ON MARCH 4, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) announced its support for a new proposal to transfer this year’s planned $31 billion tax cuts directly into superannuation funds. The decision by the ACTU to back the proposal is a turning point for a body that has historically, and quite rightly, opposed tax cuts in general, in favour of social spending on services like health and education. The “reasoning” behind the proposal is that it will help to curb rising inflation by delivering neither the planned tax cuts, nor increased government spending. Despite increases in the cost of living, the message is clear: the new government has to prove that it can match Howard’s legacy of “fiscal responsibility”-a Liberal Party catch-cry that over eleven years further accentuated the gap between rich and poor.

WITH THE ALP’s promised review into the first year of the NT intervention due to begin in July, there are new crises cracking the facade of the policies. The roll out now affects about 7700 Centrelink recipients in 29 Territory communities. Three groups of town camps are also subject to the restrictions.

ONE HUNDRED and twenty people packed a meeting of the Aboriginal Rights Coalition in Redfern in April to hear first-hand the impact of the intervention on remote communities in the NT.

Fear of a Brown Planet

On April 30 hundreds of taxi drivers blockaded one of Melbourne’s busiest intersections, at Flinders and Swanston streets, for 22 hours. The Victorian government was forced to meet with the drivers after they threatened to continue the action and blockade the airport.

Of all the articles, features, memoirs and books devoted to 1968, “The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After”, by Chris Harman, the editor of International Socialism journal, is still, by some distance, the best.

Bring on boss freedom day

CURRENTLY THOUSANDS of Aboriginal people from outstations and remote communities in the Northern Territory are living in unstable conditions in the major urban centres of Alice Springs, Darwin, Katherine and Mt Isa.

The US subprime mortgage crisis has seen hundreds of thousands of Americans lose their homes. In Australia, between 1985 and 2004, incomes doubled-but house prices quadrupled.

The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America

THE NSW Labor party has been wracked by a bitter dispute over the government’s attempt to privatise the power industry.

Solidarity spoke to Robyn Fortescue, from the Darlington Labor party branch

Iemma and Costa have made clear their determination to push ahead with privatisation despite their crushing defeat at the ALP state conference. But there is no reason why they should get away with this.

STRIKES, PROTESTS and riots over the cost and availability of food have swept across Burkina Faso, Somalia, Cameroon, South Africa, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Senegal, Egypt, Yemen, Indonesia, Morocco and Bangladesh. “Peace-keeping” forces in Haiti fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters after days of unrest there.

Neoliberalism has dominated economic and social policy for the best part of three decades. This ideology claims that the economy and society can be effectively run through the market and “small government”.

Wide opposition to new Melbourne freeway

The Climate Camp in Newcastle (10-15 July) will bring together climate activists from around Australia.

Why is the Rudd government so keen on “clean coal” as a solution to the climate crisis?

THE RUDD government’s first budget is a mixture of small mercies and big crimes. There is a $10 tax cut for low-waged workers, an increase in the child-care rebate and a $750 education rebate for parents.

Kevin Rudd talked about “opening a window on our democracy to let some fresh air in.” But how fresh was the 2020 summit?

Almost 60 people attended a Melbourne public meeting in solidarity with those arrested following the protest against the G20 summit in 2006. The meeting was part of an ongoing campaign to defend those arrested and oppose the attack on the right to protest.

Noel Washington, an official with Construction Division of the Victorian CFMEU, will be called before a court after refusing to be interrogated by the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), a Howard-era anti union body, funded by taxpayers.

NEW FIGURES showing a dramatic drop in union membership in 2007 highlight the challenges facing the labour movement as it attempts to rebuild after the Howard years.

After three state-wide strikes and five weeks of rolling stoppages, some Victorian teachers have won large pay increases of 10 and 15 per cent over the next year in an “in-principle” agreement between the Australian Education Union (AEU) and the Brumby government.

WORKERS AT Boeing subsidiary Hawker de Havilland in Port Melbourne have successfully defied anti-strike laws to take action in defence of a sacked workmate.

Six months after Labor’s election, unionists are still fighting Howard’s laws. Dave Kerin of Union Solidarity has been summonsed by the workplace ombudsman to “produce documents” over the Boeing dispute, under a clause of the Howard government’s Workplace Relations Act (predecessor of WorkChoices).

MAY DAY in the US this year was marked by dockworkers along the West Coast taking industrial action against the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some 25,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), representing 29 ports from Seattle to San Diego, took part in the 8-hour day stoppage during their busy day shift.

RIOTS IN Egypt against a government crackdown have shaken the regime of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak.

IN LATE March this year the sixth Cairo Conference was held. Hundreds of representatives from opposition parties and organisations including the Muslim Brotherhood attended as well as international participants.

GEORGE ORWELL wrote sport “is war minus the shooting”. The tension that exists between states gets expressed in and around sporting events and the Olympics are often a site of bitter wrangling between rivals.

Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd are rushing to claim the high ground in the “fight against inflation” after delivering their first budget.