E D I T O R I A L

The Sirens' Song
There is nothing for trade unionists to celebrate from Labor�s loss in the Cunningham by-election.

F E A T U R E S

Interview: The Wet One
NSW Opposition industrial relations spokesman Michael Gallacher stakes out his relationship with the union movement.

Bad Boss: Like A Bastard
Virgin Mobile is sexy and funky, right? Well, only if those terms have become synonyms for dictatorial or downright mean.

Unions: Demolition Derby
Tony Abbott likens industrial relations to warfare and, like a good general should, he is about to shift his point of attack � from building sites to car plants, reports Jim Marr.

Corporate: The Bush Doctrine
For the powerful, consumerism equals freedom, and is all the freedom we need, writes James Goodman

Politics: American Jihad
Let�s get real. The origins of modern Islamic terrorist groups are in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Langley, Virginia not Baghdad, argues Noel Hester.

Health: Secret Country
Oral history recordings are an inadequate tool in trying to find out what happened to Aboriginal stockmen and their communities on cattle stations in Northern Australia, writes Neale Towart

Review: Walking On Water
On the 20th anniversary of the first AIDS-related death, Tara de Boehmler witnesses the aftermath of losing a loved one to the illness in Walking On Water.

Culture: TCF
Novelist Anthony Macris captures life on the shop floor in this extract from his upcoming novel, Capital Volume II

Poetry: The UQ Stonewall
The University of Queensland has sought to join the ranks of union-busting companies like Rio Tinto in trying to sack the president of the local union - and made the mistake of thinking they were dealing with an array of acquiescent academics.

N E W S

Email Use Sparks Pay Claim

Melbourne Cup Strike Threat

10,000 Rally in Support of Kingham

Negligent Bosses Labelled �Serial Killers�

Ambulance Officers Win $6 Million Back-Pay

Strike Pay to Bali Appeal

Boral Bosses Bag Bulk Bucks

Bid to Block New ACCC Chief

Cuts Equals Profits for ANZ

First Takers for 36-Hour Week

IT Outsourcing Agencies Called To Account

Pay to Work Spreads to Hornsby

Howard Opens Waters to Rogue Ship

Work a Suicide Factor

Unis Drop RDO Assault

Boxes of Books for Good Causes

Activist Notebook

C O L U M N S

The Soapbox
I Walk The Line
American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has weighed into the Hilton Hotel dispute with this special message to the workforce.

Postcard
Mekong Daze
Union Aid Abroad's Phil Hazelton fires off a missive from Laos where he is spending a year working with the community.

Month In Review
Bush Whackers
It was a month where the world teetered on the brink of peace, no thanks to the leader of the free world, writes Jim Marr

The Locker Room
The Laws Of Gravity
Phil Doyle goes looking for the fine line that separates sport from an exercise in time-wasting

Bosswatch
Snouts in the Trough
It�s AGM season in the corporate world, and deal after shady deal is being exposed as highfliers treat company accounts like the proverbial honey-pot.

Wobbly
Songs of Solidarity
There has been a proud history of pro-worker tunes dating back to the early days of the 20th century, which will be continued in a new CD, writes Dan Buhagiar.

L E T T E R S

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From Little Finks ...

The student union elections at my university have just concluded, and a broad left ticket has defeated the incumbent alliance of Liberal students and students from the AWU-SDA section of the Labor Right.

This alliance of the Liberals and Labor Right, which I'm told is a feature of student politics on most Australian campuses these days, highlights a disturbing phenomenon which I think has been and continues to be a significant factor in the ALP's present woes. This is that for the past quarter century, students aligned with the ALP Right have seen their main priority in University student unions as opposing the left. Further, they have been so strongly committed to this goal that they have frequently been able and willing to coalesce comfortably with the Liberals, Groupers and other hard right elements around an undiscriminating anti-leftist, anti-feminist, anti-queer, anti-anti-racist, anti-environmentalist, etc., agenda.

Those of us who have had the good fortune to know ALP Right student activists know that for many of them their opposition to the left is not a considered philosophical position or a context-specific political calculation, but a visceral, consuming and politically defining passion.

And those of us who've observed this fascinating sociocultural phenomenon over a period will have noticed that the ALP Right's anti-leftism on campuses has degenerated utterly from the intellectually serious anti-totalitarian social democracy which Frank Knopfelmacher imparted to the likes of Michael Danby and David Cragg in the 1970s, to the kind of thoughtless and reactive neo-conservative anti-leftism which another Knopfelmacher protege, Robert Manne, has criticised in the contemporary Right, and which Knopfelmacher himself warned against in a series of Quadrant articles in 1984-85 on why anti-communist social democrats should support feminism.

This would not be a problem if student politics was as unimportant as ALP hardheads pretend to think it is. However a brief glance at the Federal and State Labor caucuses and ALP organisational office-bearers shows that student politics has been an important training ground and formative experience for many of them. One must ask how much harm is being done by the entrenched and powerful presence in the ALP of people whose original and defining political motivation was (and probably remains) hatred of all the main manifestations of progressive politics - not least within the Labor Party. And one must also ask whether these people can be really serious about fighting the Tories when their earliest political friends and comrades in arms were the unpleasant radical right fanatics of the

Australian Liberal Students Federation - again, often in struggle against progressive members of the Labor Party.

As Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly might have put it: "from little finks big finks grow".

Paul Norton.

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Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005