Analysis

  • Overworked and underemployed: the Australian 'recovery'

    On November 12, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released labour force figures for October that showed unemployment had increased by 11,100 to 690,000 people. At the same time, monthly aggregate hours worked fell by 1.9 million hours (to 1521.1 million hours) from September.

  • Socialist campaign brings change to Fremantle

    Justine Kamprad is a co-convenor of the Fremantle Socialist Alliance, and was the campaign director for the October 17 Fremantle City Council elections, in which socialist Sam Wainwright was elected with 33.44% of the vote.

  • A new Spanish-language supplement

    For environmentalists, Indigenous rights activists, feminists, socialists and all progressive people, Latin America is a source of hope and inspiration today. The people of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador, among others, are showing that radical social change is possible and a better, more just society can be imagined and built.

  • A radioactive labour camp?

    On October 6, BHP Billiton and the South Australian Department for Correctional Services announced a new agreement allowing the company to employ prisoners from Port Augusta at Olympic Dam — the world’s biggest uranium mine.

  • Fight for equal love gets stronger

    In 2004, the Coalition government, with Labor support, banned marriage for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. This year, the Greens introduced the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill to federal parliament, to try to overturn the ban.

  • Write on: letters to the editor

    Freddo Frog charge A 12-year-old Aboriginal boy in living in Northam in regional Western Australia was charged with stealing a Freddo Frog chocolate. He was told he would face court over this matter. The worse part of this story is that he did

  • Rudd outsources cruelty: refugees are not criminals

    The brutal nature of the Rudd Labor government’s “Indonesian solution” to deal with asylum seekers was revealed on November 15 when the Indonesian coastguard fired upon a boat carrying 61 Afghan asylum seekers headed towards Australia. Two of the passengers were shot and injured.

  • Guilty of shopping while black

    Most people reading or hearing the news story last week about the 12-year-old Aboriginal boy who was taken to court in Western Australia (WA) and charged with receiving stolen goods — a 70 cent chocolate Freddo — would have thought this was a sick joke.