Issue 95: 16 June to 22 June 2022
## Prices and everything
Workers and their wages are the collateral damage of the war on inflation
Greg Jericho | The Guardian
Whenever inflation begins to rise, the desire to blame wage rises is an itch that employer groups and those who represent them in politics and the media cannot resist scratching.
Labor won’t commit to raising welfare payments but admits there are ‘a lot of things to fix’
Stephanie Convery | The Guardian
Why Albanese needs to protect capitalism from the capitalists
Ross Gittins | SMHAge
If the PM wants to make our economy work better for all Australians, not just those at the top of the economic tree, he will be pro-market, not pro-business.
The four factors that help women combine paid work with having children
Jessica Irvine | SMHAge
The data shows that countries which have made it easier for women to combine achieving both their career and family goals have achieved not only higher female workforce participation, but also higher rates of fertility. Jobs and babies. Win-win!
Scott Free But Still In Chains
Tim Dunlop | Meanjin
Now they tell us about the problems with the energy markets. Now they tell us about funding holes in the NDIS. Now we hear that the National Gallery in Canberra is falling down, falling down because of underfunding. Now we hear they stopped funding recovery programs for endangered plants. Now we hear all the things.
Indigenous people facing ‘economic apartheid’, policy shift needed
Tess Ikonomou | National Indigenous TImes
First Nations at ANU vice-president Professor Peter Yu said government policy, which has focused on training and employment pathways, had been a “consistently flawed approach” to closing the gap over previous decades.
Woke capitalism distracts from economic inequality
Carl Rhodes | Independent Australia
Right-wing commentary over “woke capitalism” is distracting attention from addressing economic inequality.
## Heating
The climate crisis is hitting the planet’s working classes the hardest and they know it
Jeff Sparrow | The Guardian
To put it another way, if you’re not fighting global warming, you don’t care about the working class, irrespective of how often you take to Sky News to rage rhetorically against “woke elites”.
The Coalition’s denial of climate science created this energy crisis. But there is a solution
Zoe Daniel | The New Daily
The national electricity market is a failed 1990s experiment. It’s time the grid returned to public hands
John Quiggin | The Conversation
Coal mine fined for ‘unacceptable’ damage to world-renowned NSW rock formations
Xanthe Gregory | ABC News
How to survive a megadrought: lessons from America
Duran Flack | Crikey
Why nuclear energy won’t work in Australia
Scott Ludlam | The Saturday Paper
There is something almost comical about the Liberals and Nationals throwing the forlorn spectre of nuclear power back into national energy debates, right after their loss in the 2022 ‘climate election’.
Nationalise the energy sector
Pip Hinman | Green Left
Now is the perfect time to increase coal royalties to fund Australia’s energy transition
John Quiggin | John Quiggin’s Blogstack
Climate Wars Out West
Gerard Mazza | Arena
The climate wars seem bound to intensify, given that the systemic transformation needed to address our climate and ecological crises is not on offer. At the grassroots of the climate movement, activists are preparing to fight.
## Misc
The unvaxxed will always be with us. But their power and presence has been dealt a blow
Dyani Lewis | Crikey
Inside the Qantas saga: ‘It is a wonder they can get a plane off the ground’
Rick Morton | The Saturday Paper
As Qantas drops to become the worst performing airline in the country, staff and unions say years of outsourcing have turned it into a budget carrier.
Trillion-dollar government failure, Dopesick and an Istanbul taxi driver
Michael Pascoe | The New Daily
The hard-luck stories have already started about people who have lost all or much of their savings by being suckered into the crypto maze. They will have nowhere to turn for help because they were playing in a totally unregulated casino, a lawless space where operators invented new games at will, feeding greed and fantasy.
The great Sydney University grant swindle
Jeanne Ryckmans | Michael West Media
“Nobody checks. Nobody cares. It’s all about bringing in the big money to enhance the reputation of the university”.
Three groups vie to shore up discredited Australian university trade union
Mike Head | World Socialist Web Site
French parliamentary election results: Bad blow for Macron, mixed news for the left
John Mullen | Green Left
The left, while still very much a minority in the assembly, grew from 64 MPs to 155.
China, a country of the mind
Ted Rule | Pearls and Irritations
China has always been a country of the mind, a big Rorschach test into which we pour all our dreams or hopes of good and evil. But it has rarely matched those dreams.
Bring Assange Home!
Nick G | Vanguard
In less than a fortnight’s time, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will be extradited from Belmarsh Prison in England to the United States. There he will face charges that together could result in a 175-year prison sentence.