Softening up for cuts to jobs and services at Australia Post begins
As the Abbott government’s Commission of Audit prepares its war path against public services and public sector workers, Australia Post looks to be squarely in the firing line.
Small step towards justice for Jessie
Jessie Cayanan faced deportation last October after his 457 visa ran out, but has now been granted a Bridging Visa E with work rights. Most Bridging Visa Es don’t come with work rights, so this a minor victory for the campaign to grant him permanent residency.
Liberals have always dreamed of killing Medicare
The plan for a $6 co-payment fee for every bulk-billed visit to a GP has generated anger across the country. Health Minister Peter Dutton is on the attack claiming that health spending is “unsustainable”.
Nauru: Australian colonial control never really ended
Today, Nauru is as a pliant micro-state ready to warehouse and imprison asylum seekers. Its willingness to do Australia’s bidding is the result of a history of colonial exploitation.
Nauru—not fit for pregnant women, not fit for anyone
Another mother-to-be brought from Nauru to Brisbane at the end of January has won a reprieve from being sent back to Nauru.
Moral panic over drunken violence covers attack on our rights
The media frenzy over “alcohol fuelled violence” has led to the introduction of sweeping new police powers and alcohol restrictions in NSW, including the introduction of mandatory sentencing.
Media corruption frenzy boosts Abbott’s attack on unions
Tony Abbott has seized upon reports alleging corruption in the construction union to press his case for a Royal Commission and a new round of union busting.
Aboriginal grandmothers fight to stop new Stolen Generation
On the sixth anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s apology, a rally outside the NSW parliament demanded an end to what activists are calling a new Stolen Generation—removals by child protection departments.
Abbott’s attitude to Aboriginal people shows a new paternalism
The latest “Closing the Gap” report, released February 13, shows deteriorating conditions in Aboriginal communities across the country—a result of years of bipartisan support for assimilationist, pro-corporate policies such as the NT Intervention and attacks on Aboriginal organisations.
Egypt’s revolutionaries still defying the military
Three years ago more than a million people packed Egypt’s Tahrir square celebrating the fall of the hated dictator, Hosni Mubarak. Today things are not so bright.
Why Marx was right about capitalism
Karl Marx’s ideas remain crucial to understanding capitalism and the crisis and instability across the world today.
100 years since the First world war: Slaughter for empire and profit
Lachlan Marshall explains how the First World War was the logical outcome of the drive to divide the world into rival empires, not simply a tragic mistake
Oil, imperialism and intervention: Australia’s sordid history in East Timor
Australia’s self-interested grab for Timor’s oil is of a piece with the motives that drove the 1999 military intervention argues Vivian Honan
Full savagery of black slavery captured on film
Based on the life of Solomon Northup, published as a book in 1853, Twelve Years a Slave is a serious attempt to deal with the substance of slavery.
Mary and Mohammad both in the same boat
Heather Kirkpatrick's documentary, Mary Meets Mohammad, captures two worlds colliding in “Australia’s least multicultural town” of Pontville, where Tasmania’s first refugee detention centre was opened in mid-2011.
