Changes to workers' superannuation announced in the federal budget last week amount to a new tax levied on lower income workers and foreshadow the eventual abolition of the age pension.
Under the scheme, workers will pay 1%, 2%
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The government's plan to corporatise and privatise public services under the proposals of the Hilmer Committee threatens to widen the gap between rich and poor. As well, there are serious doubts whether the extensive benefits being
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Governments and media alike are promising extensive benefits from the recommendations on competition policy known as the "Hilmer Report". A recently released Industry Commission (IC) study on the report projects
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The Chinese government has ordered a crackdown on "chaos" in rural areas, where shrinking income, high inflation, food shortages, back-breaking taxes and rampant corruption have set public resentment bubbling. Emergency
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Increased repression of dissident and ethnic minority movements in China has failed to silence opposition voices. A section of the Xinjiang independence movement chose bombing to make its point, while protests rocked the city of
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More workers in Japan are likely to lose their jobs or have their pay packets cut as the rise of the yen to new heights encourages Japanese companies to shift more production lines to the Third World, where costs are cheaper.
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China is plagued by high inflation, an overheated economy, growing budget deficits, a crippling debt service burden, a destabilised rural population and dwindling food production. The just-concluded National People's Congress (NPC)
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At least four groups of political activists braved arrest in the first week of March to make their voices heard in demand for greater democracy in China. They are of diverse background, posing a wide range of daring demands by
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China and the US have locked horns repeatedly over trade issues in recent years, from the most favoured nation (MFN) benefits to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) membership and from trade balances to intellectual
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The creative accounting of a 28-year-old whiz-kid in faraway Singapore blew open a US$1 billion hole into which the British merchant bank Barings fell, never to emerge. Observers fear that other financial "time bombs" are still
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Up to 50 million workers across India took part in a one-day general strike on May 21. Demands included a halt to the central government's privatisation program, an end to job cuts, a halt to the implementation of anti-labour laws, a
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On May 1, a month after they admitted for the first time that they had discovered China's first cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) back in November but had withheld that information from public knowledge, Chinese