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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With Prejudice

We've all heard the claims that the Commission seems more concerned about allegations involving the CFMEU than more general considerations, but you have to sit inside the court-room to understand the nature of the unfairness inherent in the Royal Commission process.

While a phalanx of lawyers are on hand to represent the interests of various parties, there are really only two players in the Commission - Cole in the chair, and his counsel assisting Nicholas Green.

Green controls the agenda and runs witnesses through their statements. For employers with a gripe against the CFMEU, this comprises a series of friendly leading questions to squeeze out maximum scandal.

In contrast, when a CFMEU official enters the stand the tone changes with the Counsel Assisting setting out to lure the witness into a contradiction or, better still an admission of guilt.

Green's performance questioning Andrew Ferguson this week was extraordinary, he was probed on everything from statements in his university thesis of 20 years ago to whether officials have ever sworn on building sites.

At the time the primary evidence is elicited, the lawyers for the CFMEU are not allowed to cross-examine witnesses on the statements they provide the Commission; their involvement is limited to intervening on points of legal order.

They are allowed to cross-examine at a later date, but only on matters witnesses receive prior notice of - and long after damaging allegations have been aired publicly.

This is where the real injustice of the Royal Commission lies; with the restrictions imposed on union lawyers to challenge evidence at the time it is given.

By controlling the agenda and the evidence, Cole and his Counsel shape their inquiry, rolling out untested allegations with all the quasi-judicial trapping of impartiality.

The media assigned to report on the case, wait breathlessly for the juiciest morsel each day and faithfully reporting it - without the risk of defamation. The Commission provides a steady source of anti-union stories presented in a forum where there is no right of reply.

Even when the Commissioner showed his compassion in allowing the mother of a dead worker to address him directly, it was unfortunately the exception that proved the rule.

The key issues of union concern - that is safety, tax fraud and use of illegal immigrants - have been hived off to a paper inquiry rather than presented in this very public manner.

Make no mistake, what is going on here is the manufacturing of a 'crisis', every bit as cynical as the Children Overboard affair - a calculated use by the Howard Government of the judicial processes to control a media agenda to meet defined political ends.

Peter Lewis

Editor

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