Workers Online
Workers Online
Workers Online
  Issue No 45 Official Organ of LaborNet 10 March 2000  

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Tool Shed

The Minister for Caged Hair


Not since the salad days of her leadership tilt back when Downer was mishandling the job has Bronwyn Bishop barged to the forefront of public consciousness.

 
 

Sure, she's always been in the background, the beehived madonna of federal politics, another junior minister whose talents ended up falling way short of her ambitions.

Like the aunt who's vice like grip you avoided each Christmas, there was something almost reassuring in the knowledge she was out there - a long, long way away from Planet Relevance.

How things change in a week.

When the nursing homes scandal first broke, you actually got the feeling Bronnie was enjoying the attention; here was a bank of cameras to bare the molars at, who actually wanted to film her. A nice change from having to chase them herself.

The fact that most of the attention is over her inability to run a department that could discern between establishments that care for the old and those who speed their flight from this mortal coil was just a detail. The show was on!

But as the week has worn on, the strained smile transformed into a grimace as she lurches from question time to question time with a blowtorch on the belly.

Press gallery observers say her performance has gone from bad to worse; incompetent in question time , not even on top of her briefing notes to the extent that she's been passing on one question, only to discover the prepared answer in her files a couple of questions later.

By the end of the week she was a dead woman walking - wounded, perhaps mortally, from her own inability to master a brief. It was a far cry from those heady days in opposition when she would hammer junior public servants in Senate Estimate committee hearings, playing up her inquisition to the TV news.

As it all unravels besieged Libs must be turning their minds back ruefully to the days when she used her numbers on the NSW State branch to bump off one of the truly decent Liberal's Chris Puplick, to snare the top Senate position for herself. These days Puplick is the NSW Privacy Commissioner - how Bronnie must be wishing for the benefit of his services right now.

So, in the interests of kicking a political corpse when it's down we induct the Minister for Caged Hair into the Toolshed. Now it's time to use your creativity to help bring out the true awfulness of the Bishop persona to the surface.

Question Is it my imagination, or has the pressure of the past week flattened the beehive?

Check out the Tool Shed


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*   Issue 45 contents

In this issue
Features
*  Interview: Working Women
Nareen Young talks about how services are being delivered to our most vulnerable workers - and what unions need to do to make them their own.
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*  Unions: Into the New Frontier
IT professionals are part of the new workforce that unions need to win over - and while they are often contractors, they're workers too.
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*  History: Handling The Ladies
1943 - women were filling the gap in the workforce left by the diggers abroad and Australian managers needed some advice on how to deal with these strange creatures.
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*  Technology: Building The Hypermacho Man
In a stinging critque of the �Wired� culture, Melanie Stewart Miller argues digital cultural is creating a new super-Man.
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*  International: The Long March Home
Trade union women round the world used International Women�s Day to launch the World March of Women Against Poverty and Violence.
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*  Satire: Kerosene Dilution Racket
The nursing home industry has been rocked by a new scandal with the revelation that some unscrupulous proprietors have been diluting their patients� kerosene baths with illicit liquids.
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*  Review: Power and the Back Bar
In an upcoming book, Julia Gillard argues the ALP retains a male culture that is fast losing step with contemporary society.
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News
»  Services Threatened Over Olympic Bonus
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»  Games Edict: Dance for Free
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»  Revealed: Secret State Transit Corporatisation Plans
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»  Women Demand Better Pay from Faye
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»  Telstra, Banks Whack Rural Australia
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»  Casuals Inquiry Still On Union Agenda
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»  Shaw, Sams Pay Tribute to John Whelan
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»  Teachers� Website Mysteriously Blocked
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»  Cash Bonus for Bilingual Workers
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»  Women Demand Better Pay from Faye
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»  Shareholders Push Global Action
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»  Fair Wear Conquers Schools
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»  TWU Calls on Workers to Steer Clear of Woolworths
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»  Push to Strike Out Parrish Directors
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Columns
»  The Soapbox
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»  Sport
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»  Trades Hall
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»  Tool Shed
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Letters to the editor
»  TV Show Seeks Bankrupt Worker
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»  Crosby Spot On
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»  Confused About Workplace Rights
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»  Global Campaign Against Yahoo!
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»  Teachers Row
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