Telstra has told the ACTU and affected unions that they are walking away from current Enterprise Agreement negotiations because the unions are insisting on unlawful side agreements.
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It’s no secret that in the internal battle inside the DSP I have been, broadly speaking, more sympathetic to the minority that has now been expelled from the DSP and started publishing Direct Action. This sympathy was based on my estimate that, taken as a whole, they are a more serious group of people, particularly the younger ones, and more interested in Marxist theory, and to some extent the history of the labour movement.
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Sovereignty and Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs is not just a campaign slogan but the very essence of the Aboriginal struggle, just as relevant to the mode of political organization of grass roots action groups as it is to government legislation.
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Earlier this year, the Muslim students of RMIT’s Swanston Street campus were informed that the new Muslim prayer room that had just been completed, replete with verses from the Koran on the walls and other culturally appropriate touches, would not be opened as a spacefor Islamic students, but, instead, would be transformed into a second interfaith centre for the campus.
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Debate moved from another thread on request! If someone wants to write a longer introduction, send it to me and I’ll post it.

Dear Leftwrite readers,

Union Solidarity’s Dave Kerin, SP’s Anthony Main, and two meat workers officials were witnesses last week at the trial of a Melbourne boss who had driven his vehicle through a picket line, nearly killing workers. The boss got off scot free, but the blatant class bias of the judge is a sign of the times. Here is a report from a SP comrade who attended the trial.
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I arrived at the Flemington Racecourse with several Melbourne University students who had come along to show their support. We had a placard that read "Melbourne University Student Union supports cabbies". We were informed by someone called Alister Morley, that on orders from the Minister’s office, we had been asked to leave the venue. We refused, were threatened with charges of trespass, and still refused to leave.
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The withdrawal of the electricity privatisation legislation in NSW until the parliamentary sitting in September is a second victory for the anti-privatisation forces in a protracted war on the question.
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Mary Bluett, the president of AEU Vic, is defending a deeply divisive pay deal with gains won for those at the top and bottom of the scale by saying “you are a long time at the top".
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The Leninist Party Faction, a dissident minority expelled from the Democratic Socialist Perspective on May 13 and Direct Action, an organisation established by former DSP members in Melbourne and Geelong after they left the DSP in May 2006 have united to launch a new party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) with members in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth, Geelong, Adelaide, Newcastle and Cairns, and others currently residing overseas.
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I was browsing the ABC news site earlier today and came across this brief story.
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Major Jim Hammett is frustrated. What’s the point of being a tough-guy soldier if they won’t let you kill and be killed? Hammett has been to Somalia, East Timor, Tonga and Iraq, and now he’s an author. Writing in the Australian Army Journal, he has “deflated the boastful bombast that has characterized official versions” of Australia’s role in Iraq.
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On Sunday evening Mick Armstrong came into my shop, as he does when he’s in Sydney, worked his way through my Marxist shelves picking up all kinds of things for his personal bookstall, which he conducts at Socialist Alternative events in Melbourne, and I gave him the usual significant discount as a pretty good customer. The arrangement suits him and it suits me, and we had the usual desultory exchange of political ideas.
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On Sunday August 23rd 1851 a hard fought riot broke out in Sydney. Whilst such disturbances were common place at the time this particular riot is interesting in that it was sparked by the arrest of a sailor for wearing women’s clothing, was led by military men and involved attacks on a number of police watch-houses. Despite police and newspaper reports of the incidents being confused and often contradictory the riot tells us much about attitudes of Sydney’s population towards cross dressing, police and the law.
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