Issue 50 : 24 – 30 June 2021
Liberal governments’ failures are the reason we are in lockdown
Diane Fieldes | Red Flag
Berejiklian’s instinct to put business interests above public health interests allowed superspreading events to occur in Sydney and allowed the virus to spread throughout the city and to other states.
Lack of proactive COVID policy is lighting the fuse for medico burnout
Madonna King | Crikey
Australia’s COVID reaction has been all about catching up to the effects of the virus, not getting ahead. Feedback from medical professionals indicates this is likely to have a devastating effect on those caring for us.
What has Australia gained from the crisis the pandemic represented?
Jack Waterford | Pearls and Irritations
Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have spent billions fostering an economic recovery. In doing so, they junked 50 years of neoliberal ideology on debt and deficits. Yet their ideological prejudices prevented a focusing of spending on new jobs for a new century. Most of the subsidies went to old jobs and declining industries.
Too much spin, too little action: a view from the front line of aged care’s COVID crisis
Janine Perrett | Crikey
Mob let down by vaccination efforts
Sarah Smit | National Indigenous TImes
Delay in Sydney lockdown allows COVID Delta outbreak to spread across Australia
Mike Head | World Socialist Website
Militarism has become the norm. We now even have an Army Lieutenant General heading the vaccine roll out
John Menadue | Pearls and Irritations
New report’s big news on population will worry pollies and business but not me
Ross Gittins | Nine Newspapers
The Intergenerational Report sounds an alarm on the ageing population but overlooks how the economy adjusts to change.
Trickle-down dogma won’t save ageing Australia
Michael Pascoe | The New Daily
From Barnaby Joyce to the Great Barrier Reef, Coalition climate inadequacy is on parade
Greg Jericho | The Guardian
Climate change denial continues to be the strongest force in Australian politics
Carbon Bomb Beetaloo: world goes net zero, yet Coalition steps on the gas, Labor nods
Callum Foote | Michael West Media
Tracts the size of Bulgaria open for oil and gas exploration, along with generous government subsidies for foreign oil companies. Just as the world is tackling climate change, Australia is accelerating its fossil fuel production, and in almost every state and territory.
What Western media can’t get right on the rise of China
Guy Rundle | Crikey
As the West fails to place China’s rise alongside a field of broken tiger economies, it also fails to understand the country’s vital contract: stay out of politics and prosper in the belly of the leviathan.
Witness K: Gangster Capitalism Meets Kafka
Binoy Kampmark | Arena
Australia remains…one of the most secretive and, it should be said, punitive democracies when it comes to dealing with its public servants and whistleblowing.
Lest We Forget: the Harmful Policy Legacies of the Northern Territory Intervention
Jon Altman | Arena
Fourteen years on, one looks back sadly at the devastation and havoc wreaked by the Intervention, with contemporary morbidity—long-term ill effects—experienced by many whom the imposed measures were supposed to heal and restore.
First Nations water campaigner cleared of charges for peaceful bridge protest
Paul Oboohov | Green Left
Australian unions’ Harvey Norman farce
Duncan Hart | Red Flag
“Workers are protesting outside Harvey Norman stores across the country today”, read an ACTU press release on 28 May. This would have been remarkable news if true.
Workers in Australia Launched a Strike Against General Mills. They Just Won.
John Falzon | Jacobin
Australian General Mills strike shut down by United Workers Union
Martin Scott | World Socialist Website
Bookshop workers take next step to win rights
Isaac Nellist | Green Left
How the religious right is trying to take over the Liberal Party
Mike Seccombe | The Saturday Paper
The South Australian Liberal Party has frozen new memberships after an apparent Pentecostal takeover, but the move speaks to a vulnerability both feared and exploited in conservative politics.
End wage theft at universities
Markela Panegyres | Green Left
The federal budget will cut funds to universities by 9.3% over three years. But rather than push to increase funds, university managements are using the crisis to further squeeze workers while filling their own coffers.
Student-led petition fights lecturer’s sacking at Sydney’s Macquarie University
World Socialist Website
Conservatives Are the Ones Attacking Free Speech at Universities
Evan Smith | Jacobin
Big Brother is Watching French Academia
Jyhene Kebsi | Arena
Academics under surveillance as anti-China witch hunt escalates in Australia
Mike Head | World Socialist Website