces a loss of 10% of its operating budget. TAFE courses that are not in high demand are expected to be slashed.

  • Max Brenner 19 defiant on support for Palestine as court case starts

    About 50 supporters of the “Max Brenner 19” — Melbourne Palestine solidarity activists being prosecuted in the wake of a protest in July last year — gathered outside the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on May 1 to show their support for the defendants at the beginning of their trial. One of the defendants, Jerome Small, read out a statement on behalf of the accused. The statement appears below. * * *

  • Yolngu people say they don’t accept NT intervention laws

    The Yolngu Nations Assembly, which represents 8000 Aboriginal people in the western, central and east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, released the statement below on May 2. * * * To the Leaders of the Australian federal and Northern Territory parliaments: 1. The Yolŋu Nations reject the Stronger Futures Bill (and those associated) and call on the Senate to discard these bills in full. We have clearly informed you that we do not support the legislation.

  • The Titanic: class war on the high seas

    A case of the unspeakable, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, in pursuit of the unsinkable? It is actually rather fitting that the multi-billionaire mining “magnate” Clive Palmer should be drawn to the idea of recreating the ghastly Titanic experience.