bell jar posted:

Agreed - I suppose I'm just annoyed at the mechanism for pushing for political action. I don't know what the best way to go about this sort of thing would be (free/discounted party membership for union members?) but I know that if I was a member of the ALP and wanting to push for change it would be annoying that (amongst other lovely things that the ALP currently does in determining policy and leadership) the power of the rank and file vote is essentially diminished by a group of people that may or may not be members of my party.

I'd really be interested in a mechanism where unions poll their members to see which party they'd prefer to contribute to/split contributions among multiple parties.

It feels like having half the party be actual unionists/working class/labour force, and the other half of the party (seemingly) want to march headlong into neo-liberalism isn't the effective way to go about strengthening protections and benefits for workers.

Beetphyxious posted:

hasn't the ETU in vic been continually supporting the greens?

Whitlam posted:

Yep. The Greens candidate for Footscray is an ETU member.

Beetphyxious posted:

angus mcalpine the plumber?

quote:

In another major setback for the Victorian Greens, the influential Electrical Trades Union will pull its financial support for the Federal MP for Melbourne and formally rejoin the Labor Party.

The ETU's Victorian branch walked out on Labor in 2010 over the then Rudd government's refusal to dismantle the industry watchdog the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).

ETU Victorian secretary Troy Gray told The Age that the Bill Shorten-led Labor Opposition's pledge to abolish the watchdog had been enough to swing his union back to the party and as well as a push to change industrial laws.

“Our members have had a look at it, and they want a seat at the table to keep Labor on track to deal with all these issues - now’s the time to be inside the tent making change. It’s now or never to tackle inequality and change the broken rules,” ETU Victoria secretary Troy Gray said.

“Our members want us in the tent, kicking and screaming to ensure Labor addresses these problems. Changing the rules is far too important to be sitting on the political sidelines.”

The decision, ratified by 350 of the union's delegates that represent the union's 18,000 members last Thursday, is a blow to Federal Greens MP for Melbourne Adam Bandt heading towards a likely federal election early next year.

A spokesman for the ETU said the ETU Victoria has donated a total of $780,766 to the Australian Greens Victoria Branch for Adam Bandt’s campaigns since 2010 including money for the 2016 Federal election.

At the state level the ETU had supported the Daniel Andrews state Labor government, he said.

The ETU national office is not affiliated to any party under the union's federated structure. All state branches with the exception of Victoria and Tasmania were affliated to the Labor Party.

Mr Gray said it was likely his union would now divert its financial support for Mr Bandt to the Labor Party.

"We will be supporting Labor into the future," he said.

Mr Gray said Mr Bandt, who has worked for the ETU as an industrial lawyer, would understand the union's independence and commitment to its blue collar members.

"Adam is one of the most honest politicians I've come across. And to be honest having the Greens on the outside tent applying pressure and the ETU on the inside of the tent applying pressure is almost the perfect storm," he said.

"Adam will understand it. He knows we are a blue collar union and he will know the reasons for doing it and knows how independent we are."

"I’m grateful for the support the ETU Victoria has given me and I’ll continue to have a good working relationship with them into the future, just as I do with many other unions," Mr Bandt said.

The ETU’s return to the fold will be confirmed at Labor’s state conference on Saturday and will further alter the factional landscape in Victoria, where several unions have formed a new alliance that has split the Labor left and fractured a nine-year-old stability deal.

The breakaway alliance, called the Industrial Left, is seeking more influence over the preselection of candidates in some of Labor’s safest seats, including the proposed new federal electorate of Fraser in Melbourne’s north-west.

The ETU is politically close with these unions, but Mr Gray said the ETU would initially be an independent voice and would not automatically join the Industrial Left.

“We’ll be an independent union,“ Mr Gray said. “At the same time, industrially and socially we line up with the CFMEU and have for decades.”

Beetphyxious posted:

hasn't the ETU in vic been continually supporting the greens?

Grouchio posted:

I was wondering what good history books on Australia I should find to read in my spare time. Biographies?

Beetphyxious posted:

that's all well and good except you weren't just commenting on the idea, were you?

Grouchio posted:

I was wondering what good history books on Australia I should find to read in my spare time. Biographies?

Beetphyxious posted:

Anything by Keith Windschuttle

Birdstrike got me onto them a while back.

Cartoon posted:

If you have read 'Fabrication' can you do a compare contrast with: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-27/map-of-indigenous-massacres-grows-to-include-more-sites/10040206

Lid posted:

“Society is unlikely to be functional if we continue to put down one entire gender in order to prop up another.”

Grouchio posted:

I was wondering what good history books on Australia I should find to read in my spare time. Biographies?

Lid posted:

A PRO-GUN, anti-feminist, half-American Donald Trump supporter is asking for money to help fund a “March for Men” in Melbourne next month.

Sydney Watson, who describes herself as a “conservative political commentator”, is planning on bringing hundreds of men and women together at Melbourne’s Federation Square on August 25 to march against what she sees as “an assault on men collectively”.

The former University of Melbourne student is critical of the response from politicians and the media after the death of Eurydice Dixon, who was killed while walking home from a night out.

In particular, she takes issue with the narrative that has emerged declaring men need to change their behaviour, not women.

“As many of you know, over the last number of weeks, it has felt like there has been an assault on men collectively,” she said in a video promoting the event.

“I know that this has upset a lot of men and women alike and a lot of people are very distressed that they don’t feel as though they can support men’s rights, masculinity and men in general without being judged.

“I want Australians to rally together for masculinity, for men’s rights and just to demonstrate that we know that men matter too.

“I want to make it abundantly clear that the purpose of this rally is not to hate on women, diminish women’s rights or to make any negative statements about women.”

She said the fight for women’s rights is harming the fight for men’s rights.

“Society is unlikely to be functional if we continue to put down one entire gender in order to prop up another.”

Lid posted:

“Society is unlikely to be functional if we continue to put down one entire gender in order to prop up another.”

You Am I posted:

The NTEU during the 2010 election asked their members to vote against Labor and go Green, as Gillard at that time was going to pull money out of uni funding to pay for Gonski.

quote:

There is no "us" any more - or soon won't be.

In 1996, there were 119,000 China-born residents living in Australia — 20 years later, it was 526,000... In 1996, there were 80,000 India-born people living in Australia. In 2016, the number was 469,000.

Add the Left's destruction of national symbols and its pushing of identity politics, and Australia is turning from a home into a hotel.

It is true that the Chinese and Indian disaporas actually enrich us in many ways, and both have lower imprisonment rates than the rest of the community. Chinese names dominate the lists of high achievers in many university courses in accounting, maths, science and medicine.


Given that, immigration from these sources would be preferable to many others.

The difficulty now is that assimilation can no longer be assumed as it once was.

Check the crowd at the MCG when Australia plays India at cricket. Who are most of the many Indians there barracking for?

It's not just a question of loyalty. Our various tribes are now more likely to live apart from each other and to not even speak the same language.

Check the new Chinese suburbs such as Melbourne's Box Hill, where an astonishing two thirds of residents were born in China or have Chinese ancestry.

Add the Chinese-language signs and the Chinese spoken in the streets and in homes (in fact, in 40 per cent of homes) and in Box Hill, at least, it's clear that immigration is now colonisation.

quote:

Poor AB can't stand the thought that non-anglos even exist in his community.

Bolt posted:

Again, false. I am not Anglo myself and do not hold the views you try to ascribe to me.
Deal with my argument. Don't just scream "racist".

Recoome posted:

The NTEU (my union) of today would still be more aligned with the Greens, although the NTEU is a pretty progressive/socialist union (from what I've seen)

Box of Bunnies posted:

quote:

Australian Labor Party plans another pro-business, higher education restructure
By Mike Head
28 July 2018

Australian Labor Party deputy leader Tanya Plibersek last month convened a panel, featuring prominent business representatives, to conduct a proposed “once in a generation” review of post-secondary education. It will purportedly be launched within 100 days of a Labor government taking office.

Plibersek’s language should be a warning to all educators and students. Labor is preparing yet another pro-business offensive against public education.

This is not the first “once in a generation review” carried out by a Labor government in the interests of the corporate elite. Almost 10 years ago, the Rudd Labor government released the report of its “Review of Australian Higher Education” under the title “Transforming Australia’s Higher Education System.”

The 2008 review, conducted by a panel of two senior academics and two business executives, headed by Professor Denise Bradley, became the platform for Labor’s market-driven “education revolution,” which has devastated the conditions of education staff and students alike.

Labor’s blueprint has turned the country’s public universities into business-dominated institutions, heavily dependent on corporate partnerships and engaged in competitive struggles to enrol both international and domestic students in business and vocational courses. Public Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges have been decimated by the proliferation of profiteering private vocational colleges, many of which have since collapsed, having ripped-off thousands of students.

The entire sector has become highly casualised and blighted by soaring fees, and large class sizes and workloads for teachers and professional staff. Under both Labor and Liberal-National governments, the education trade unions have blocked any unified struggle against this offensive. Instead, they have policed the gutting of conditions via enterprise agreements designed to deliver what employers require to survive in the education “market place.”

Union-negotiated enterprise agreements have helped managements casualise their workforce. Only 6.4 out of every 100 new positions created at Australian universities between 2009 and 2015 were tenured teaching or research jobs. At the same time, universities generate more than $22 billion a year in revenue for the wealthy elites, mainly by charging exorbitant fees to Asian and other international students.

Labor’s latest review will take this situation to a new level. It will seek to further transform universities and technical colleges into corporate entities, tied closely to the needs of business, and churning out graduates tailor-made for major employers. It will also try to push students away from university education altogether and into Vocational Education and Training (VET) courses.

The make-up of the panel indicates its agenda. A key member is Business Council of Australia (BCA) chief executive Jennifer Westacott. She delivered a National Press Club address last year demanding an integrated university-vocational college system “joined at the hip to industry.”

In her speech, Westacott outlined a corporate vision for the future of education, in which the majority of young people would only be trained to meet the skill specifications required by employers. She said employers were complaining that they were getting graduates “that aren’t ready for work.”

Westacott called for an end to what she called a “cultural bias, reinforced by a funding bias, that a VET qualification is a second-class qualification to a university one.” She announced that the BCA, which represents the largest corporations in Australia, wants a full voucher-style education system, in which students would purchase courses from competing public and private operators.

“The Business Council is proposing that every Australian receive a new Lifelong Skills Account to use throughout their adult life,” she said. “The Account would be made up of a taxpayer subsidy and an income contingent loan that could be used to pay for courses at any approved VET or higher education provider.”

Labor’s panel includes Rod Camm, chief executive of the Australian Council of Private Education and Training, representing private education providers, and James Pearson, the CEO of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, another employer group.

The education employers will be represented by Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson, two TAFE Directors Australia chiefs, Mary Faraone and Craig Robertson, and former University of Technology Sydney vice-chancellor Ross Milbourne.

Also on the panel is former Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe, a key figure in the Hawke and Keating governments of 1983 to 1996, and Brotherhood of St Laurence research general manager Shelley Mallett, representing charities and NGOs.

Just as they did with Labor’s “education revolution,” the unions are enthusiastically backing the process. In fact, three top union officials will be on the panel—Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus, National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) president Jeannie Rea and Australian Education Union (AEU) TAFE division secretary Pat Forward.

Their task is to corral the mounting opposition of educators and students to the destruction of their conditions behind the return of yet another Labor government and to then enforce the dictates of that regime.

Plibersek herself emphasised the central thrust of the review, brushing aside any conception of education as a critical all-round preparation for life, and for social and political engagement. “Labor wants prospective students to see TAFE and uni as equally attractive study options,” she said. She told Sky News on June 19: “The type of jobs people are doing is changing. We need an education system that gives them the skills and knowledge to do those jobs of the future.”

While the education unions promote Labor and the Greens as “progressive” alternatives to the Liberal-National Coalition, it was Labor that began the creeping privatisation of the tertiary sector. The Hawke government reintroduced student fees in the 1980s, first for international students, then domestic students. This was part of its restructuring of the economy, dictated by the corporate and financial elites, at the direct expense of the working class.

With the support of the NTEU—the main union covering universities—the Rudd and Gillard governments of 2007 to 2013 extended this transformation throughout the tertiary education sector. While boasting of having lifted caps on enrolments, the Greens-backed Gillard government cut $2.7 billion from tertiary funding in 2013, initiating a cost-cutting drive that has intensified ever since.

The NTEU is now, once again, trying to drum up support for Labor’s plans. “The NTEU applauds the strong emphasis on developing a cohesive and coherent post-school public education system rather than seeing vocational education and training (VET) and higher education as separate endeavours,” NTEU national president Jeannie Rea enthused in February, when Plibersek first foreshadowed the review.

This echoes the NTEU’s praise for Labor’s “revolution” as a “critical part of the nation building agenda.” Like the rest of the union movement, the NTEU has become an instrument for enforcing cutbacks on its members in order to render Australian capitalism “globally competitive” in a world dominated by ever more ruthless financial markets.

To fight for the basic social right of all young people to a free, first-class education and the right of all staff to decent, well-paid and secure positions, university and school employees need to make a decisive political break from the NTEU, along with all the other education unions, and from Labor and the Greens.

Such a struggle requires a socialist perspective, aimed at the complete reorganisation of society in the interests of all, not the profits of the wealthy few. We urge all those who want to take forward this fight to contact the Committee for Public Education, established by the Socialist Equality Party.

quote:

The New South Wales Government has been criticised for financially propping up the state's greyhound industry, two years after trying to ban the sport.
NSW Racing Minister Paul Toole today announced a $500,000 cash injection for the code, which will be used to fund the richest dog race in the world in Sydney later this year.
The "Million Dollar Chase", set to be staged at Wentworth Park in October will be the the jewel in greyhound racing's crown and feature the best dogs in NSW.
That public funds would be used to fund greyhound prize money has drawn the ire of NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley, who described it as a "very expensive sorry note".
Mr Toole said the money would come from NSW's Community Development Fund (CDV) — which is made up from unclaimed gaming cash.

Beetphyxious posted:

Found it, and gently caress it was like two days ago. my brain is fried.


https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/07/28/nteu-j28.html

bandaid.friend posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-31/nsw-government-tipping-$500,000-into-greyhound-racing-prizemoney/10055554

Lid posted:

In particular, she takes issue with the narrative that has emerged declaring men need to change their behaviour, not women.

“As many of you know, over the last number of weeks, it has felt like there has been an assault on men collectively,” she said in a video promoting the event.

“I know that this has upset a lot of men and women alike and a lot of people are very distressed that they don’t feel as though they can support men’s rights, masculinity and men in general without being judged.

quote:

A masculinity movement that is not most anti-feminist has yet to appear

bandaid.friend posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-31/nsw-government-tipping-$500,000-into-greyhound-racing-prizemoney/10055554

Beetphyxious posted:

Anything by Keith Windschuttle

Birdstrike got me onto them a while back.

Lid posted:

A PRO-GUN, anti-feminist, half-American Donald Trump supporter is asking for money to help fund a “March for Men” in Melbourne next month.

Sydney Watson, who describes herself as a “conservative political commentator”, is planning on bringing hundreds of men and women together at Melbourne’s Federation Square on August 25 to march against what she sees as “an assault on men collectively”.

The former University of Melbourne student is critical of the response from politicians and the media after the death of Eurydice Dixon, who was killed while walking home from a night out.

In particular, she takes issue with the narrative that has emerged declaring men need to change their behaviour, not women.

“As many of you know, over the last number of weeks, it has felt like there has been an assault on men collectively,” she said in a video promoting the event.

“I know that this has upset a lot of men and women alike and a lot of people are very distressed that they don’t feel as though they can support men’s rights, masculinity and men in general without being judged.

“I want Australians to rally together for masculinity, for men’s rights and just to demonstrate that we know that men matter too.

“I want to make it abundantly clear that the purpose of this rally is not to hate on women, diminish women’s rights or to make any negative statements about women.”

She said the fight for women’s rights is harming the fight for men’s rights.

“Society is unlikely to be functional if we continue to put down one entire gender in order to prop up another.”

Birdstrike posted:

yeah I said he was poo poo, sorry you can’t read

after the debate I called him out at he told a bunch of private school kids that “we don’t know what happened to all the missing indigenous people, maybe aliens took them”

ewe2 posted:

The real tragedy of Whitewash is that he's really more incompetent than an arsehole, not a lot more but there's a small gap. He wouldn't pass high school history much less pass an actual academic standard.

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Noted new Chinese suburb Box Hill