Communist Party of Australia

Current Issue of The Guardian

September 20, 2017 - click here for index of articles.

Media ownership laws – Murdoch’s monopoly

Last week, by accepting demands of the One Nation Party, the Nick Xenophon Team and four crossbench Senators, the government finally managed to dump certain laws that restricted the operations of major newspapers and “free-to air” media corporations. more ...

Editorial – Whose law?

This week’s Guardian features an interview with two trade union officials in which they expose how Australia’s labour laws deny workers and trade unions fundamental rights while allowing employers to act with impunity. The construction union (CFMEU), in particular, has been subjected to a constant barrage of large financial penalties for doing nothing more than carrying out legitimate trade union activities. more ...

Public broadcasting, democracy and human rights

The healthy operation of the mainstream media is essential to democracy and the exercise of human rights. Critical to the quality and the diversity of the country’s media is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). An independent and comprehensive national public broadcaster that is resourced to play a prominent role in the life of the nation is integral to the maintenance of our culture. Another fundamental prerequisite for the healthy operation of the media is diversity of commercial media ownership. more ...

“Change the Rules, Change the System” – Politics in the Pub

On September 6, more than 40 people came to the 43 Below venue in Perth for Politics in the Pub on the topic “Change the Rules, Change the System”. The panel of three union speakers had all attended the NextGen Conference in Sydney last June. At that conference, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus launched the ACTU campaign, Change the Rules. more ...

Important Conference on Australian Peace and Independence

Melbourne has just hosted a highly significant peace meeting. The fifth annual conference of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) marked a growth in numbers and breadth of the new national peace network, an aim of communists and many others after the demise of the Australian Peace Committee as Australia’s national peace organisation. more ...

People in crisis

The capitalist media are often seized with not just surprise but amazement when ordinary people pull together to help one another in times of crisis, as so many Americans did after Hurricane Irma. Such “human interest” stories are always given prominence, even ahead of stories about baby animals. more ...

For working class solidarity

In their offensive against the trade union movement and workers, the Turnbull government and capitalist media have singled out the building and construction unions and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) for special treatment. As two of the most militant unions, the aim is to break them and then move on to destroy the rest of the movement. more ...

Alexei Tolstoy

No, I haven’t made a mistake and misspelled the name of the author of War And Peace. Appropriately, in this centenary year for the October Revolution, I have been re-reading Alexei Tolstoy’s great trilogy about that turbulent time, Ordeal (whose Russian title actually translates as Road to Calvary). A great nephew of the author of War And Peace, Alexei was also related through his mother to the writer Ivan Turgenev. Not surprising, perhaps, given his antecedents, that when he finally began writing – at his mother’s prompting in his teens – the words flowed readily. more ...

Between a shark and the deep sea

Can a US chain of profit-making schools really help the poor? Patience Akumu reports on the impact of Bridge academies in Uganda. more ...

Culture & Life – Fossil fuel and fascism

Donald Trump campaigned on the slogan “Make America Great Again!” He told unemployed coal miners in Pennsylvania he would get them jobs – but not by funding retraining to equip them to take up new generation green jobs. Certainly not! Trump has no interest in green jobs (a situation which at least saves his administration the cost of any retraining) despite the fact – and it is a fact – that developing green energy will provide many more jobs than continuing with fossil fuels. more ...