Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is revamping notorious laws that provide sweeping powers to the police and courts under the guise of combatting “bikie gangs.”

As the Australian university year begins, students confront a drastically changed world, where an extreme right-wing administration has come into office in the United States.

By targeting Khaled Sharrouf, the government is continuing a pattern of using individuals demonised by the media to set legal precedents that threaten basic democratic rights.

Soaring housing prices are causing widespread financial stress and social hardship, especially for young people.

Over the past decade, it has become increasingly difficult for any government to push through parliament the brutal measures demanded by the corporate elite.

Union officials sought to divert the widespread anger into impotent appeals to the state Coalition government, while promoting the opposition Labor Party.

The political crisis not only raises the prospect of a split in the federal government but points to the widespread popular disaffection wracking the entire parliamentary establishment.

Under intense pressure from the financial markets, the Turnbull government is seeking to slash social spending to enable cuts to business taxes.

The February heatwave is among the hottest ever recorded in southeastern Australian cities and towns, where most of the country’s people live.

The CFMEU is seeking to suppress opposition to the agreement, which cuts wages by 5 percent and creates a new tier of lower-paid workers.

By resuscitating previously blocked budget cuts, Turnbull’s government is intensifying the assault on welfare entitlements.

Security and defence analysts claim that if the summit is jeopardised, China will take advantage at the expense of Canberra and Washington.

The public sector union is seeking to channel workers behind impotent appeals to the government.

While Bernardi’s split is not, by itself, an immediate threat to the ruling Coalition’s one-seat majority in the lower house, it points to broader processes tearing apart the government.

In Bernardi’s resignation statement, he highlighted the deepening crisis of the two-party political establishment.

While the demonstrators were animated by opposition to the persecution of refugees and the rise of militarism, protest organisers called for an “independent” Australian foreign policy.

Protesters were animated by opposition to the persecution of refugees, the eruption of militarism and war and the growth of far-right movements around the world.

The ruling Liberal-National Coalition is riven with divisions on foreign and domestic policy that have only been intensified by the advent of the Trump administration.

Donald Trump’s election as US president has sent shockwaves through the parliamentary elite and accelerated the global turn to trade war and war.

Just two weeks in office, Trump’s aggressive “America First” economic nationalism and militarism are sending political shockwaves around the world.

Trump’s bullying treatment of Turnbull has thrown the Australian government and the media into turmoil.

The Greens are cynically invoking Trump’s immigration ban to advocate a more “independent” foreign policy for the Australian ruling elite.

Hanson is cynically exploiting the widespread political disaffection with the establishment parties which are responsible for making deep inroads into the living standards of working people.

Sections of the Greens are calling for an anti-establishment posture, in order to prevent the party being bypassed by a developing movement of workers and young people.

Adult prison guards will be deployed to two youth detention centres as part of a crackdown on alleged child rioters.

In the face of global outrage over Trump’s measures, Turnbull undertook to strengthen relations with the new US administration.

Profit-making colleges with dubious records have received millions of dollars in public funding under a scheme introduced by the former Labor government.

The HRW report points to the rapidly escalating erosion of basic legal and democratic rights in Australia which continues despite previous such reports.

The ruling was one of a series of interventions by the Fair Work Commission into industrial disputes that underscore its role as an apparatus of the corporate elite.

The federal and state handouts will depend on Alcoa and the Australian Workers Union cutting workers’ wages and conditions.

Despite leaks of damning information by public sector workers, the Turnbull government is ratchetting up its attack on welfare recipients.

The lockout of 65 Parmalat workers is part of a corporate onslaught on the wages and conditions of manufacturing workers nationally.

While unable to connect the Bourke Street incident to the bogus “war on terror,” the Victorian Labor government has used it to prepare far more stringent bail laws.

While the organisers promoted Hillary Clinton and gender politics, many of the attendees voiced concerns about the rise of militarism, the erosion of democratic rights and the growth of the far-right.

WSWS reporters spoke to workers about the escalating attacks on jobs and wages, and existing high levels of unemployment and poverty in the region.

While Mike Baird claimed to be resigning for family reasons, he sent a barbed political message to Prime Minister Turnbull.

Prime Minister Turnbull’s fourth cabinet reshuffle in 16 months underscores the Liberal-National government’s instability.

Carers of people with a disability are being denied support programs under the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The Roy Morgan data shows that membership is lowest among young people and the most impoverished sections of the working class.

Large contingents of police have used “move on” powers to shift groups of homeless people from busy areas of the city popular with tourists, including Flinders Street station.

In pursuing aggressive “America First” trade measures, Trump threatens the economic interests not only of China but also of close allies such as Australia and Japan.

The union and management are invoking the threat of an imminent plant closure to bludgeon workers into accepting the deal.

The tragedy is one of a growing number of fatalities in the construction industry as builders, with union complicity, maximise profits by cutting basic health and safety.

Contrary to the myth of Australia as an egalitarian society, it is among the most unequal industrialised countries in the world.

The latest measures are part of a decades-long assault on energy workers in the Latrobe Valley and nationally with the collaboration of the unions.

Paul Keating stated that a Trump administration threatened to “involve Australia in war with China.”

The National Disability Insurance Scheme will deny adequate assistance to many in need, even those with severe mental illnesses.

The motivation for the faction’s formation is concern over the fall of support for the Greens.

The industrial tribunal’s ruling clears the way for pay cuts of 30–65 percent, a precedent that will be used against other workers.

The cuts are the thin edge of the wedge of a far-reaching assault on the democratic right to a secure retirement.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology detailed several record-breaking temperature anomalies caused by global climate change.

The announcement represents a significant tactical shift by Australian imperialism.

Conflict between the US, led by the protectionist Trump, and China, Australian capitalism’s largest export market, could have catastrophic consequences for an already contracting economy.

Increasing numbers of parents are feeling pressured to organise tutoring for their young children in “kindy boot camps” where they undergo structured learning and constant testing.

The government is dispatching thousands of “debt notices” demanding that current and former welfare recipients repay hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars.

Mounting levels of unemployment and underemployment underscore the fraud of the government’s claim that its policies would deliver “jobs and growth.”

The incident sheds light on the deep concerns in the Indonesian military over the prospect of the country becoming embroiled in a confrontation between China and the US.

An already under-funded scheme for providing disability services to public school children in the state of Victoria is to be targeted for further cuts.

An additional 3,100 police officers will be recruited, expanding the size of the force by 20 percent.

Faysal Ishak Ahmed, a 27-year-old asylum seeker from Sudan, died after suffering a seizure and collapsing in an Australian-controlled detention centre.

There has been virtually no media coverage of the spiralling trend, because it raises serious questions about the rising level of social inequality.

Global warming has caused the worst destruction of corals ever recorded on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

In recent years, Melbourne has been transformed into a regional hub for US and Australian military research and development.

Although racism undoubtedly plays a role in the cruel treatment of indigenous people by the police, Dhu’s death points to the high rate of deaths for all prisoners.

Returning from a three-month stint in the US, where he fraternised with Trump supporters, right-wing Liberal backbencher Cory Bernardi is testing the waters for a new far-right party.

The unions have repeatedly boasted of their role in boosting productivity and profitability at the CUB plant.

Although the circumstances of the police raids remain unclear, the political establishment and media are using the events to foment an atmosphere of crisis.

Hanson’s political program is directed at supporting big business, while blaming immigrants, foreigners, welfare recipients and “the Chinese” for social devastation.

The disputes centre on the basic dilemma facing the ruling class: how to balance between China, Australia’s largest export market, and the US, its longstanding strategic partner.

The lectures establish the connection between social inequality, the living and working conditions of the poor, and the deterioration in their health outcomes.

An air of unreality hung over the government’s budget update because of the worldwide uncertainty in the wake of the election of Donald Trump as US president.

While the media commentary surrounding Eddie Obeid’s jailing has focused narrowly on “corruption,” the public disaffection and political instability go far deeper.

Royal commission evidence, including testimony by Dylan Voller, who was repeatedly assaulted, shows that youth detention abuses were the result of government policy.

More than a third of the largest companies operating in Australia paid no tax in 2014-15 and multinational tax evasion cost an estimated $4.8 billion.

Probing more deeply the causes of her daughter’s crippling anxiety during the last two years of school, Clark found a general consensus that “education is broken.”

Under the banner of “welfare fraud,” the government is seeking another pretext for gutting the entire welfare system.

The strong response to the SEP meetings demonstrates a significant politicisation among new layers of workers and youth.

Those attending the SEP meetings voiced their concerns about Trump’s extreme-right political agenda and the social and political issues confronting workers in the US and internationally.

The worst downturn since 2008 is part of a longer-term decline in Australia’s commodity export-dependent economy.

Socialist Equality Party supporters challenged the union’s refusal to circulate the deal before forcing teachers to vote on it.

The medical evidence makes clear that Hamid Kehazaei died as a direct consequence of the refugee detention regime imposed by successive Australian governments.

A Fair Work Commission ruling, allowing Anglo American to dismiss workers involved in “protected” strike action, sets a dangerous precedent.

Melbourne, a city of more than three million people, ran out of ambulances as thousands of people suffered potentially fatal thunderstorm-related asthma.

The SEP calls all NSW public school teachers to demand that the full 2017–2019 Salaries and Conditions agreement be circulated well in advance of any vote.

The Electrical Trades Union handed the dispute over to the industrial tribunal and is wholly responsible for the outcome.

The unions are working with the government and the industrial tribunal to prevent a stoppage by their members.

The union has called stop-work meetings on December 8, for 50,000 public school teachers to vote on an agreement that they have neither read nor discussed.

While Australia’s political elite hails the 1966 Wave Hill walkout strike, tens of thousands of Aboriginal people continue to live in dire poverty.

An estimated 6.6 million people—28 percent of the population—are living in areas of outright economic decline.

The central purpose of the bill is to outlaw and suppress all strikes, stoppages and work bans by workers throughout the construction, transport and offshore oil and gas industries.

Socialist Alternative’s commentary on Syria closely aligns with the most hawkish sections of the US military and intelligence apparatus.

The acquisition will intensify years of job destruction and restructuring by the mining and engineering contractor.

The job losses did not begin with the current Liberal-National government but with chronic underfunding that started with the Hawke-Keating Labor administrations three decades ago.

“America first” protectionism could lead to trade wars that would crash the global economy, with disastrous consequences for Australian capitalism.

Thousands of miners could be afflicted by the deadly disease as a result of the erosion of safety standards by the major companies, with government and union complicity.

The repressive response to a so-called riot in the Melbourne juvenile prison is the latest example of the brutality being inflicted on teenage prisoners in Australia.

In 2017, the centenary year of the Russian Revolution, the IYSSE will wage a fight for Trotskyism in opposition to the pseudo-left politics that have dominated on campus.

Nur Islam, a young Rohingya man who fled Burma, was on a temporary bridging visa, which blocked basic social and political rights, including to work.

The rail union is complicit in the widespread job-shedding and casualisation within the haulage sector.

Turnbull demanded “hard” economic and budgetary decisions that would “create winners and losers.”