E D I T O R I A L

The Hijacking of May Day
Unionists watching the shambolic and violent affair that was the M1 protest could be forgiven for wondering what has become of the traditional workers' day?

F E A T U R E S

Interview: Youth Group
Federal Labor's youngest frontbencher, Nicola Roxon, on how the ALP can win back the hearts and minds of the young.

History: Back To The Future
As building unions put old animosity aside, Neale Towart looks at the history of the 'demarc' - and the steps taken to avoid them.

Industrial: On the Street
Jim Marr looks at the human cost of Treasurer Peter Costello's refusal to fund a pay rise for community workers.

Unions: The New Deal
Adam Kerslake outlines the importance of the ground-breaking pact between unions in the building and civil construction industries.

Legal: The Police State Road
Rowan Cahill argues that the Howard Government's new anti-terror laws carries echoes of a more sinister past.

Women: What Women Want
When 300 ALP women from around Australia converged on Canberra for the National Labor Women�s Conference they had more than quotas on thier minds, Alison Peters reports.

Politics: Street Party
Paul Howes looks at how May Day was celebrated around the Globe by those involved in trade unions and those who are not.

International: The Costs of War
Ariel Sharon is facing growing pressure from Israeli unions over the conduct of his war on Palestine, reports Andrew Casey.

Review: Songs of Solidarity
It had rock, grunge, pop and rap. The May Day union anthem song contest had everything, including an element of surprise thanks to competition winner Swarmy G.

Satire: Bono Satisfies World Hunger for Preachy Rockstars
U2�s lead singer Bono has launched a daring solo mission to end the world�s hunger for rock stars who use their high profiles to crap on self-righteously about charitable causes.

Poetry: Woomera
Divide and rule, that age old tactic...the lips of defence personnel inexcusably sewn to dehumanise an imaginary threat, the lives of asylum seekers incomprehensively dehumanised so as to defend a threatening image.

N E W S

Yarra Seamen Take Border Stand

War on Terror Targets Unions

Year Zero for Building Unions

Kinkos Copies Anti-Union Script

Nike Told to Shoosh on Sweatshops

Rapper Wins Wobbly Anthem Prize

Technicians Take Aim At Canon

Unions Target Labour Hire Bidding War

Rally Targets Tight-Arse Costello

Councils To Be Audited On Language Allowance

Scope For Payback In Privacy Limitations

Heavyweight Push For Medibank Private To Stay Public

What About Dad? - TWU

East Timor MPs Question Timor Gap Plan

Artists' Union Bans Voice For Peace

Activist Notebook

C O L U M N S

The Soapbox
Maurie on May Day
PSA supremo Maurie O'Sullivan had them in the palms of his hands when he delivered the traditional May Day Toast.

The Locker Room
Impractical Punting
Most of life is six to five against. That is, unless you know a Packer or a Waterhouse. Phil Doyle expands.

Bosswatch
Show Me The Money!
It may be May Day - but life in the banking industry has never been sweeter - unless you're in the gambling caper.

Week in Review
Two Bob Each Way
The double standards of modern life have left Jim Marr scratching his head.

Tool Shed
Border Insurgent
Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson has blockaded himself into the Tool Shed this week for opening Australia's borders up to flag of convenience ships with Third World crews.

L E T T E R S

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Youth Group

Interview with Peter Lewis

This week we've seen young people on the streets at M1 protests, but it won't have much to do with the ALP. Has Labor lost it's edge with young people?

I think the basic thing is that Labor is still getting the lion's share of young people's votes. We know that 18-24yr olds are still voting for us, massively ahead of any other party. But I think we have lost our position compared to previous generations. We have certainly lost a lot of our primary vote amongst that age group. There are a lot of visible issues that young people care about, particularly globalisation and the environment, that seem to catch young people's imaginations, where we don't necessarily have a presence. However we've actually got quite a lot to say and should have a stronger presence on some of these topics.

Young Labor does not exactly have a cool image - has it been the professionalisation of the Party that you think has lead to that situation?

No, look I don't think it necessarily is to do with that. It depends a lot on the issues that are the really "hot" issues for a generation and I guess people talk all the time about young people protesting against Vietnam and how that captured people's imagination. However there are quite different issues that are around now and it's not so much the changing attractiveness of the Party because of who's in it, I just think that we need to re-address how we are looking at the issues that young people care about.

What about an issue like asylum seekers, has Labor's handling of that, in your view, been damaging to it's appeal amongst young people?

I think it's been a damaging issue in the community generally. It's not necessarily one that young people are more passionate about than others. All indications are that there is a lot of diversity amongst young people on this issue, just as there is in the rest of the community, about how we should go forward. But my view is that we can afford to listen more to young people and we need to accept that political parties are not the places that young people voluntarily come to all the time to express their views. We need to actually make sure we are going out to them more and we have to do that through different forms of communication, not just through the newspapers or the nightly news because that is not necessarily where young people are getting most of their information.

Do you think organisations like Young Labor, which are basically models of the grown up Party, are the right forum?

I think there is plenty of scope for Young Labor, along with the rest of Labor, to re-think how it's structured and whether it is attractive for young people in the way it operates. The only thing we should be careful of is we don't want to have young people too far removed from the main body of politics, because their views need to be heard by politicians of whatever age. We also want to make sure that there is an effective way to do that, whether it's through Young Labor or through other structures.

What sort of other structures are there?

Well I mean that's why we're actually going through this review of the Party and the sorts of things that I've been proposing is looking at issues based forums or branches rather than geographical ones, for example. It is young people in particular who are interested in the environment or are interested in globalisation or interested in rights for young workers. They are things that they would be able to meet and talk about with others who are similarly interested. We need to build a good conduit then for any decisions or views that come up in those forums to be passed on to the Party as a whole.

How's that proposal gone down since you've raised it?

Well the Hawke/Wran review hasn't reported yet so I guess I don't know whether it will be something that's included, but we've certainly got lots of feedback on it! A lot of people are interested in being able to meet and talk about issues that they care about and are passionate about rather than sit through what can often be a bit tedious in branch meetings. There certainly seems to be a lot of evidence and anecdotes around that young people would rather organise and talk over issues rather than other types of structures. So I think it's our obligation if we want to be relevant to the next generation to be out there finding what those issues are and organising forums and opportunities for young people to talk to Labor.

Within that model how difficult or challenging would you see getting these sort of structures up and running issues without being consumed by the issues of factionalism and pre-selection that seems to have strangled the local branch structure?

Trying to re-think our internal structure, so that you can actually be organised around issues, does take quite a lot of change because for over a hundred years we've organised ourselves based on local geography. And the branch meetings have always been a mix of local issues and voting at the local level as well as the bigger picture things that people might have been interested in. But I think that as a national Party we can't afford to say that local politics is the only thing we want people to be interested in.

I wouldn't want that to be taken as me thinking it's not important, there are lots of reasons that many local issues are important. But we need to have a bit more breadth and encourage people to join who aren't worried about a local toxic dump or aren't worried about the local primary school and want to put their energy into international affairs or some other issue that we legitimately need to have a role in. It's going to take a lot of work to determine a new structure, such as: how will people meet, if they are going to need to be on the internet, are we going to want to be able to have forums every six months because people will have to travel further. It does create a fair number of challenges, but I don't think ones that are beyond us.

As the person responsible for youth affairs within the Crean Shadow Ministry, how difficult is it to get your agenda listened to in a time when we've got an ageing population and the political parties might by necessity have to really pitch themselves at an ageing demographic?

Well I think that the problems of the ageing population are ones that have got a lot of good coverage and attention and certainly a lot of my colleagues are acutely aware of it. But I think when we go back to some of the basics, which is why we have lost some of our primary vote amongst young people. The 18-24yr olds we're talking about make up about 10% of the population and we are talking about a time when elections are won or lost by 1% or 2%. Some energy being put into the way that we reach young people is something that has got a big electoral impact. Quite apart from that I think my colleagues are just as aware as I am that the next generation are the ones that we need to actually be winning over because we need to deal with the future. Children and young people may only be something like 20% of our current population, but they are 100% of our future. So we can't afford to ignore them, and I don't think any of my colleagues believe that they can or should be ignored.

You've also got responsibility for children what are your priorities there?

My priorities as the new spokesperson in this area is to actually look at what it is that families, and young people in particular, really need and can expect from Government. We've very much segregated a lot of our children's services in different states and between different levels of Government and I think that it's actually got to a point where we have to go back to the start and ask - why is it important for children in their earliest years to have support - why is it important for their health and well being - what impact does it have on their future developments? There's actually now heaps of research on the value of investing in these very early years of a child's development and the impact it can have in their later life.

So what I'm trying to focus on is the way the mix of children's health, maternal and child health, child care and other children's services fit with the rest of our concerns about how you balance work and family. Another big question is how these services tie in with the industrial relations system.

You've also been, as a young women in Parliament, involved with the Labor Women's Network and they met last weekend recommending remedial action in some states to raise the number of women in Parliament. Can you see scope for similar quotas for younger people as well?

I think that we have to constantly be vigilant if we want the Labor Party to be progressive and representative of the community. We have to always be looking at whether we've got a good mix of people in Parliament, whether it's young people, whether it's women. I think some more attention needs to be given to people of different ethnic backgrounds and there's even a debate, which is healthy to have, whether we all come too much from one section of the community. If we don't keep challenging and asking those questions, we can get complacent. I don't think that's happened yet, but it's good for us to keep pushing the boundaries.

One of the more interesting, vaguely political stories this week was the voting out of the Big Brother house of the Young Liberal and Young Labor's claimed some credit for that. How important is popular culture in getting a political message across?

Well of course it is important, but I think it's actually much more difficult to try to penetrate in a serious political way. As politicians we shouldn't take ourselves so seriously that we aren't prepared to be involved in commenting on those sorts of things, but on the other hand you can't always be expected to be up with every popular culture issue.

One of the things that I worked on during the recent Youth Week was a report containing the views of nearly 3,000 young Australians about the issues that they were most interested in, the things they enjoyed doing most, and what they would do first if they were Prime Minister for the day. This report was presented to Simon Crean on the final day of Youth Week. In terms of what they enjoyed doing most, the things that rated the highest were sport, socialising, music and dancing, and I think there is a message in that which is we mustn't dismiss these as non-political issues. I think there are actually ways to be able to use the things that young people are interested in to help get our message across.

But I also think the report provides some ideas about some things that we can explore a little bit more, like the need to provide more decent sporting facilities, both to meet their recreational needs and to help in preventing young people getting into all sorts of trouble. Everyone always thinks it's always politics versus the things that are more fun. I guess we have to try to make politics a little bit more interesting but at the end of the day we're still concerned about a lot of serious issues and we think that young people are too when they come to actually place their vote at the ballot box.

Well on that note, the challenge for Labor looking forward to a younger demographic is to wrap the traditional Labor values and Labor story into a contemporary context. Have you gone through that process in your mind, what does Labor mean to the new generation and if so, what is that message?

It's going to be something that I will probably be developing and revising in my mind every time I talk to another group of young people because it's not an easy thing to do and I don't think I have the answers for it yet. But what I am interested in exploring a bit more are the issues for the next generation of young people that are going to be different, and particularly the trends that we're seeing amongst young people - fewer having children or having children later, putting off buying houses or not being able to buy houses, often not making decisions about permanent partnering until much later. All those factors signal that there are new issues facing young people and obviously a lot of it's also driven by their working environment, casualisation, contract labour all those sorts of things.

Labor needs to be talking about what it is that we can deliver for young people who are in that position. We can't ignore a big group of people who have different needs to people of similar age from previous generations. So I'm looking at these issues and hoping that we can have a debate about where appropriate public investment should be made. I think we've increasingly lost perspective on why governments spend money on public infrastructure such as universities and child care centres, especially under this Government where they're very much into providing support directly to an individual person or family.

I actually think for this next generation we have to re-make arguments about why it's worthwhile to invest in a whole lot of public programs and what that would deliver. It's probably a debate that is a currently a fair way down the track, but I would like to play a role in helping articulate and promote

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Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005