Economy

For the past 12 weeks, students of Quebec’s colleges and universities have been on strike against Premier Jean Charest’s proposal to increase tuition fees by 75%. The indefinite strike involves more than 170,000 students and is now attracting high school students. Broad layers of the general public are sympathetic to the movement.  

As part of savage budget cuts, the Victorian Coalition government has slashed $300 million over four years of funding for the provider of public technical and further education, the state’s 18 TAFE institutes that teach about 400,000 students a year. Funding per student in 80% of courses has been cut from about $8 per training hour to as low as $1.50 - to a range meant to reflect labour market priorities. Trades apprenticeships, aged care and child care received some small increases.

Like all wars, the “price war” between the two big supermarket chains — Woolworths and Coles — has its casualties. It is in the countryside and ordinary households that the toll is being counted, not in the profits of the two giant corporations.

It can seem like there is nothing but bad news in this country sometimes. Corporations are shedding jobs, governments are slashing spending and Essendon went down to Collingwood by one fucking point on ANZAC Day.

The Victorian Coalition government has taken to the state with a razor and announced huge cuts in the 2012 budget. These are the biggest cuts since the Jeff Kennett-led Coalition government that ruled Victoria from 1992-1999. Victorian TAFE institutes in particular will be hard hit. The level of cuts was so severe that higher education minister Peter Hall sent a letter to TAFE heads on April 29 indicating that he had considered resigning from the ministry.

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.

“Two years of brutal Con-Dem cuts and failings have left the nation seeing red as Labour gained hundreds of seats across local councils today,” Britain's Morning Star reported on May 4. The article said the council elections took place against a “backdrop of a double-dip recession, despite massive cuts to jobs and services”. The Conservative Party lost 11 councils to Labour and the Conservatives' coalition partner in government, the Liberal Democrats, lost one.

More than 8000 people demonstrated in Auckland on April 28 against the privatisation and give away of public assets in Aotearoa (New Zealand). A few days earlier, a Hikoi (walk) began from Cape Reinga in the far north of New Zealand's north island, headed for the capital, Wellington.

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.

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.

The Occupy movement in the United States relaunched itself on May 1 when thousands of people rallied in more than 130 cities across the country to mark May Day — the international day to mark working people's struggles.

Footage from the 'Malaysian Spring': the inspiring 250,000-strong Bersih ('clean') rallies for free and fair elections in Malaysia plus from Australian support rallies in Melbourne (1200 people), Sydney (500) and Perth (400).