MELBOURNE — Labor "left" Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe's image minder probably thought it wasn't very good to have a picket of community health workers, their patients and a few leftists outside his electorate office the day
-
-
One more time: why are women underpaid? At a conference on inequality, at the University of New South Wales a few weeks ago, a study was presented which claimed to prove that discrimination has little to do with the earnings gap
-
Women rally against Nile billSYDNEY — Three thousand people rallied and marched here on September 7 to support a woman's right to choose abortion. The rally was called by the Women's Abortion Action Campaign and sponsored by
-
Walk into any supermarket, turn the pages of any glossy magazine, and you'll find bountiful evidence of the corporate world's sudden conversion to the environmental cause. Petrochemical companies, logging companies, transnational
-
Gold in green"There's gold in them thar green hills", declared a headline in the Sydney Morning Herald more than two years ago. In Australia, the main contenders for the prospective billion dollar waste management industry
-
I have a friend in Canberra, Sean, who is a child-care worker, a gentle person who hates war and loves working with children. The work is important but, because it is seen as women's work, it doesn't carry any sickness benefits. In
-
Interview by Boris Kagarlitsky VLADIMIR KONDRATOV is a Socialist Party deputy to the Moscow City Soviet. During the coup of August 19-21 he was a member of a special committee formed to organise the defence of the City Soviet building; his
-
Much has appeared in this paper over the last few months about the possible formation of a national Green Party. Most of it has inferred that the process is "top down", undemocratic and, at the worst, that its leading
-
Gun laws The flip side to the shooting deaths at Strathfield Plaza on August 17 occurred a couple of days later, and a few suburbs away, in Meadowbank. There, a young man went on the rampage with a knife, wounding seven, one quite seriously, but
-
SYDNEY — The facts in the case of the Croatian Six — revealed to a mass television audience in a recent Four Corners program — confirm that the Australian "criminal justice" system is about the closest thing in these parts to
-
Sex and the Old Testament At the September 7 rally and march in Sydney against the Reverend Fred "Festival of Light" Nile's bill to restrict abortion in New South Wales, the familiar black and white habits of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
-
GOLD COAST — A "Black and White night charity bash" is being organised by Surfers Against Nuclear Destruction on Friday, September 13, beginning at 8 p.m. at the Kirra Pub. It will feature Gun Shy & Punk Tured Lung. A Ride For Peace on Sunday,
-
Ecological shopping Tracy Sorenson September is the "Life. Be In It" campaign's Buy Green Month. There is scepticism among consumers about the environmental claims being made for some supermarket products, and an understanding among committed
-
The Twisted Semantics of the Week Award goes to that commie threat to True Blue Aussie With the Big Red Heart, that socialist danger to Aussie freedom, deputy PM and minister for wiping out the concept of free health, Brian Hoo, for
News
-
BRISBANE — The Queensland government seems determined to steamroll ahead with siting the state's largest toxic waste dump at Gurulmundi, near Miles in southern Queensland, despite expert advice against it. A resident's group,
-
GOLD COAST — Australia's favorite holiday beach, Surfers Paradise, could soon be named "Sewers Paradise" if protests against a $23 million ocean outfall pipeline are ignored. Queensland environment minister Pat "Rubber Stamp"
-
Pro-choice activists beatenSYDNEY — A group of women and men from pro-choice organisations were beaten up by anti-abortion thugs here on September 8. At the well-attended pro-abortion rally here on September 7, a demonstration
-
SYDNEY — Openness, public participation and environmental protection are among the key issues being pushed by a range of progressive candidates in the local council elections to be held across NSW on September 14. These issues
-
MELBOURNE — The Victorian Secondary Teachers Association and the Federated Teachers Union of Victoria decided on September 6 to step up their industrial campaigns against the loss of 2000 jobs. There will be a full-day stoppage on September 12,
-
Threat to deregister teachers' unionSYDNEY — The NSW Teachers' Federation is threatened with deregistration after refusing to call off the TAFE teachers' strike on September 1-2. The state Industrial Relations Commission
-
Picket opposes hospital closure By Stephen O'Brien NEWCASTLE — More than 300 people gathered outside the NSW Industrial Commission offices here on September 4 to demonstrate community support for keeping Wallsend Hospital open. The
-
Aboriginal woman vs six menSYDNEY — "I see this as a big challenge", Elva Taylor told 91̳, "because I'm Aboriginal and a woman, running against six men". Taylor is standing as an independent candidate for the South
-
Pragmatist "From the moral point of view, there is no difference between personal terror and collective terror. Here and there blood is spilled, here and there people are killed. One must look and judge it from the point of view of the utility of
-
MELBOURNE — Residents are angry and frustrated over the Kirner government's legislation on rezoning of land around the Altona petrochemical complex — especially in the
-
Perth police terrorise actorsPERTH — Police rampages like the one that led to the killing of David Gundy in Sydney last year are nothing unusual in WA. The latest victims of WA Tactical Response Group and Division 79
-
WOLLONGONG — Under the slogan of "Wollongong — Clean and Green in the 1990s" the Active Community Team (ACT) is running three tickets in the local government elections. The ACT has released a comprehensive environment
-
Bite in SA budgetADELAIDE — Despite being described as "almost mild" by current Australian standards, the SA budget delivered by Premier-Treasurer John Bannon on August 29 will have a nasty bite for many people. Government
-
MELBOURNE — The More Not Less Campaign (a coalition of 28 groups) and the Campaign Against Newstart are organising a "rank and file contingent" at the September 10 Jobs and Justice rally to demand a "militant
Analysis
-
Hawke and Namaliu Bob Hawke and Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Rabbie Namaliu, meeting in Canberra last week, agreed that more Australian aid should be directed to solving PNG's "law and order" problems. They agreed that PNG must shift the
World
-
Hunger strike at Chinese embassy Li Lu, a student leader during the 1989 pro-democracy demonstration in Tienanmen Square in Beijing, is currently on a hunger strike in front of the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC. He began his fast on August
-
Bill Kelty and Laurie Carmichael are often hailed as the brains behind the ALP-ACTU Prices and Incomes Accord but a short overview of the evolution of trade union and left politics in Italy since the late 1970s suggests at least one
-
Governor bans rallies in Timor The Indonesian governor of East Timor has banned demonstrations during a scheduled visit by Portuguese parliamentarians later this year. "Demonstrators will face the Indonesian armed forces", Mario Carrascalao
-
The South African government was involved in a plot to assassinate a leader of the African National Congress as part of a coup in the "independent" Transkei bantustan. The target was Chris Hani, a senior member of the ANC's national
-
US blocks waste controls GENEVA — The United States has strongly resisted attempts by some Third World and European countries to strengthen international safeguards against the movement and dumping of hazardous wastes. In a carefully worded
-
MOSCOW — Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin moved on August 28 to strip the Moscow City Soviet of most of its authority. Taking advantage of the "democratic" euphoria following the collapse of the August 19-21 coup,
-
Interview By Renfrey Clarke An economist and specialist on the problems of women in the workplace, ANASTASIYA POSADSKAYA is head of the Gender Studies Centre within one of the institutes of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. She was interviewed in
-
MOSCOW — Since the August coup and the dissolution of the Communist Party, trade union and left activists in the Russian Federation have accelerated their efforts to build a new, democratic mass party fighting for the rights of
-
The African National Congress has condemned constitutional arrangements proposed by South Africa's President F.W. de Klerk. It calls them a "recipe for disaster" and a ruse to "retain the accumulated privileges of apartheid". De
Culture
-
Thelma and Louise Directed by Ridley Scott Screenplay by Callie Khouri With Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis Reviewed by Rose McCann The fact that a film like Thelma and Louise can excite such controversy and critical comment (including being
-
Bran Nue Dae A documentary film by Tom Zubrycki State Film Theatre, Melbourne ReviewedI wish I hadn't missed the stage musical performance of Bran Nue Dae in Sydney last year — especially after seeing
-
This year's Perspecta was an understandably Greinerised affair, chopped back a bit (they couldn't afford the two dimensional artists), privatised to the hilt and for the most part lacking a bit of soul.
-
Patrick White — A life By David Marr Random House. 727 pp. $49.95 hardback ReviewedAfter he won the Nobel prize, Patrick White became a Living National Treasure. The fact that, to a large extent, his work
-
SYDNEY — Over two nights in August, a team of six graffiti artists created and dedicated a huge mural to the people of Newtown. The mural features planet earth, US civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King and a
-
The Edinburgh Years Directed by Cameron P. Mellor ReviewedThe Doug Anthony Allstars, middle-class Canberra boys and musical comedy group the world loves to hate, wreak havoc once more in their new feature-length