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Solidarity Forever
Another May Day, another year gone, another year to look back on our history and celebrate the past and talk about how we can make our movement strong again.
Interview: Staying Alive
CPSU national secretary Adrian O'Connell talks about the fight to keep the public service - and the union movement - alive.
Bad Boss: The Ultimate Piss Off
Wollongong workers on poverty-level wages are losing up to $5000 for taking toilet breaks, according to the union representing staff at a Stellar call centre.
Industrial: Last Drinks
Jim Marr looks at the human cost of the decision to close Sydney�s Carlton United Brewery
National Focus: Around the States
If Tampa told us that John Howard circa 2003 is the same spotted rabid dog from 1987, this week�s assault on Medicare confirms it reports Noel Hester in this national round up.
Politics: Radical Surgery
Workers are vitally interested in Medicare, not least because they traded away wage rises to get it. Now, Jim Marr writes, the Coalition Government is tearing apart the 20-year-old social contract on which it was founded.
Education: The Price of Missing Out
University students and their families will pay more for their education following the May Budget, writes Tony Brown.
Legal: If At First You Don't Succeed
Love is wonderful the second time around, goes the famous torch song. But is the same true for legislation? Asks Ashley Crossland
History: Massive Attack
Labour historian Dr Lucy Taksa remembers the general strike of 1917 to put the recent anti-war marches into perspective
Culture: What's Right
Neale Towart looks at a new book that looks at the failings of the Left, while reasserting the liberal project
Review: If He Should Fall
Jim Marr caught Irish folk-rock-punk legend Shane MacGowan at Sydney�s Metro Theatre. He was surprised but not disappointed.
Poetry: If I Were a Rich Man
Through a distortion in the time-space continuum, we have found a recording showing how people a few years into the future will deal with health care.
Satire: IMF Ensures Iraq Institutes Market Based Looting
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed to monitor the Iraqi economy to ensure that the reintroduction of looting into the economy conforms with free-market theory.
 Mystery Men Behind Pan Bungle
Charities Brace for Medicare Backlash
Court Throws Out Cole Prosecutions
Child Actor Dodges Broken Voice
Rio Tinto: $40 Million for Boss, Eviction for Workers
Child Care for Oldies Too
Winning Poster Shouts at Freeloaders
May Day Tragedy Claims Union Lives
Westfield Cleaners to Down Mops
Question Marks Over Nursing Home
Burn Payout Highlights Compo Fears
Costa Blows Whistle on Canberra Raid
Hoops Bet on National Body
Tear Us Down, Buttercup
Activist Notebook
The Soapbox
What May Day Means to Me
Reader Marlene McAlear penned this tribue to May Day and worker solidarity.
Solidarity
The Toast
Labor Council secretary John Robertson's toast to the annual May Day dinner in Sydney. The Locker Room
The Numbers Game
In life there is lies, damned lies and sporting statistics, says Phil Doyle - but who�s counting. Postcard
Brukman Evicted
ZNet's Marie Trigona reports from the streets of Argentina in the rundown to last week's presidential election. Bosswatch
The Costs of Excess
Some tall business poppies had their heads lopped this week as the laws of economic gravity applied their always chaotic theory.
Is Labor History?
Bob Gould Sprays Gerard Henderson
War and Peace
A Strange Light
A Little History
Does It Have To Be?
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Letters to the Editor
Is Labor History?
I fear that in 20 years time school students will be reading in their history books about that once great, idealistic and influencial Federal Labor Party which decided, in the year 2003, to commit suicide.
And it is not just opinion polls on which I base my assessment of how the Federal ALP is wilfully self-destructing. Almost everyone I speak to, including staunch Labor supporters, either hates Simon Crean, or thinks he is a dead weight that the party can no longer afford to carry.
"Give him a fair chance to prove himself," was the cry after he had been in office a few months. "Give him a chance to prove himself" was still the cry after he had been in office for 12 months.
Well almost 18 months have passed since November 10, 2001, and all Mr Crean has proved is that he is increasingly and universally unpopular; that he is utterly incapable of standing up to Howard; and that he is totally unwilling to concede that he is just not the man to lead the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party.
Oh he will lead it of course, but as leader of a pack of lemmings rushing to leap to their death over the nearest cliff.
Simon Crean's lack of leadership, and the party's absence of policies would not be so alarming if it were not for the fact that the shrewd, cunning, lying tenacious John Howard is determined to make Australia effectively nothing less than the 51st State of the USA.
I am in no position to judge the Prime Minister's personal sincerity: very likely he believes that the course of action he is taking is actually best for the country.
But Australia is supposed to be a democracy, not an autocracy.
Julian Hancock
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Issue 176 contents
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