Prime Minister John Howard has signalled his intention to effectively dismantle the wheat single selling-desk, reports Pat Byrne, even though the merits or otherwise of the single-desk arrangements deserve to be treated quite separately from the AWB-Iraq saga. The Cole Inquiry has become an excuse for free-market ideologues to dismantle the single desk, which has given…
Kevin Donnelly believes Labor is losing the argument about school values. Education has traditionally been an electoral plus for the ALP, but not any more. As a recent Newspoll survey reveals, the Coalition Government has orchestrated an eight percentage point turnaround and is running neck and neck with Labor in terms of positive voter perception.…
Swarms of anarchists, punks, hippies and anti-globalisation protesters shut down several Melbourne city blocks for hours and taunted Victoria’s police during the recent G-20 summit, reports Mark Lopez, who was present at the protest. The momentum of well over a 1,000 marching anti-globalisation protesters in Melbourne was blocked by a police barricade across Russell Street…
There are two sets of official unemployment figures, writes Marcus L’Estrange. Both tell a different story. The claim in the official monthly labour force unemployment figures that we have reached a 30-year unemployment low of 4.9 per cent, or 500,000 unemployed, is nonsensical. There are two sets of official unemployment figures. Both tell different stories.…
