F E A T U R E S

Interview: Minority Report
New federal ALP industrial relations spokesman Stephen Smith on the hostilities in store for the labour movement.

Industrial: Girl Power
Tim Brunero looks at how women are making their mark in a once-male dominated trade.

Unions: Made in NZ
Jim Marr looks behind the rhetoric to uncover what the Howard Government has in store for Australian workers.

History: Spirit for a Fair Go
Paddy Gorman looks at the importance of Eureka on the Australian political psyche.

Economics: Fool's Gold
Tom Bramble identifies some contradictions in Howard's economic miracle.

Politics: Worth Fighting For
One of the Left's most influential figures of the last 40 years gives his theory of power ...

Health: The Force Behind Medibank
Public health has always been a core activity for the union movement, writes Neale Towart

Legal: Robust Justice
Former ACTU executive member and textile union leader Anna Booth argues that Alternate Dispute Resolution is one way around the looming assault on union rights.

International: After the Revolution
Has China entered a post-revolutionary phase - and where will it take the world, asks James Goodman

Poetry: The Sound of Unions
Ah, the hills are alive, with The Sound of Unions, muses resident bard, David Peetz

Review: Bad Santa
Billy Bob Thornton's newest role puts the 'nick' in Saint Nicholas and reveals the Satan in Santa, writes Tara de Boehmler.

C O L U M N S

New Matilda
How Labor Lost the Plot
In his contribution to Australia's new political zine 'New Matilda' , Father Michael kelly argues the ALP is in search of a soul.

The Soapbox
Outside the Tent
Labor exile Lindsay Tanner is warning the ALP to be careful who it gets into bed with.

The Locker Room
Sons Of Beaches
Phil Doyle gets the perfect wave, and waves back

Politics
The Westie Wing
150 years since the struggle at Eureka, the fight to achieve social justice, equality and responsible government is just as vital as ever in the neo-conservative Australia, writes Ian West.

Postcard
Postcard from Harare
Ken Davis, from Union Aid Abroad, on how unions are at the forefront in the battle for democracy in Zimbabwe

E D I T O R I A L

Moral Majority
Unions NSW is currently hosting one of the world’s great thinkers in Robert Reich; academic, commentator and Clinton labour secretary; a man with a mind as big as the dilemmas progressive politics face right now.

N E W S

Moral Crusade to Save Family

20 Dead – Stockmarket Applauds

Karen Gives Howard a Paint Job

Buckeridge Bill Blocks Entry

Casual Beach Closures

Railworkers Scull Costa

Racism in the Dock

Go Home Alone – And Other Survival Tips

Vet Beats Bullet

Cleaners Clean Up

Weekend Work Wiped

Miners Go to the Movies

Feds Attack Low Paid

Activists What's On!

L E T T E R S

WHAT YOU CAN DO

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Sons Of Beaches

***********

Hitchhiking was once the preferred mode of transport for this columnist.

It was a variable way of moving between point a and point b, allowing one to sample a diverse and candid range of philosophies and opinions. Some mad, some crazy and others just plain ridiculous.

The brief things people spoke often said a lot.

"I'm like most people, I surf," said one panelvan wielding long hair as we rattled along between Cobargo and Narooma one pleasant sunny afternoon.

Surfing wanders into the realm of sport like someone in shorts and thongs wanders into a wedding.

It has a culture that would test many an anthropologist. It is a world, as my kind lift so many years ago inadvertently pointed out, all on its own.

The ocean is an amazing thing.

The moon and wind dragging the ocean tides and throwing up a great green heaving angry beast one day and a sheet of tranquil glass another.

It is a personality; a character.

It is the home of dolphins and dead sailors.

It is the altar of the surf gods.

Needless to say the modern equivalent of that character from Hemingway‚s The Old Man And The Sea, the surfer, is not allowed to merely engage in the reflective pursuit of nirvana on a six foot piece of fibreglass, no.

In these great times it is necessary to reduce all the majesty of riding the ocean rampant to the evil banality of competition.

I have tried to understand surfing as a sport, but its sheer subjectivity escapes me.

It would be like trying to award points to a beautiful day, or a bushfire. Nature itself comes to the crease and marks its guard - for without the ocean, and a halfway decent swell, the whole affair is pointless.

After all, you can't surf in Katoomba.

But a sport it is, replete with competition and a pro-circuit, big business sponsorship, fashion labels and expensive car parking.

It's like golf, only not as many nerds.

Summer is here. The high season of surfing, and all things oceanic. Maybe some things should be just left as fun and not dropped into the brown bureaucracy of sport as a business.

Summer is also the season of cricket on the radio.

This is a fine institution, even if sometimes they forget to tell you the score for overs on end.

Kerry O‚Keefe may or may not be funny in your eyes, but his laugh is certainly unique.

The GPS tones of Jim Maxwell lend a certain authority to the event, capturing something of the atmosphere of how a test match is as much the crowd as it is what's going on at the wicket.

For pure atmosphere there is no substitute for being at the game, preferably with a few friends, dressed in something ridiculous and perhaps not as sober as you once were.

"Give us a wave," you cry to the bloke fielding at long leg, or third man. And there's a roar as the bloke waves back, contributing to the general sense of anarchy and winning the hearts of thousands of half-cut yobbos for a day.

Every now and then there‚s even some wit but not as often as there used to be it seems. These days there's mainly some form of vilification or another and the presence of the ubiquitous security guards.

The beer's too expensive and the food is atrocious. By half past five everyone is either sunstruck, drunk or fed up. No one has any idea of the score. Australian culture at its finest.

Unfortunately you can't surf at the cricket, but you can listen to the cricket at the beach.

And drifting in and out of sleep on day three of the Sydney test while flat out on the sand during the tea session is not the worst old way to pass ones time on this mortal coil.

After stumps, like most people, you can go for a surf.

Phil Doyle - going three wide as they come into the straight

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Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005