The waterfront war that shook Australia
Twenty years ago, on 7 April 1998, Patrick Stevedores dismissed and locked out all 1,400 of its unionised waterside workforce, triggering mass protests and picketing around the country. In the dead of night, balaclava-wearing scabs with German shepherds and rottweilers entered the docks, c...CONTINUE READING
Surging homelessness as wages stagnate
Despite 27 years of uninterrupted economic growth, homelessness is rising in Australia. What ought to be a fundamental human right – like access to food, water, education and health – is increasingly denied to people in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. More worrying is that in...CONTINUE READING
Australian apartheid, even in death
Henry Lawson’s “The Bush Undertaker” tells the story of an old shepherd who respectfully reburies a white man after digging up the bones of a black man. “I’ll take a pick an’ shovel with me an’ root up that old blackfellow.” Little has changed more than a century later. At Fitzroy Crossing...CONTINUE READING
‘Cashless welfare’ a punitive fraud
In mid-February, the government announced that the trial of so-called cashless welfare cards at Ceduna, South Australia, and east Kimberley, Western Australia, was to continue for another year. A third trial area may be added. This is the scheme that Malcolm Turnbull declared last Septembe...CONTINUE READING
ABC’s pathetic kowtowing to government
US investigative journalist I.F. Stone famously said: “All governments lie”. So a filing cabinet full of classified government documents should have been a heaven-sent opportunity for the ABC to hold the Australian government to account. Instead, we got a craven attempt by the ABC to show...CONTINUE READING
Hell NOprah!
It was the speech heard round the world. Award ceremonies are like that. But this was much more. After Oprah Winfrey’s acceptance of the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, the Washington Post, and social media, raised the possibility of Oprah as the next US president. ABC News an...CONTINUE READING
Sydney solidarity rally with PNG maritime workers
The Sydney branch of the Maritime Union of Australia organised a rally on 31 October in support of 1,000 dock workers in Papua New Guinea who have been sacked and replaced with more exploited non-union labour. The sackings were condemned as an act of corporate greed and union-busting by th...CONTINUE READING
Cheap and easy consultation still too much for a racist government
The “Uluru statement from the heart”, produced by a meeting of several hundred Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders in late May, put the final nail in the coffin of the billion dollar bullshit of the “Recognise” campaign. This rejection – most forcefully by the minority of radicals who...CONTINUE READING
Why won’t Buddhist leaders condemn terrorism?
Terrorist atrocities are taking place as I write this, on an almost unimaginable scale. Houses have been destroyed and civilians (including children) have been burned alive, tortured and even beheaded. The BBC has reported seeing a death squad of thuggish perpetrators, brandishing swords,...CONTINUE READING