E D I T O R I A L

Weasel Words
We are living in an era where words are not always as they seem, and where language is used to shape the world rather than just describe it.

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

AWAs Bully the Sisters

Busted: Howard's 14 Percent Furphy

Top End of Town to Write IR Laws

New Laws Make Green Bans History

Hardies Dodges Responsibility

Blokes Wouldn�t Cop Child Care Wages

MPs Duck As Unions Hit the Road

Profits Do Not Mean Security

Dodgy Wagons Rolling In

Telstra: Death By 1,000 Cuts

Andrews Shafts Employee Safety

Indon Rail Workers Roll Paycut Plan

Activist's What's 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

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Stupid Sale

The sale of Telstra threatens the Australian egalitarian way of life, measured not materially but in terms of equal opportunities. There are three tier-levels of basics, without which, there cannot be equal opportunity, no matter your residence on the continent.

1. Clothing, food, shelter

2. Education and health

3. Telecommunications and transportation

Efficient infrastructure providing transportation and communications in turn provides efficiencies in education and health. Take (public or private) investment away from communication technologies/infrastructure and education and health will fall into rapid decline. Moreover, regional industries, very dependant on continuous new investment in new telecommunication technologies and infrastructure to remain cost competitive, will also decline in regional investment causing regional unemployment. Consequently, the family institution will not be able to provide the first of the tier-level of basics (food, clothing and shelter).

There is no economic return on communications infrastructure to about 80 per cent of the Australian continent because of its dispersed population. With information technology currently experiencing almost a 100 per cent turnover every seven years, what of its infrastructure investment for over 80 per cent of the continent in fourteen years time? Or twenty-one years time? Where is that money going to come from? That investment is a public good. It preserves all three tier-level basics that preserve the Australian egalitarian way of life.

Congratulations Mr. Howard for delivering a welfare state to over 80 per cent of the continent. This is a betrayal of trust!

Keith Cartwright

South Australia

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Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005