The announced closure of the Ford manufacturing operation in Victoria from 2016, the loss of 400 jobs at Holden’s manufacturing operation in Adelaide, and Holden’s threat to close manufacturing unless governments invest $500 million over the next five years, are the storm clouds threatening the future of motor manufacturing in Australia. Without a critical mass,…
The next federal election will be accompanied by a referendum which would allow direct Commonwealth funding of local government, a proposal that seems positively good — that is, until one considers the consequences of what is proposed. Despite government claims, it is not a referendum on “recognition” of local government in the federal Constitution. It…
PLEASE NOTE: The following editorial piece was written before News Weekly went to print on June 26, a few hours before Julia Gillard lost the leadership of the Labor Party after a leadership spill. In a sense, the ongoing speculation about a leadership challenge to Julia Gillard by Kevin Rudd is an irrelevancy. Both Gillard…
At the time of writing, the 94-year-old former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, lay critically ill in hospital, forcing South Africans to contemplate life without the man who changed their country forever. Born in 1918 to the family of minor African royalty in a village in Cape Province, Mandela was a beneficiary of efforts…
