February 21, 2018 - click here for index of articles.

Trade union rights – TIME TO ACT!

If the trade union movement is to survive a unified movement to defend trade unions and defeat anti-union legislation must be built on as broad a basis as possible. Last week the High Court and the Federal Court, using the full force of the Coalition government’s state machinery hit the union movement and militant unionists with two savage blows. more ...

Editorial – It’s your ABC – defend it

The ABC’s Charter requires its broadcasts to include a wide range of political views, allowing the public to make informed decisions about important issues. It also states the ABC Board must “ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is accurate and impartial ...” more ...

Centrelink issues hit remote people

Aboriginal people from remote communities in the Northern Territory are struggling to access enough money to eat, due to difficulties contacting Centrelink. And, at the same time, the Turnbull government has come under fire for handing over $430,000 to an American consultancy firm for ideas about resolving problems with Centrelink call centres. more ...

Criminalising journalism

The Turnbull government’s National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017, introduced on the last sitting day of Parliament in 2017, would criminalise all steps of news reporting and pose a grave threat to press freedom in this country. more ...

Review – Taking the Party to the People

Following up the theme of the CPA’s National 13th Congress, taking the party to the people, the Maritime Branch of the CPA has published a “how to” manual entitled Taking the Party to the People – a practical handbook. more ...

Extreme weather and extreme politics

Extreme weather events have always been with us. What makes them noteworthy now is their increasing frequency and severity, and the realisation that both those aspects are a consequence of human activity. Or to use the appropriate scientific terminology: a consequence of anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD). more ...

Solidarity with the Gov’t and the People of Venezuela

The US government is not slowing in its attempt to annihilate the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela in order to seize the enormous wealth of that country and to strike an unprecedented blow on all of Latin America. To do so it is sparing no effort. more ...

“Its name is communism”

In February 1848, 170 years ago, Marx and Engels published the Manifesto of the Communist Party, commonly called the Communist Manifesto, the birth certificate of scientific communism. A hundred years later Bertolt Brecht, the German communist poet, attempted a versification of it. Below are extracts, translated into English by Jack Mitchell. more ...

Culture & Life – The increasing signs of poverty

The bourgeois mass media, faithful to the capitalists who own it, consistently present an image of the developed world as one in which life is so much better than it used to be: we all have plentiful “labour saving devices”, multi-roomed homes, new or near-new cars and of course a job that pays for all our needs. more ...

Quote of the Week

Inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.

1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid

This web page was last updated: Tuesday, February 20, 2018