E D I T O R I A L

With Prejudice
For anyone doubting the ability of an incumbent government to control the political agenda, this week's sitting of the Cole Royal Commission into the Building Industry made fascinating viewing.

F E A T U R E S

Interview: Class Action
NSW Teachers Federation general secretary Barry Johnson on Bob Carr's election budget and what he needs to do to win back the profession.

Safety: A Mother's Tale
Robin McGoldrick relives the tragedy that prompted her to confront Royal Commissioner Terence Cole over workplace story.

Unions: The Hottest Seat in Town
Nostalgia buffs should make a point of catching at least one session of Tony Abbott�s controversial, Royal Commission, playing to increasingly thin houses in Sydney. Jim Marr sat through the opening scenes.

International: Defensive Enterprise
How can men and women working in the unprotected "informal economy" be helped to better defend their rights? The ICTU grapples with the issue in The Congo.

Economics: A Super Deal?
Neale Towart looks at the debate raging within Labor circles around savings and investment.

History: A Radical Life
Stephen Holt gives an insight into one of the Australian Labor Party�s original true believers through his examination of papers held in the Manuscript Collection

Media: Cross Purposes
Stuart Mackenzie looks at the lines spun at the recent Senate committee hearing into media ownership laws.

Review: When the Force Is Unconscious
Cultural Theoritician Mark Morey reports on how a trip to the Sydney Writers Festival became a battle for intergalactic supremacy.

Poetry: Wouldn't It Be Loverly
For seven decades, Queensland aboriginal workers working under government control were 'paid' below-award wages which were placed into 'trust' accounts which were pilfered, levied, diverted and bled dry.

N E W S

Grieving Mum Turns Cole Around

Hamberger Grilled Over AWA Scam

Government Shrugs Off Death Sentence Charge

Action To Pay Foreign Crew Aussie Wages

Jockeys Face Insurance Crisis

Birds Get More Protection Than Workers

Budget Delivers - But Not For DOCS

Statewide Ban On Grain Loading

Howard Soft On Organised Crime?

UN Honours Building Union Drugs Program

Award-Winning Poet Wins Right To Write

Workers Out For Gay Games

Mahathir Told to Release Labour Activisits

Horta Backs Western Sahara Independence

Activists Notebook

C O L U M N S

The Soapbox
It�s The Members, Stupid.
Those officials obsessed with union voting power in the ALP are missing the point, writes Luke Foley.

The Locker Room
Too Good To Be True
Phil Doyle castes his withering gaze over a week in sport that featured origin square-ups, the World Game in all its glory and a few drunken jockeys.

Bosswatch
In The Cauldron
It was another week of pull-outs, profits de-mergers and takeovers in the corporate world; but some bright news with a plan to make executive pay more accountable.

Week in Review
The Black Letter
Legal mechanisms, national and international, are throwing up challenges to all sectors of our community but the law is a beast of many shapes and sizes as Jim Marr discovers.

L E T T E R S

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The Black Letter

The Federal Court delivers controversial Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock a curt "please explain" in the wake of repeated attacks on the judiciary. The court's most senior judges say his politically-driven rhetoric could be read as an attempt to pressure them, raising the fundamental issue of separation of powers.

Meanwhile, the Cole Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry, henceforth known at the Inquisition, opens in Sydney with widely-reported claims that people swear on building sites.

...............

While The Inquisition hammers away at its pet theory that workers should compete individually in a free labour market, claims of electricity price rigging sparked by the first cold snap of winter, pass through to the keeper. A detailed analysis of a price hike from $40 a megawatt hour to $6000 is passed to the ACCC.

Under toughened eligibility rules Government expects to carve $751 million out of the pockets of welfare beneficiaries over the next four years, figures reveal.

Meanwhile, at The Inquisition, CFMEU state secretary Andrew Ferguson confesses to having been a university student but, under cross examination, is unable to recall chapter and verse of a thesis he wrote more than 20 years ago.

..............

Millions of dollars spent tarting up outback detention centres in the days preceeding a visit by UN inspectors appears to have been wasted when the Government is sternly rebuked by a group which includes international jurists.

The UN expresses disgust at Australia's mandatory detention system, describing the Howard Government policy of locking up asylum seekers for long periods as a gross abuse of human rights.

Meanwhile, the organisation responsible for the establishment of The Inquistion, has something of an identity crisis. A senior officer of the Office of Employment Advocate fronts The Inquisition, not representing the office you understand but in a personal capacity. He claims building workers make life difficult for the OEA and doesn't disagree when an inquisitor suggests the office has been rendered "impotent".

Makes you wonder why he didn't represent the OEA in the first place. Once a private investigaor, always a private investigator, maybe?

..............

On a day when lawyers prepare another attempt to force the Government to come clean over its 1998 watefront dispute dealings, hidden away from repeated FOI requests, Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, rubbishes the afore-mentioned UN findings.

"We do not run off to the UN asking how Australia should be run," Downer tells Parliament. Giving as good as he gets, UN delegation head Justice Louis Joinet, says criminals get a better deal than asylum seekers under the Howard regime.

Meanwhile, union pressure forces The Inquisition to give some airtime to the issue of building site safety, albeit brief. A mother travels from Tamworth to tell inquisitors of the death of her 17-year-old son and urge improved workplace safety. At least one Sydney daily prefers to lead its report of that day's events with the claim of an ageing male contractor that he knew what it felt like to be raped. His claim, like most others, was subject to no supporting evidence or cross examination.

...............

Following faithfully in the footstep of George Bush, Australia formally announces it will not ratify the Kyoto climate change treaty aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. "It is not in Australia's interests to ratify the Kyoto protocol," Prime Minister Howard says.

Howard's Government signed the treaty but has steadily distanced itself from ratification since the election of energy industry-friendly US president Bush.

Meanwhile, in a Sydney courthouse the $60 million Inquisition, follows its predictable, pre-determined course.

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