Critical Times

The combined impact of the state budget and the dreadful WorkCover laws marks June 5, 2008 as a dark day for SA, according to SA Unions Secretary, Janet Giles.

“Mike Rann proudly describes himself as being a “pro business Premier”, but he fort to add “anti worker” to the equation”, Ms Giles says.

“This budget reinforces the business windfall announced last year, and comes at a time when vulnerable injured workers are being stripped of entitlements.

Source: Serve The People
Wednesday, June 18, 2008

South Australian members of the Australian Education Union have vented their anger at the state’s Labor government by holding a 24-hour strike.

The AEU covers Technical and Further Education (TAFE) lecturers, pre-school and school teachers, principals, school services officers (SSOs), early childhood workers (ECWs) and Aboriginal education workers (AEWs) in the public education sector.

Frustrated by months of stubborn rejection of their wage claim (21% over three years) and faced with the loss of protection for class sizes and working conditions, members voted by 85 percent in Electoral Commission-conducted secret ballots, to strike.

By Max Oz

To paraphrase – from the title of a children’s story Run! Rabbit Run! – Rann! Labor Rann! is a fitting description of the current Labor Government’s efforts in regards to workers in South Australia. Although the Labor Party ‘Rann’ away along time ago (well before the appearance of Rann) from its working class heartland, Media Mike has contributed splendidly to its pretensions as “business-friendly” and “investment-friendly” rather being ‘champions of working people’. History inevitably catches up with pretenders and they’re a plenty in the Labor Party.

Dear Kevin Rudd,

Why doesn’t Australia achieve international recognition by being the first country to successfully develop an Electric Car?

In the late 1990s, General Motors began commercial sales of the EV1, successfully demonstrating that a battery powered, zero-emission car was possible. The EV1 was quieter, cleaner and cheaper to run than cars powered by fossil fuels. However, the project was shut own because of pressure by fuel companies.

Green Left Weekly Enviro Film Festival

Saturday June 21, 6-9pm

South West Community Centre, 171 Sturt Street, Adelaide.

Over 2 sessions, 2 films plus vignettes from historic environment protests plus the recent Climate Change/Social Change conference featuring John Bellamy Foster and Roberto Perez.

Tickets: Whole Festival $15, $10conc, or 1 Session: $9, $6conc

Vegetarian Dinner, hotdogs, popcorn and drinks available

Phone: 8231 6982, 0438 624744 | Email: adelaide@.

NOEL WASHINGTON FACES JAIL…HIS CRIME?

STICKING TO THE UNION!

Noel Washington has been in the Australian construction industry all his life…first as a crane driver, then as a building union official. He’s also a family man watching the future for his grandchildren. Noel wears his Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) jacket with pride and is the Senior Vice President of his union in Victoria.

By Dean Mighell

IT’S ironic that Kevin Rudd comes from Queensland, the state where the Australian Labor Party was founded in the 1890s by striking unionists under the sacred Tree of Knowledge.

In 2008, it’s symbolic that the Tree of Knowledge is now dead. This irony must not be lost on Australian workers when they look at our industrial relations laws.

Five years after they were sent to Iraq to support the US imperialist invasion, Australian combat troops are being withdrawn.

This has been made possible by the widespread and continuing opposition to the Iraq invasion by the people of Australia. In the prelude to the illegal actions of the US imperialists and their Australian puppet, now former Prime Minister, John Howard the largest ever anti-war demonstrations took place, eclipsing even those of the Vietnam war period.

Sara Moss & Susan Austin

The Socialist Alliance is joining the growing number of people and organisations campaigning for a big increase in all pensions and other welfare benefits. It is outrageous that people on welfare were almost totally ignored in the recent federal budget.

PM Kevin Rudd says he wants to look after Aussie battlers, but he’s forcing a whole sector of the population to live in poverty while giving tax cuts to even high-income earners and keeping a major budget surplus aside.

The oil monopolies are giant foreign-owned juggernauts
making billions out of this country’s resources, squeezing
those who work for them and holding workers and small
business hostage to their petrol monopoly and their drive
for ever-increasing profits.

They are making billions while ordinary Australians scrimp
and save to afford the petrol they need to get to work.

The government is in league with the oil monopolies
in the ‘import parity pricing’ rort, insisting that Australia
remain tied to imported oil while the cleaner local product is
exported overseas.

The biggest crowd seen in the Moonta Town Hall in 50 years turned up last night to discuss a proposed desalination plant to water a new Greg Norman designed golf course in the Yorke Peninsula town of Port Hughes.

The meeting, attracting over 300 people, was organised by the local Community Action Group with support from Greens MLC and planning lawyer Mark Parnell.

“The Local Council has well and truly been put on notice: the people who elected them don’t want to be kept in the dark about major changes to their community,” Mr Parnell said.

Dave Holmes

When one sees a modern city from the air, especially at night, it is a truly awe-inspiring spectacle. The immensity of the project is a testimony to the power and creativity of human beings. However, on the ground and actually living and working in this wonder, things are quite different: the social and ecological problems crowd in and fill your view.

Anna Pha

The price of crude oil more than doubled in 12 months and more than quadrupled in five yeas since May 2003. The big oil corporations empty people’s pockets and pump out record profits, while the government sits by and says there is little else it can do. Debates about reducing the GST or excise on petrol avoid the real issues and genuine solutions.

Guerilla gardeners across the world say they are fighting a win-win war, writes Kate Kelland.

THEY work under the cover of night, armed with seed bombs, chemical weapons and pitchforks. Their tactics are anarchistic, their attitude revolutionary.