E D I T O R I A L

Abbott's Rule of Law
Tony Abbott has had a bit to say about the Rule of Law in recent times; how respect for the law should be at the centre of industrial relations and that anyone who flouts it is a national traitor.

F E A T U R E S

Interview: Party Girl
Former ACTU president Jennie George on women in politics, life in Canberra and the ALP-union relationship.

Unions: Touch One, Touch All
The tribes of the union movement gathered outside the Cole Commission this week to repay the CFMEU for its generosity.

Industrial: Condition Critical
Nurses have taken their claim for financial recognition from the hospital ward to the courts, Jim Marr reports

International: Innocence Lost
There are nearly 250 million child labourers in the world, and every one has a story. As the ILO launches the first World Day Against Child Labour, here are just three.

History: Strange Bedfellows
Women�s first successes in adult suffrage came without much campaigning, and was in fact supported by Mormons, in defence of polygamy.

Organising: Just Say No
How would you react if you had to run a "no vote" campaign to oppose a non-union agreement issued by a company whose 3000 strong workforce was spread over 3500 kilometres. React quickly and expect to travel is Will Tracey's advice.

Review: Choosing Life Beneath The Clouds
Ivan Sen's Beneath Clouds is a road movie of the highest order, in which the destination becomes secondary to the choosing of a path.

Poetry: Did We Make a Big Mistake
It's one hundred years ago this week that Australia gave women the vote, and jumped early onto a bandwagon than would roll across democracies world-wide.

N E W S

Building Workers Gagged By Commission

Labour Hire Veil Lifted

Unionists Hit HP Fire Wall

Combet Drives Car Industry Summit

Green Ban Protects Aussie Timber Jobs

Unions Launch Gucci Boycott

Della Picks Up Manslaughter Baton

Jockeys Crisis Worsens

Billions Of Reasons For Reasonable Hours

Swans in Dark as Lights Go Out

Workplace Wishes Walked All Over

Airport Security Flies High

Canucks Boycott Starbucks

Campaign Steps Up To Stop Child Labor

Activists Notebook

C O L U M N S

The Soapbox
The Conviction Unionist
In his speech to the National Press Club, ACTU secretary Greg Combet expands on his breed of unionism and charts the resurgence in the movement.

The Dressing Room
Give Greg a New Look!
We have converted the Tool Shed into a Dressing Room to give you the opportunity to give ACTU secretary Greg Combet a make over.

The Locker Room
The Other Les Murray
Those pesky colonials have been making life difficult for the natural order of things again, reports Phil Doyle.

Week in Review
Quelle Horreur
Jim Marr drags himself away from a four-yearly fascination with people of one name � Raul, Rivaldo and co � to discover fouls are still being committed on the international stage.

Bosswatch
The Great CEO Swindle
Breath-taking figures from the USA show the extent to which executives are taing a bigger and bigger slice of the corporate pie.

L E T T E R S

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Brown Nose

Red Card to John Howard for his nauseating and dangerous brown nosing of the Bush bottom. On the very day that the US president shows he is fair dinkum about suspending individual rights by locking up a 31-year-old Latino - no visits, no charges, no lawyers, no time limits, all on the say-so of intelligence agencies, proven flawed - Howard praises the US as a bastion of democracy and individual rights.

Sure, there is the compulsory bow to his rural constituency, a gentle nudge over farm subsidies, but it is well camouflaged by insistence that at least the US isn't as bad as those football-loving Europeans.

Howard, following the Bush game plan, distances himself from supporting a new International Criminal Court in much the same way as he has distanced himself from the Kyoto Protocols. Both proposals were originally endorsed by his administration.

Right to Strike

Howard's support presumably, and logically, extends to US insistence that it has the right to unilaterally launch nuclear strikes against any country or organisation it wants.

Bush lays out the new doctrine at a Washington dinner attended by Howard, reinforcing his country's "right" to strike states or groups it says possess nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Neither Howard nor Bush comments on whether this "right" should be extended to other countries, given that the US has more of the hardware in question than all other nations put together.

Toxic Seas

Meanwhile, neither says boo about two ships, loaded to the gunnels with enough nuclear material to create, wait for it, 17 atomic bombs, about to start unescorted voyages between Japan and the UK.

The rest of us might think they would make a tasty target for international terrorists, who Bush and Howard insist have tentacles across the globe, but, no, apparently this is business and can't be interfered with.

The cargo is a consignment of mixed plutonium and uranium oxides, delivered by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd as waste from its Sellafield plant. Trouble is, BNFL bodgeyed their paper work and the Japanese have told the company to pick it up, take it home, redo the paperwork, then send it back.

Amongst obvious concerns are a) the fact that British and US intelligence agencies are currently scurrying around, trying to piece together information on alleged Al Queda plots to attack British and US shipping. Three men were arrested in connection with this inquiry on May 11; b) confirmation that one of the transporters, the Atlantic Osprey, caught fire on its last ocean-going voyage; and c) predictions that the vessels are most likely to make their journey through the Tasman Sea.

You would think that even if, like his hero, Howard didn't give a Round Rodent's Ringpiece about the rest of the world, he would at least be wary about the proposed route, particularly in light of a categorical warning from the west's definitive defence briefing. Jane's Foreign Report calls security for the vessels' trips "totally inadequate".

Full House

Johnny might be having a shocker but he pulls one back, against the odds, when his friends at the UNHCR rule that only 25 of the 244 asylum seekers screened on Nauru are genuine refugees. Then, just when he's off on his lap of honour, we find it's another own-goal. Nauruan leader Rene Harris describes Howard's election-driven Pacific Solution as a "Pacific Nightmare", intimating that promised cash inducements haven't materialised and suggesting that while it might have ensured Johnny held his place in the team, he fears the axe when the island's selection committee meets later in the year.

It's The Rules, Stupid

Meanwhile, former South African star Nelson Mandela adds his voice to the call for an international judicial system. Mandela, who knows a bit about prison life, visits convicted Lockerbie bomber, Baset al-Megrahi, serving 20 years in isolation.

He calls the Libyan's confinement in Glasgow's toughest prison "psychological persecution" and backs demands for another appeal. Mandela's workrate, outstanding for an 83-year-old, complements ringing criticism of the al-Megrahi conviction from a UN Observer appointed to monitor the case.

Fair go, if an outfit like FIFA can get more than 200 countries to play by an agreed set of rules and abide by one judicial system, why can't the pollies?

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Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005