War drums in the Pacific
Coming hard on the heels of George Speight's terrorist coup in Fiji, the
Australian capitalist media's battalion of analysts were quick to pronounce
the Malaita Eagle Force's (MEF) June 5 seizure of Solomon
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Support the right to organise On May 29, the Federal Court fined two union officials $20,000 each for refusing to apologise to the court after being found guilty of contempt. The court had earlier found Dean Mighell and Craig Johnston, both
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Reconciliation requires justice On May 27, in the Sydney Opera House forecourt not far from where the attempted genocide of Australia's indigenous people began, the spokespeople for the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation will hand their
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The budget and 'democracy' Every year, at 7.30 pm on the second Tuesday of May, the federal treasurer gives a half-hour speech in which he (there has never been a woman treasurer) "hands down" the national budget. In the following hours and days,
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The 'new' relationship In the wake of Labor leader Kim Beazley's meeting last week in Jakarta with Indonesia's President Abdurrahman Wahid and PM John Howard's response to Wahid's announcement on April 27 that he was postponing his May visit to
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Zimbabwe crisis exposes refugee hypocrisy Australian politicians are falling over themselves to offer refugee status to wealthy, white plantation owners displaced from their properties in Zimbabwe by supporters of President Robert Mugabe. On
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Howard and Burke's dirty deal While the compromise on mandatory sentencing struck between Prime Minister John Howard and Northern Territory chief minister Denis Burke may have been sufficient to quell disquiet from the Liberal
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UN a tool, not the answer The call by Geoff Clark, chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, for the federal government to invite members of the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial
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From social security to social control Over the next few weeks and months you will hear a lot about the interim report of the government's committee on welfare reform, Participation Support for a More Equitable Society, issued on
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Environmental criminals Yet another toxic spill by an Australian mining company in the Third World provides a compelling argument for tougher laws against polluters. It also exposes the futility of "industry self-regulation". On March 22, one
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Mandatory sentencing: it isn't over In spite of Senate and United Nations reports finding mandatory sentencing laws are in breach of international conventions, and in spite of the Senate's March 15 adoption of a private member's bill overturning
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New economy', same old principles Stockbrokers, market analysts, finance journalists and politicians have been breathlessly singing the praises of the "new economy", supposedly based on the rapid growth of communications and information technology,