Communist Party of Australia

Current Issue of The Guardian

August 9, 2017 - click here for index of articles.

Dehumanising human services

Since 2010-11, the government has cut staffing in the Department of Human Services (DHS) by over 15 percent with the loss of 5,500 jobs. The cuts have hit Centrelink – its staff and clients – with a sledge-hammer. Information provided to a Senate committee earlier this year showed that the “functional and efficiency reviews” established in May 2014 by the Hockey/Abbott budget would cut $3.2 billion from social services between the 2014-15 financial year and 2020-21. Education and training, health and child support are among other DHS services in for the chop. more ...

Editorial – CSIRO cuts threaten our future

In February last year after the CSIRO suffered $115 million in funding cuts, its CEO, Larry Marshall, announced that 350 staff positions would be terminated. They included 220 in the oceans and atmosphere division and the land and water division. Both divisions deal with climate change. more ...

Climate of fear in the Torres Strait

Torres Strait fisherman Joseph Billy says he has seen more land disappearing from Masig (Yorke Island) every year. “Last five years, every year I have moved my shed back from the beach another few metres,” Mr Billy said. more ...

Book Review – Driving Disunity

On May 29 this year, ABC TV screened a program from a meeting in Canberra of approximately 250 Indigenous delegates. They were delegates who had previously come from all parts of Australia to meet at Uluru where discussions, deliberations and decisions were agreed upon and from which the “Uluru Statement” was delivered. more ...

Themis Speis – A free man

Every Wednesday morning Themis could be relied upon to turn up at the Communist Party’s office in Sydney to wrap Guardians for the weekly mail-out. A warm, friendly and committed comrade, it meant a lot to him that in his 80s he was able to make a valuable contribution to the Party. more ...

The lion and the injured zebra – Getting Venezuela right

As Venezuela’s fascist-minded oligarchy conspires with US imperialism to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicolas Maduro, few in the US seem to care. Instead of denouncing right-wing violence that aims at regime change, many on the US left have stayed silent, or opted to give an even-handed analysis that supports neither the Maduro government nor the oligarchy trying to violently overthrow it. Rather, the left prioritises its energy on lecturing on Maduro’s “authoritarianism” and the failures of “Chávismo”. more ...

Solidarity groups stand up for Venezuela

On Saturday July 29 outside Sydney Town Hall a rally organised by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network heard from unions and solidarity groups about the shocking pressure that the present government of Venezuela was withstanding: the Constitutional Government of President Nicolás Maduro who is continuing the Bolivian Revolution started by Hugo Chávez. This revolution aimed to restore the ordinary people’s resources robbed from them by neo-liberalism of former governments. more ...

Killing chemical protections

Scott Pruitt doesn’t want you to know what hazardous chemicals are being manufactured or used in the plant next door. And his decision, yanking a federal rule revealing the existence of such chemicals to workers, communities and first responders, has the United Steelworkers (USW) and a top job safety and health specialist mad. more ...

Culture & Life – The ongoing Cold War

Anyone who tries to tell you that the Cold War finished years ago “with the fall of the Soviet Union”, has not been paying attention to what is happening right now in various parts of the world, most conspicuously perhaps in Venezuela. A democratically-elected government that is trying to meet the needs of the poor is being destabilised by a well-organised, well-funded foreign-directed campaign supported by a massive, co-ordinated propaganda blitz through all the world’s monopoly-controlled media. more ...