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Labor Party members discuss refugee policy

BY IGGY KIM SYDNEY — "If it wasn't for the Tampa, we'd have a Labor government today", former NSW premier Neville Wran told a May 23 Labor for Refugees forum which heard calls for an end to the government's present policy towards asylum seekers.

Refugees' rights campaign hits campus, city

BY KERRYN WILLIAMS CANBERRA — More refugee-rights activists are getting involved in the organising of a June 23 protest. In addition to the Refugee Action Committee (RAC), the ACT Council of Churches, Community Aid Abroad, Amnesty International,

Q-Build workers protest govt stand-downs

BY BILL MASON BRISBANE — Construction and maintenance workers employed by the Queensland government public works corporation Q-Build marched through city streets on May 21 to protest low wages and inequities in superannuation and working

Activists plan Sydney social forum

BY NICK EVERETT SYDNEY — Activists representing the Wilderness Society, the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, the Democratic Socialist Party, the International Socialist Organisation, the NSW Greens and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union

GERMANY: 'Peace for the world - pretzels for Bush'

'Peace for the world - pretzels for Bush' A crowd of 50,000-70,000 rallied on May 21 in Berlin against George Bush's phony “war on terror”, preparing to give the US president a not so much warm as heated “welcome” to the city when he arrived

Tax workers want pay rise without strings

BY CHRIS SLEE The Australian Taxation Office's insistence that staff must meet "corporate indicators" before receiving a pay rise will likely be a hot issue in negotiations on a new certified agreement for the agency. At a May 16-19 meeting of

Socialist Alliance protests Tasmanian budget

BY DARREN JIGGENS HOBART — Praised by the establishment for handing down a "fiscally responsible" budget, the Labor government was criticised by the Socialist Alliance, which has just announced its candidates for the state election later this

EAST TIMOR: 'Your struggle is our struggle'

[The following is a slightly abridged version of a speech given by Sarah Stephen, a member of the Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific brigade to East Timor, at a protest organised by a number of East Timorese groups in Dili on

Loose cannons

Frustration "It's a frustrating war. The reason it's so frustrating and aggravating is because the enemy is not fighting." — US Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Fetterman in Afghanistan, quoted in the May 16 Washington Post. Deja vu "We're trying

Action Updates

Melbourne greets Tampa MELBOURNE — On May 16 the MV Tampa was greeted by a flotilla of boats organised by both the Refugee Action Collective-Victoria and the City of Port Phillip. Messages of support for Captain Arne Rinnan's rescuing of

AMWU leaders charged

BY SUE BULL MELBOURNE - The Victorian branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union has found itself under major attack from both its national office and the state government, in what many of the union's supporters believe is an

ANGOLA: The crisis you aren't hearing about

BY SEAN HEALY Out of sight of the world, a humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions is unfolding in Angola, as perhaps hundreds of thousands of people flee the “grey zones”, the 90% of the country which have until now been closed to