En Passant

Am I living in a police state? On Tuesday the Australian Federal Police raided the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst. On Wednesday it was the turn of journalists in the Sydney offices of the ABC. They were looking for information that they could use to prosecute whistle-blowers who provided the information to journalists. […]

My thoughts in Independent Australia on the Government and the Liberal Party’s anti-ABC  approach. They would destroy the ABC if they could.

Sophie Longden at ABC Radio South East NSW interviewed me for 15 minutes about my poetry book launch. Plus a lot of politics and two poetry readings.   The book launch will be on 30 March at 4.30 pm in The Terrace at the National Folk Festival.   Sophie will be playing the interview in […]

This is the direct youtube link to my almost 14 minute interview with Genevieve Jacobs on ABC Radio 666 on the GST on Friday 6 November.

This is the link to my interview with Genevieve Jacobs on ABC Canberra Radio 666 on the Goods and Services Tax on Friday morning.

Until an anti-austerity mass movement and its political expression arise we will continue to have bad government after bad government in Australia. That new formation will I suspect only happen when we decide to take action as the working class against whoever is in power, the Liberals or Labor.

Independent socialist and prospective ACT Senate candidate, John Passant, today called on ABC staff to walk off the job indefinitely to stop the mass sackings taking place right now.

We need more protesters and less Tony Jones on ‘our’ ABC. So how can we defend the ABC and SBS? How can we defend the jobs, the work-life balance of the remaining workers and the ability to deliver some quality programs from time to time instead of the shit dished up on the commercial channels?

There is only one way. The two main unions, the Media Arts and Entertainment Alliance and the Community and Public Sector Union have to call their members out on strike until the government backs down. The unions would have mass support if they did this. The ACTU and individual unions have to pledge that if any action is taken against these ‘illegal’ strikes under bourgeois law then members in other unions will walk off the job. This is the only way to stop Abbott and Turnbull, and in doing that we open up the possibility of a more democratic and popular ABC and SBS reflecting the views of a population which is far to the left of the major political parties on most issues.

In defending the ABC and SBS we have the chance to reclaim them.

In the circumstances of reformism’s despair and degeneration, abuse becomes a substitute for politics. To win laughter back we on the left need to help organise the fight, fight, fight against the neoliberalism of both parties which renders so many on the soft left, in their passivity, humourless and without hope.

We interrupt normal programming to bring you politics from the street, writes Colleen Bolger in Socialist Alternative. That was what happened when the ABC’s Q&A panel was rendered speechless for two delicious minutes on 5 May by a group of rowdy students. Their actions struck a chord for many reasons, not least of which is that we’re fed up with the banal drivel that somehow still passes for “robust debate”.