Unite to fight the Liberals in the Sydney Uni SRC
The campaign to defend the Sydney University Student Representative Council (SRC) from the Liberals must get ready for the fight to come.
A Labor student won the SRC President in the...
Victory as Ark Tribe walks free
Ark Tribe has defied the ABCC and won. Taken to court for refusing to attend a secret interrogation by the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), he was found...
Power bills skyrocket under market solutions
The scandals over the cost of solar feed-in tariffs reveal the dangers of advocating market solutions to climate change.
The NSW government’s Solar Bonus Scheme, a feed-in tariff for rooftop solar...
Hazelwood CFMEU members demand a say
The political debate over closing Hazelwood has largely ignored those who actually work there. CFMEU members at Hazelwood held a mass meeting in early November to demand a say in...
Offshore processing unfair and discriminatory, says High court
On November 11, the High Court found the government’s offshore processing arrangements invalid, ruling that they must give asylum seekers “procedural fairness” and take account of relevant Australian law.
The...
Detention despair—Villawood suicide sparks protests
For a week or two in mid-November, it seemed Australia’s detention regime was coming apart at the seams. In the aftermath of the second asylum seeker’s suicide in two...
Gillard offers constitutional token but strips away real rights
In early November Julia Gillard announced plans for a referendum to decide whether Indigenous Australians should be formally recognised within the Australian Constitution. The move drew cautious support from...
ACTU tour learns of Intervention atrocities
In November a 20-strong trade union delegation organised by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), visited Central Australia on a fact finding mission to hear firsthand the impacts...
GenerationOne: the gloss on an assimilation agenda
“If you go back to the stolen generation it is true many Aboriginal people were stolen from their families but there was also a large proportion who would have...
Aboriginal school says mainstreaming no way to close the gap
Supporters of an Aboriginal school in Melbourne have occupied the gym in a sit-in protest against plans to take half the school’s land. ‘’We want at least one Aboriginal...
US bases deal fuels arms race with China
The Gillard Labor government has further committed itself to the US alliance, agreeing to a major increase in US military operations and use of military bases in Australia.
The decision...
Ireland: ‘Fear of poverty, homelessness and unemployment are pervasive’
A new wave of economic crisis is sweeping Ireland. The European Union and the International Monetary Fund were forced to announced a $150 billion bailout in late November—most of...
Release of Suu Kyi not the end of the fight in Burma
Burma’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released in November after spending most of the last 20 years under house arrest. It’s welcome that she’s free. But hopes...
Wikileaks documents show who the real terrorists are
George W Bush once described the invasion of Iraq as a “noble mission” targeting terrorists who had an “utter contempt for innocent life”. Thousands of US military documents leaked to...
Alexandra Kollontai: revolution and women’s liberation
Solidarity continues a series on the lives and struggle of revolutionary women
The 1917 Russian Revolution saw women win greater political, civil and legal equality with men than in any other...
Labor prepares another worse than nothing carbon price
Julia Gillard has promised to deliver a carbon price by the end of 2011, saying that there will be “nowhere to hide” from climate change. But Labor is shaping up...
New call for movement to break with market solutions
Academics James Goodman and Stuart Rosewarne have delivered a welcome salvo against market-based solutions to climate change.
Their new paper, written for Friends of the Earth’s Chain Reaction magazine, points out...
Labor and the ‘national interest’
Julia Gillard’s Labor government has pledged itself to govern in the "national interest". Amy Thomas looks at what this really means
At the end of the post-election shemozzle that gave us...
Trotsky, fascism and the united front
Trotsky’s understanding of how to fight fascism in Germany provides important lessons for us today, argues Carl Taylor
The Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, understood better than most the danger of...
Asking why Labor stands for nothing
Review article: Power Crisis, by Rodney Cavalier, Cambridge University Press, $34.99 and
All That’s Left: What Labor Should Stand For, Edited by Nick Dyrenfurth and Tim Soutphommasane UNSW Press, $29.95
Labor’s...
Competition, sexism and rich kids rule in Facebook film
Review: The Social Network
Directed by David Fincher, in cinemas now
The Social Network traces the origin of the online social networking website Facebook from its genesis amongst Harvard University’s elite...
The Pacific Solution: never again!
Review: The Pacific Solution
By Susan Metcalfe, Australian Scholarly Publishing, $24.95
The recent decision by the High Court in favour of two Tamil asylum seekers (see article here) has again focused...
Liberals gain from anger at Labor in Victoria
Victorian Labor has suffered a crushing rejection in the November state election—its first-preference vote collapsing from 43 per cent in 2006 to 36.5 per cent.
The Liberals have taken power...
