Chris Breen spoke to Electrical Trades Union Victorian secretary Dean Mighell about what to expect from Julia Gillard

Abbott is running the most right wing Liberal campaign seen for a long time. His racist fear campaign about refugees and his promise to turn the boats back has recommitted the Liberals to the very worst aspects of Howard’s policy.

By the time the Labor caucus moved to knife him, Rudd’s public support had evaporated. This was a major turnaround. Rudd was elected in a thumping landslide, securing the biggest swing to Labor since the Second World War. John Howard’s loss of his seat symbolised the huge Labor victory.

Gillard’s pitch to the right on refugees and her failure to offer anything on climate change have seen The Greens vote rebound again.

From serious lifelong feminist activists to fashion magazines, there is a widely held assumption that having Julia Gillard in the “top job” is a step forward for women’s rights. Even those who condemned her early conservative policies still maintain that Gillard’s victory was one for women everywhere. But Gillard’s ascension will mean nothing for the vast majority of women. Gillard is not setting out to do anything about sexism.

The palace coup that installed Julia Gillard as prime minister triggered a flurry of discussion about Labor’s factional heavy-weights pulling the strings. The irony was that right-wing power brokers had made the move to place Gillard, a member of the left faction, in the top job.

That Tony Abbott is actually running an election campaign with a pledge to stop the refugee boats is a clear sign of just how low Abbott and mainstream politics has sunk. But the road to Abbott’s racism was paved by Labor.

While most commentary has focused on Gillard’s East Timor solution, it has diverted attention from the ongoing abuses in Australian detention centres. The other elements of Gillard’s Lowy Institute address were just as disturbing.

A standing room only crowd of around 700 people gathered at Melbourne University in July for the launch of Beyond Zero Emissions’ (BZE) Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan. The turnout shows the popularity of their approach to climate solutions, which is to look at achieving the emissions reductions necessary to halt climate change, while maintaining living standards and social equity.

In early July students and activists from across Australia gathered at Flinders University in Adelaide for the annual Students of Sustainability (SoS) conference, a yearly environmental event.

John Howard’s bid to be the next International Cricket Club (ICC) vice-president has been blocked by African and Asian cricket nations. After bullying aside New Zealand’s candidate, whose turn it was to be “Australasia’s” representative, Howard was caught out by India for being a racist.

In late June the government passed Australia’s first paid parental leave scheme, finally leaving the company of the US as the only other developed nation without one.

More than 200 people attended the “Defending Indigenous Rights” conference, held in Alice Springs from July 6-9, to discuss the campaign against the NT Intervention.

More than 10,000 people gathered to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp in northern Austria.

“Europe’s strike-filled spring turning into a strike-filled summer”—this was the worried headline of Europe’s Examiner, bemoaning the resistance spreading across Europe to austerity measures.

After a year of stabilisation, the global economy is once again on the brink of a new plunge into recession.
Europe has been convulsed by a new banking crisis, as fears have emerged that some governments, such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy, may be unable to pay their debts.

Many see Cuban society as a model for socialism. But a look at its history presents different conclusions, argues Mark Gillespie

Forty years ago, the margins strike provided a model example of how to involve rank and file union members in action in defiance of the law and win, argues Tom Orsag

Review: Killer Company
By Matt Peacock, ABC Books, $35.00

As the war in Afghanistan approaches its 10th anniversary, political support for it among Western rulers is crumbling.