Issue No 100 | 29 June 2001 | |
Tool ShedBlatant Self-Promotion
In an effort to flog my latest book, I'm making the ultimate sacrifice and placing myself in Workers Online's most widely read section for a week. So it's official - I am a Tool. ******************** It was either that or a very tough choice, given that the past fortnight has seen Tool-like behaviour from across the political and social spectrum. We've had: - Two international leaders who are about to be ex-international leaders stumbling from one State Dinner to the next. One totally myopic, dribbling and speaking utter nonsense - the other the leader of Indonesia. - A Labor Premier smuggling himself into Parliament, then forcing the rest of his caucus to take the fire from a trade union picket line, standing on the steps and blowing kisses as Labor loyalists were dragged away by police. - Those same picket-breaking MPs trying to re-write history and turn an act of solidarity with striking Parliament House workers into an anti-Democratic blockade. - John Della Bosca - The Abdulramin Wahid of NSW politics - for continuing to leave all and sundry thoroughly confused about his workers compensation reform agenda. - And of course our old mate Piers, for failing to attack us at all for the picket on Parliament. Where are you, big boy? But at the end of the day, I couldn't bring myself to giving anyone else the limelight this week. After all, I've convinced Pluto Press that there are thousands of Workers Online loyalists desperate to get their hands on a copy of 'Ship of Tools' the Best of Workers Online's First 100 issues. If I don't deliver on this, I'm unlikely to ever get another book printed, so I'm putting all efforts in. And if that means consigning myself to the shed for a week, then so be it. Maybe it's fair enough. After all what's a Sussex Street backroom boy doing sucking up to feature writers and radio producers in a desperate effort to get some media attention for himself? Surely, he would be better served out their getting stories about repressed workers and attacks on workers compensations. Well yes. And no. Part of the Workers Online project has been to get recognition of a trade union voice - and if that sometimes means making the mouth the story, so be it. It's just that I risk becoming as big a tool as those I rip into on a weekly basis. Because my thesis is this. We all have Tool-ish tendencies, but those who stick their heads up in the public spotlight end up being larger than life. Take Howard, in private life he is just a small-minded man, as leader of the nation his small-mindedness takes on a grandeur of his own. If he was just a suburban solicitor, Peter Reith would just be irritating and officious, as a senior government minister his down-right dangerous. And if Tony Abbott had completed his training for the priesthood he would get up on a pulpit and sprout incomprehensible gibberish as if it was gospel truth. There goes that theory, I suppose. Beyond all the theory, the public spotlight has become an end in itself. And it is in this light that I move from behind the shadowy keyboard at Workers Online and say to all my readers - buy this book. Please. Ship of Tools - The Best of the Workers Online first 100 issues will be launched on Monday night. It is available online at http://www.plutoaustralia.com
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Interview: Baptism of Fire It�s been a rugged few weeks for Labor Council�s new honcho. But John Robertson accepts it comes with the territory. Politics: Seven Days that Shook Our World Chris Christolodulou surveys the wreckage from a week when the political and industrial wings of the labour movement collided. History: History Sometimes Repeat This is not the first Labor government to attack workers compensation entitlements. Some believe the Unsworth Government�s 1987 reforms were the beginning of the end for that administration. Technology: Unions Online: Where To Now? Social Change Online's Mark McGrath goes looking for what's on the virtual horizon for the union movement. Media: The Printed Word Revisited Rowan Cahill looks at the resurgence of the workers press and the lessons for unions in better communicating with their members. Unions: Time For Second Gear The trends are in the right direction but unions are still drinking small beer in the IT world and need to allocate more resources to communications generally, argues Noel Hester. Satire: Texan Governor Faces Execution The governor of Texas has been sentenced to death row after a jury found him guilty of killing hundreds of people. Review: The Insider Neale Towart looks at a literary anti-hero who brings the factional machinations and double-deals of the ALP machine out of the back rooms and into the light.
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