Solidarity Magazine #10 - Get the market out of childcare
So far the world economic crisis has not had the same impact in Australia as in the US or Europe. A few months ago some pundits were confidently predicting Australia could weather the storm. But now the discussion is about how bad the economic problems will get.
What a difference a month makes. In mid-October, Kevin Rudd was the toast of corporate Australia. But now no one is confident that Australia will avoid recession.
As Solidarity goes to print, the fate of up to 386 ABC Learning child care centres is in doubt. That represents one-tenth of the national child care resources. The centres look after 30,000 children and employ over 4000 people.
The final piece of Labor’s new industrial relations regime has been unveiled by Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard. The new legislation was hailed by Gillard and most of the media as bringing the end of WorkChoices.
The shocking announcement a few weeks ago of the largest ever mass sackings in Australia’s higher education sector at Victoria University (VU) prompted a well attended protest rally in a quiet time of the academic year.
In the context of the global financial crisis, governments across the world have abandoned financial conservatism, proposing significant expenditure programs, often funded through debt.
Twenty thousand teachers at meetings around NSW have voted to take 48 hours of industrial action at the start of the 2009 school year, in the event of the NSW government not abandoning its attacks on wages, conditions and the staffing of public schools.
A strong community campaign involving Traditional Owners, health organisations, environment groups and the Central Land Council has called for immediate repeal of Howard-era legislation forcing a nuclear dump on the Northern Territory.
In early November the Rudd government announced it would introduce a Student Service Fee of up to $250 per student which universities could choose to implement. This is to seek to address the damage done to student services since the introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU) in 2005.
In early October, the Federal Labor Government announced major changes to the CDEP (Community Development Employment Programs). The changes have been met with outrage from affected Aboriginal communities.
The Australian government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) is more about profit than planet.
The Walk Against Warming rallies this year were smaller that last. This is largely because they had no particular clear demands, and they did not take a position on carbon trading.
The majority of western economies are now in recession. The OECD, an umbrella group for 30 industrialised countries, says its members are facing “a protracted downturn”.
Over the weekend of November 8 and 9, the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) hosted “Socialism 2008” in Kajang, a rapidly growing working class town near Kuala Lumpur.
Renewed fighting in the Congo threatens to drag the country back into full-scale conflict, in a country where five million civilians died in war between 1998 and 2003.
There were two million people in and around Chicago’s famous Grant Park (the site of the infamous 1968 anti-war protests) at midnight on November 5 to hear Barack Obama’s victory speech. People wept openly and danced in jubilation.
Obama’s election has buried the myth that the US white working class is inherently racist, hopelessly tied to the white elite.
The failure of free market policies evidenced by the collapse of major banks and big falls on the stockmarket raise whether there is an alternative to the market as a way of running society. Judy McVey examines what a planned socialist economy would look like
The union campaign against WorkChoices succeeded in getting Howard voted out, but has not put unions in a stronger position to organise and fight. Solidarity examines why
In 1969 over one million workers took part in a general stoppage and won the freedom of jailed union official Clarrie O’Shea and an end to the penal powers. With the ABCC and most of the WorkChoices laws intact, Amy Thomas looks at the lessons for today.
Jarvis Ryan looks at the re-emergence of Russian power and explains its significance
Review: The First Australians
Directed by Rachel Perkins
Available on DVD soon
Review: Hunger
Directed by Steve McQueen
In selected cinemas now
A MAJOR investment program in Aboriginal housing in the NT is being used as a weapon to further break up community control, push people out of remote areas and entrench the NT intervention.
Infamous Victory: Ben Chifley’s Battle For Coal
ABC1, November 6
Watch online at www.abc.net.au/tv/iview
