Issue 97: 6 July to 13 July 2022

## Known Unknowns

‘Pushing bullshit’: Leaked docs reveal Dutton’s education farce
Rick Morton | The Saturday Paper
Leaked documents show the Liberal Party cut more than half the national history curriculum to fit its ideology. Now Peter Dutton is using attacks on education to rebuild his base.

Labor Legacies: What can we expect from an Albanese government?
Frank Bongiorno | Arena Quarterly
Intergenerational theft is now so embedded in Australia’s policy architecture that young people will need a lot of cultivation.

Central banking is political. We must stop pretending it’s not.
Angus Chapman | Overland
For wage increases, said Philip Lowe, ‘3.5 [per cent] in kind of the anchoring point that I want people to keep in mind’. When asking for a pay rise, that is, Australians should settle for a 3.5 per cent cut in real wages, even after a decade where they have barely grown at all.

Confected distraction or deflected class conflict? More about the knowledge class and its detractors
Guy Rundle | Crikey
The principal objection to the notion of a knowledge class is that, well, capital still exists. Some people own the means of production, some people work for wages. There’s a categorical difference between Mike Cannon-Brookes and a jobbing coder or graphic designer, even if the latter are better paid than a shelf-stacker.

Why stagflation fears from the 1970s are wrong
Ross Gittins | SMHAge
Only a Boomer who hasn’t been paying attention could worry about a wage-price rise spiral.

## Health Rights

A time of reproductive unrest
Madelaine Moore | Progress in Political Economy
The overturning of Roe vs. Wade in the USA highlights the precariousness of legal institutions and the necessity for continuous struggle to both push for and enforce social rights.

How one company came to dominate Australia’s abortion industry
Amber Schulz | Crikey
Marie Stopes is the biggest and most well-known abortion provider in the country — but it’s far from the cheapest.

Abortion rights were hard-won in Australia – the Roe v Wade ruling shows how easily they could be taken away
Van Badham | The Guardian
The challenge now – for women everywhere – is to fight through our fear, and make our courage count

Long Covid: After-effect hits up to 400000 Australians
Bianca Nogrady | The Saturday Paper

Everyone get infected: business reveals its plan for dealing with raging COVID
Bernard Keane | Crikey
In case you’re wondering how irrational Australia’s business leaders are, consider the current position of business lobby groups on the simultaneous surges of COVID and flu.

General practitioner shortages across Australia heighten health crisis
John Mackay | World Socialist Web Site

## Climate

Australia’s farcical climate policy: market forces to cut emissions and subsidies to destroy carbon sinks
Richard Denniss | The Guardian
While successive governments have spent billions subsidising research into carbon capture and storage (CCS), the really inconvenient truth is the most effective CCS technology is the humble tree. It’s low cost, low risk and ready to roll. Trees quite literally suck carbon dioxide out of the air and store it safely in their trunks and their roots.

NSW city goes a week without drinkable water after floods cause contamination
Jordyn Beazley | The Guardian

Australia’s Private Energy Market Is Rigged to Guarantee Corporate Profits
Zachariah Szumer | Jacobin
Across Australia, power prices are rising exponentially while corporations rake in billions. It’s not the product of shortages or instability but of a market designed to let for-profit companies hold the public ransom.

## Campaigns

Child Protection system a Stolen Generations ‘legacy’ which ‘discredits’ Aboriginal parenting
Giovanni Torre | National Indigenous Times
Victoria’s new Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People wants to see the day her role is no longer necessary, and says elevating the voices of those with troubled childhoods will be critical to making it happen.

‘Our children are under attack’: Don Dale self-harm crisis highlighted at Darwin NAIDOC
Stephen W Enciso | Green Left

Better Read Than Dead workers win landmark agreement after dedicated industrial action
Isaac Nellist | Green Left
Workers at the Better Read Than Dead (BRTD) bookshop in Newtown have won a landmark enterprise agreement, after taking on management that first refused then reneged on an in principle deal.

Guilt, shame, dissatisfaction: workers and customers on the gig economy (and how to make it better)
David Bissell | The Conversation

## Overseas, Out of Power?

Johnson Government normalised culture of abuse and toxicity
Sian Norris | Independent Australia

Collateral Warfare: The US proxy war in Ukraine
Alison Broinowski | Arena Quarterly
Putting themselves above international law, the American and Russian leaders have made Ukrainians into ants, trampled as the elephants fight.

Sri Lanka: A victory for a non-violent people’s movement
Janaka Biyanwila | Green Left

Rebellion in Ecuador ends in partial victory
Tom Sullivan | Red Flag

Towards A Theory Of Law, State Formation And Social Movements In Modern India
Alf Nilsen | Progress in Political Economy