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Issue No. 139 07 June 2002  
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
 Romeo and Juliet?
 Robbo's Rave
 Latham Ad Nauseum
 Our Home Is Girt By Wire
 Hands Off Hooligans!
WHAT YOU CAN DO
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News

Budget Delivers - But Not For DOCS


A positive trade union reaction to the NSW State Budget has been tempered by calls for the Community Services Minister, Faye Lo Po, to resign over her failure to secure funding for more staff.

Public Service Association general secretary Maurie O'Sullivan made the angry call, describing her inability to fund extra staff in the department of Community Services as a "humiliating dismissal".

"Any Minister worth his or her salt would take such an insult pretty infuriatingly and not hang around a Cabinet Room where clearly her opinion and her claims are trivialised," O''Sullivan says.

" The Department is in absolute crisis and this crisis has been drastically compounded by the Treasurer's dismissal of the Minister's request for an immediate interim substantial staffing increase in the ranks of Field Workers."

Apart form the DOCS funding, NSW Labor Council secretary John Robertson says the Budget was good news for working people, with strategies to stimulate employment across the economy.

Robertson says the removal of payroll tax on apprentices would provide an incentive for job creation and skills development in blue-collar industries.

"This decision places apprenticeships on the same footing as white-collar and service industry traineeships which were already exempt from payroll tax," he says

Other initiatives that the Labor Council endorsed include:

- $1.5 million to address the exploitation of outworkers in the textile industry

- an extra judge for the NSW Industrial Relations Commission

- a trial on reduced class sizes for the first years of schooling

- and increased funding for police, education and health

But Robertson says that increases in public sector staff numbers should be on a permanent not a casual basis.

"Our biggest concern is the casualisation of the public sector. Today's Budget Papers do not provide sufficient details to gauge whether this trend will continue, but it is an issue we will continue to pursue."


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