Archive for April, 2009

Gender

Posted 29 April 2009 | By chriswhite | Categories: Public Policy, Social justice | No Comments

Women on the Verge of Recession:
Confronting Gender Issues in Turbulent Times
Speech by Elizabeth Broderick
Sex Discrimination Commissioner and Commissioner responsible for Age Discrimination Australian Human Rights Commission.
We urge Labor to deliver on these gender issues.
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/about/media/speeches/sex_discrim/2009/20090429_Press_Club.html

Protest at worksite deaths

Posted 27 April 2009 | By chriswhite | Categories: ABCC Australian Building and Construction Commission | 1 Comment

The ACTU supports construction workers stop work protests across Australia for today’s International Workers Day of Mourning.
Disgracefully, but predictably, the ABCC and the MBA threaten unions risk unlawful industrial action (still kept by Labor) if they attend stop work meetings. Such is the limitation on our democratic freedoms, our right to
associate with a short political [...]

International Workers’ Memorial Day

Posted 27 April 2009 | By chriswhite | Categories: ABCC Australian Building and Construction Commission, Workers Rights | 2 Comments

Australian workers grieve for lives lost in workplaces.
Families of victims of workplace deaths will join with unions at rallies and memorial services tomorrow (Tuesday 28 April) to mark lives lost in workplace accidents. ACTU media release Monday, 27 April 2009
Loved ones, colleagues and unions will also call for greater health and safety protections for [...]

The Great Financial CRISIS

Posted 27 April 2009 | By chriswhite | Categories: Capitalist Financial Crisis | No Comments

THE GREAT FINANCIAL CRISIS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff (Monthly Review Press, New York, 2009, out in paperback) is a good critique of this period of the financialization of capital in crisis.
Based on their earlier Monthly Review analysis of what was happening in the crisis of capitalist development with stagflation, [...]

30% increase for all allowances?

Posted 27 April 2009 | By chriswhite | Categories: Collective Bargaining, Public Policy, Workers Rights | No Comments

The Welfare Rights Centre rightly says the $90 for MPs a week from the 30% increase in electorate allowance was what a young unemployed person had to pay for food, rent, transport and bills each week. Pensioners are pushing for $30. ‘We know politicians work hard for their money but the timing of this [...]

Tax reform

Posted 26 April 2009 | By chriswhite | Categories: Capitalist Financial Crisis, Public Policy, Social justice | No Comments

Julian Disney at the CrunchTime conference summarised the case for tax reform. (If I can access a link to his presentation I will post it). He is Professor and Director of the Social Justice Project at the University of New South Wales. He is Convenor of TaxWatch. He is Chair of the National Affordable [...]

Honour the dead, fight like hell for the living”.

Posted 25 April 2009 | By chriswhite | Categories: Public Policy, Social justice | No Comments

If one central thing can be drawn from reflecting on Anzac Day, it is this: In war, the best offer their own lives, the worst offer the
lives of others. Andy Alcock continues.
Graham Cornes should be congratulated for his story in SAWeekend Magazine on 25.4.2009 about returning to Vietnam.
It reminded me of a discussion that [...]

New direction on environment crisis

Posted 24 April 2009 | By chriswhite | Categories: Environmental crisis | No Comments

John Connor CEO of The Climate Institute at the Crunchtime Conference gave a devastating critque of the Government’s plans to give 58 billion to polluters, with their inadequate targets for CO2 reduction and the failure of the private market ETS model.
Details were given of a new direction needed for investmet in clean energy and [...]

Labor Environment Action Network

Posted 24 April 2009 | By chriswhite | Categories: Environmental crisis | No Comments

I attended this week the CrunchTime Policy Conference in Sydney put on by leading Progressive ThinkTanks.
http://www.crunchtime.org.au/
In the coming blogs, I report on the speakers and organisations. Here LEAN, the Labor Environment Action Network.
http://www.lean.net.au/
I had heard of LEAN in NSW and recently in Victoria, but it was the first time to experience such a [...]