E D I T O R I A L

Power Plays
Depending on where you sit, the decision by a State Labor Government to sell off the division of the power industry responsible for its long-term planning is either bold or reckless.

F E A T U R E S

Interview: Still Flying
ACTU Secretary Greg Combet looks beyond the bid to save Ansett to a broader union agenda for 2002.

Women: Suffrage or Suffering
Alison Peters marks International Women's Day by surveying the achievements - and shortcomings - of a century of female suffrage.

Industrial: No Coco Pops For Brenda
The working poor get short shrift from the hypocritical Minister For Workplace Relations says Noel Hester.

Unions: Back to the Heartland
Lidcombe, western Sydney. A boring cultural desert, right? Wrong, wrong and wrong again according to CFMEU officials who talked to Jim Marr about relocating their headquarters to a working class base.

Activists: Getting to the Point
Rowan Cahill reports on a development battle that has fractured a South Coast community and the role the union movement has played to drive a just outcome.

International: Push Polling
On the eve of elections in Zimbabwe, trade unionists are paying the price for their commitment to democracy.

Economics: Debt Defaulters
Amidst the colour and movement of CHOGM little was said about the pressing issue of debt relief, writes Thea Ormond.

Poetry: Those Were the Days
The Golden Wing lounges have closed. The last of the commiserating Ansett workers have long since departed those makeshift taverns.

Review: Black Hawk Dud
If you want to find out exactly what went wrong during the US Marines' 1993 peacekeeping operation in Mogadishu in Somalia, do not see Black Hawk Down.

Satire: Fox-Lew Launch Rescue Bid for Beta Video
Businessmen Solomon Lew and Lindsay Fox have shocked the financial sector with a daring bid to rescue the communications giant Beta Video.

N E W S

Egan Sells His Brains

Spying Bill Targets Strikers

Dunny Wars: Will Workers Carry the Can?

Drivers Appeal To Commuters

New Tack on Asylum Seekers

Go Forth and Multiply � Unions on Women

Howard Shuts Workers Out Of Steel Talks

Questions Remain As Rio Rings Changes

Labor Hire Swifty Exposed

Unions Fight 'Industrial Blackmail'

AIRC in Contracting Debacle

Mayne Chance For A Wage Deal

IT Workers Get Their Own Geek Scopes

PNG Women Visit Australia

Brazilian Unions Study Aussie Experience

No Shangri-la in Jakarta

Activists Notebook

C O L U M N S

The Soapbox
Love Thy Neighbour
Bruce Childs explains why he's reactivated the Palm Sunday committee to take a stand for refugees.

The Locker Room
Debt Before Dishonour
In a week that featured allegations of drugs in footy, fast horses and faster cars, Phil Doyle struggled to keep up.

Week in Review
Bullies Rule, OK?
Jim Marr considers a week which highlighted the absolute joy of being big, rich and powerful in a lassez faire world.

Tool Shed
Leader of the Free World
George W Bush barricades himself in this week's Tool Shed with the sort of double standards that gives world domination a bad name.

L E T T E R S

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Debt Before Dishonour

By Phil Doyle

********************

Humanity surpassed itself last week as everyone jostled for the moral high ground amidst allegations from the has-been-that-never-was, Dale Lewis, that a fondness for dance music and its associated lifestyle choices is prevalent amongst AFL footballers.

Of course we all know that the 700 odd professional footballers (and trust me, they are odd) never use drugs, are all fit clean young men who love their mum, and there isn't one of them that's in any way homosexual.

There probably is a bit in what Lewis (Dale, not Peter) has to say. As usual the truth will fall somewhere in between, like the remote down the back of a cheap vinyl lounge.

And you may as well lose the remote down the back of the lounge Foxtel and Optus are to provide more choice to the consumer by merging.

Sources indicate the new entity will be called Foxtus.

Apparently it has something to do with market forces which in this country means someone related to Packer, K.

And while cable Television scrambles to occupy the moral depths left vacant by our elite footballers, it doesn't have this domain to itself This is shared with two year old racing.

It's that time of the year again when we sink the Golden Slipper into equine sensibilities and engage in racing's equivalent of child labour or, more to the point, the horsey equivalent of pulling lucky numbers at the Royal Easter Show.

If you are up for a punt you really can't go past the Waterhouse bag. After all, if you do move from the black, through the red and into the brown then there's always an 'honorable' way to settle your debts.

That's why racing is such a noble sport.

Not like Formula One. The worlds biggest Scalectrix set is teetering on bankruptcy, while the annual Melbourne Men With A Small Penis Festival caused all sorts of mayhem to an area normally associated with good old fashioned police brutality. Some rich brat won, while an Australian finished in the top four hundred apparently. Who cares?

The feel good sports story of the week was seeing Frank Hyde singing Danny Boy again, for St George this time, as part of a cabal that is seeking the Dragons return to Kogarah.

This auspicious group has enlisted none other that the coach of the United States Rugby League Team. This is the sort of heavyweight that just might swing things for those who kept the notorious Nazi, Skull, out of Kogarah in the 70's and 80's forcing the dropkick to watch the games from atop a stepladder outside the ground.

Lets just hope they don't rely on statistics to back up their case. What was that percentage of drug taking footballers that Dale Lewis quoted again?

Go Roys.

   More from Phil Doyle

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Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005