News

  • Branch delays on confronting Carnell

    CANBERRA — ACT government workers are facing a concerted effort by the Carnell government to divide the work force through agency agreements. This will preparing the way for the sell-off of profitable sections to big business. This

  • Protesters delay CRA meeting

    MELBOURNE — Around 150 angry workers, indigenous people and environmentalists delayed CRA's annual general meeting at the Victorian Arts Centre for over an hour on May 22. Representatives from the CFMEU's mining and construction

  • Campaign for justice for indigenous Australians

    By Nigel D'Souza MELBOURNE — The election of the Howard government has had an inauspicious start for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. The recent attacks against Aboriginal organisations under the rubric of

  • CPSU bans generalise across Canberra

    CANBERRA — Most workplaces in most federal departments have placed bans on the handling of government business and the administration of cuts, bans on doing the work of vacant positions, processing government revenue and the

  • Loose cannons

    Defence of democracy "In extreme situations some rules have to be broken." — Georgy Kuznetsov, dean of the television and radio department of Moscow State University's journalism faculty, justifying media distortion and if necessary

  • University initiative on East Timor

    SYDNEY — The largest ever public education conference on East Timor will be held here June 21-24, sponsored by the University of Sydney (School of Asian Studies), University of New South Wales (Centre for Human Rights) and University of Technology,

  • Building workers to strike

    SYDNEY — Building workers will strike around Australia on May 29, against cuts by the Howard government affecting their wages and those of apprentices and trainees. In a major slug to building workers' pay, Liberal treasurer

  • Victorian government to debate drug law reform

    MELBOURNE — The Victorian state council of the Liberal Party voted overwhelmingly on May 12 against decriminalising marijuana. While the vote is not binding on Liberal MPs, statements by leading parliamentarians, including

  • Battle over woodchips looms

    BRISBANE — The battle over Australia's forests is set to erupt again with a Queensland company applying to the federal government for an annual licence to chip 140,000 tonnes of timber. Wilderness Society spokesperson Virginia Young

  • Wilderness Society courts Liberal government

    HOBART — Tasmania's new environment minister, Peter Hodgman, was guest speaker at a Wilderness Society campaign dinner and slide show here on May 13, attended by 50 people. Slides were shown of some of the sites proposed by the

  • Calls for controls on new smelter

    WOLLONGONG — Some 350 people attended a May 8 meeting to discuss the reopening of the Southern Copper smelter, closed for economic reasons since early 1995. The Coalition for Economic Advancement, which is coordinating the bid to

  • Students say: enough is enough!

    PERTH — Chanting "Stop the cuts — enough is enough!", "Education for all, not just the rich" and "Students united will never be defeated!", almost 700 students rallied here on May 15. This lively and militant "student