Australia

Treaty of Waitangi

Issues surrounding the Treaty of Waitangi have been long debated in New Zealand. Supporters of Maori land claims have looked as the Treaty as a vehicle to fulfill past injustices. But has the treaty benefited all Maori or just a strata of Maori society? And should socialists continue to uncritically support all Maori claims under the Treaty? For a generation now, many on the left have seen the politics of the Treaty of Waitangi as a vehicle for addressing the social inequalities Maori have faced. In no small measure, this dominant view, particularly popular amongst liberals, has been the...

Carr crashes mid-term

The NSW Carr Labor government is approaching mid point of its historic third term. Observers of NSW state politics broadly acknowledge that the Carr government is on the nose with the electorate on key issues like public transport, health services and education. With a huge 17 seat majority in the Lower House Bob Carr appears to believe his government can weather the storm. But approval ratings have been falling and the Opposition has made up some ground. NSW Labor has adopted such an uncompromising conservative agenda that it is finding itself increasingly outflanked by a populist Liberal led...

Free Craig Johnston!

Earlier this year former Victorian State Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Craig Johnston pleaded guilty to charges of assault (verbal abuse), criminal damage and two counts of affray in a previous court case. Craig Johnston has had his suspended sentence overturned in the appeal court. He was given a 2 year and 9 months jail sentence with the 9 months to be served immediately and the 2 years jail sentence to be suspended for 2.5 years. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Craig has had an alliance of powerful enemies preparing the ground for such an outcome. The Office of...

Vote Socialist Alliance! For a Labor Government and a union fightback!

Happier after Howard? Kicking Howard out, and saying "Not Happy, John" are words on many lips, placards, T-shirts and stickers. Howard has undermined working class consciousness and working class solidarity, on many fronts - by legal penalties against unionism, by policies to promote profit-making and more intense competition, putting health and education squarely into the market, tax breaks for property owners, reducing taxes for the better off and reducing government spending, privatisations, etc. This is in a global context with specific intense manifestations in Australia, of reduced...

The Luisita massacre

In a violent strike dispersal in Hacienda Luisita in the Philippines on 16/11/04, 14 people were killed, including two children aged 2 and 5 years old. Join the protest campaign organised through the Labour

PRD celebrates decade of struggle

By Max Lane On 22 July, more than 300 people gathered in Jakarta to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People's Democratic Party (PRD). Keynote speakers were Dita Sari and Yusuf Lakaseng, the current chairperson of the PRD's central leadership council. Dita Sari reminded people: "One decade ago was the age of dictatorship by a military and crony capitalist elite that buried the people's political freedoms. This was the 'New Order', which came to power over the corpses of one million left-thinking human beings, as well as exile, torture and the suppression of left progressive...

Victorian times under Bracks

By Bryan Sketchley If any Victorian trade unionist had an inkling that Bracks and the state ALP would deliver up a half way decent deal for workers, they would, by now be sadly disappointed. With the current round of enterprise bargaining recently concluded for public servants some unionists have been heard to say that 'at least under Kennett you could expect to get a kicking, and prepare accordingly.' The deal stitched up between CPSU officials and the government has seen pay outcomes that will stay marginally ahead of inflation and a handful of minor improvements in conditions. Every pissant...

15 years since the Cockatoo Island occupation

From a speech by Claude Sandaljian at a meeting sponsored by Solidarity, Socialist Democracy and the Workers League on 24 April 2004. Claude Sandaljian worked as a boilermaker at Cockatoo Island Dockyard (in Sydney Harbour) for 17 years. At the time of the occupation he was the Convenor of the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union (AMWU) and Chairman of the Cockatoo Island Shop Committee, which represented all the workers on the island. It's very hard to put 14 weeks of industrial struggle into a ten-minute talk, but I'll give a resume. In 1987 there was a White Paper on defence and the Hawke...

How Victorian nurses battled Bracks

By Bryan Sketchley What was shaping as a significant, and possibly protracted, industrial dispute in Victorian hospitals was settled on 4 May. The state Labour government offered a 2.25% wage increase, over three years, and an additional .75% if nurses agreed to give up nurse - patient ratios. The nurse patient ratios system - 5 nurses rostered for 20 patients - has made intolerable working conditions, in the words of the Nurses Federation, 'barely tolerable.' On top of that Victorian nurses are currently amongst the worst paid in the country. An entry level nurse in Victoria will earn $55 a...

First person: A political odyssey

Bob Carnegie describes his political itinerary, from young cadre of the Stalinist movement through Maritime Union official to anti-Stalinist revolutionary. I always had a strong underlying humanist bias. I tended not to view things not just from an ideological viewpoint, as was the rule in the SPA [Socialist Party of Australia, a 'hardline' pro-USSR split-off from the Communist Party of Australia]. My moral break from authoritarian state-capitalism, or Stalinism, which still infects the Australian left and the Australian trade union movement to a much larger degree than people realise, took a...

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