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Issue No. 275 05 August 2005  
E D I T O R I A L

Iemma�s Dilemmas
The past fortnight has seen the sort of upheaval in NSW that reminds us all that politics is a very tenuous game with few certainties and even fewer rules.

F E A T U R E S

Interview: On Holiday
Historian Richard White looks back on the Aussie vacation - and finds a way of life is under threat.,

Unions: One Day Longer
Nathan Brown travels to the Boeing picket line and find a group of workers with a steely determination to stick together.

Industrial: Never Mind the Bollocks
Jim Marr plays the Howard Government's industrial relations spin job on its merits.

Politics: Spun Out
Canberra�s latest campaign underlines the need for controls over government advertising, according to Graeme Orr and Joo-Cheong Tham

Economics: If the Grog Don't Get You ....
Evan Jones explains how the way we purchase alcolohol reflects the type of economy we live in.

History: Taking a Stand
Neale Towart looks at two books that chronicle how to build community support against social injustice.

International: The Split
Amanda Tattersal outsider's account of an insider's shake-out at the AFL-CIO Convention 2005

Legal: Pushing the Friendship
George Williams argues that the federal government�s constitutional powers are not sufficient to enact a comprehensive national industrial relations scheme

Poetry: Simple Subtractions
The latest blitz of taxpayer-funded advertising has revealed a crisis of arithmetic in government ranks has moved resident bard David Peetz to prose.

Review: Sydney Trashed
Sydney band SC Trash are on a mission to give new life to folk and country music � and the politics of common sense. Nathan Brown had a beer with them

N E W S

 Carmen's Boss No Fun Guy

 Discriminating Centrelink on Charges

 Uproar Over Holiday Plans

 Do The Bus Stop

 Taxpayers to Fund Advertising Orgy

 Get Up Stands Up

 Andrews Provokes Showdown

 Thousands in Super Rort

 Constituents Don�t Trust Andrews

 Skill Shortage Fabricated

 Yanks Short Change Tradesmen

 Howard Steamroller Hits Building Sites

 CFMEU Bans Ferguson

 Activists Whats On!

C O L U M N S

Parliament
The Westie Wing
Our favourite MP, Ian West, goes away for a couple of weeks and look what happens�

The Soapbox
The Last Weekend
Unions NSW secretary John Robertson's speech to the Last Weekend - how the Howard government laws will undermine the Ausrtalian way of life.

The Locker Room
A Concept Is Born
In which Phil Doyle helps the proponents of the vision thing across the road.

International
Workers Blood For Oil
A new book by Abdullah Muhsin and Alan Johnson lifts the lid on the bloody reality of US backed democracy for Iraq's trade unions

Postcard
London Post
During his recent stay in London IEU industrial officer John Shapiro was living only a few hundred metres from the site of one of the bomb blasts.

L E T T E R S
 Back To The Past
 AFL-CIO Not The Only War
 Be Afraid
 Frame Up
 We Love Morris
 ANew Development
 A Readers Suggestion
WHAT YOU CAN DO
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Work/Time/Life

Uproar Over Holiday Plans


The tourism industry says moves to cut annual leave are a threat to the $55 billion sector, while a leading historian warns they will change what it means to be Australian.

Tourism and Transport Forum chief, Christopher Brown, said Kevin Andrews' threat to halve guaranteed annual leave entitlements could decimate domestic tourism.

Industry leaders expressed their concerns to federal Tourism Minister, Fran Bailey, last week.

Brown said Andrews' plan to allow two weeks of annual leave to be cashed out would see workers taking fewer holidays.

He said it would take Australia one undesirable step closer to the US situation.

"We don't want to end up like the Yanks, with only two weeks holiday," Brown said.

At the same time, Sydney University history teacher, Richard White, argued it could split Australian society between the haves and the have-nots.

Near-universal access to paid family holidays, he said, had been a defining characteristic of Australianness, different from the experiences of other Anglo-Celtic societies.

"One scenario, if we keep on going down this line, is that we'd get to a situation which is a bit like it was back in the 18th Century," White told Workers Online.

"(Where) you had a sort of class that could afford leisure and sufficient income - unearned income from investment and inheritance - that that class didn't need to work and they could enjoy quite a lot of leisure.

"On the other hand, the majority of people had less and less leisure available to them."

The Australian reported, last week, that there was widespread tourism industry support for Brown's warning about economic damage.

It quoted voyages Hotels and Resorts boss, Grant Hunt, warning staff would 'burn out' because economics would dictate they should take the money.

Queensland Tourism Industry Council head Daniel Gschwind called the proposal a "bad move".


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