Victory for student democracy
BRISBANE — Students at the University of Queensland have voted decisively to reject changes to the UQ Union constitution, proposed by Liberal students. The no vote was victorious with a 62% majority of the almost 3000 students who participated in the August 5-7 referendum.
The Liberals proposed that decision-making power would be centralised in the union executive, weakening the Student Representative Council.
Polling booths for student elections would also have been moved from the refectories to the residential colleges, making it more difficult for ordinary students to vote.
Other undemocratic changes were proposed to pave the way for voluntary student unionism.
Defend Medicare group for Bankstown
BANKSTOWN — On August 12, a meeting of two dozen activists at the Bankstown Socialist Alliance office decided to initiate a campaign in the local area to save Medicare.
The Socialist Alliance is inviting political, union and community groups and individuals, including the Bankstown mayor, to a meeting to talk about action to save Medicare. For more information, phone (02) 9793 2188.
ACI Box Hill lockout extended
MELBOURNE — ACI management has taken manufacturing workers at its Box Hill plant before the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. ACI has locked the workers out on July 24 in the hope they will accept worse conditions.
The AIRC has ruled that further employer employee negotiations on an enterprise agreement take place. The parties have met on four occasions, however the employer continues to hamper progress. Management has recently extended the lockout until September 18.
Further hearings before the AIRC will commence on August 22. The AIRC can either rule to terminate the current enterprise bargaining period, returning workers to work under their current conditions. Or it can terminate the agreement, returning workers to minimum award conditions.
Since the workers have won better conditions than the award, this would suit management.
Students and staff take to the streets
WOLLONGONG — In opposition to proposed fee hikes and job losses, on August 13 more than 200 TAFE students and staff marched to the office of state ALP MP for Wollongong, Noreen Hay. Petitions with more than 700 signatures were presented to Hay's office and to a representative of federal Greens MP Michael Organ. The event was organised by the newly formed Students of TAFE Action Group.
Road map to nowhere
ADELAIDE — An August 13 public meeting organised by the Socialist Alliance was addressed by West Bank resident Adam Hanieh, who discussed the US-sponsored "Road Map to peace" in Palestine.
Hanieh detailed the history of the region since 1967 and explained the political background to the Palestinian intifada. He explained that Israel was a racist state, which allowed limited rights for the non-Jewish population. Israel is constantly making inroads to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The latest example is the building of an 8-metre-high wall to enclose Palestinian areas.
LEAF supports peace pilgrimage
BENDIGO — While attending the annual Students of Sustainability conference in Adelaide this year, members of the La Trobe Environmental Action Forum (LEAF) in Bendigo became interested in the International Peace Pilgrimage (IPP).
The IPP, a walk from the Roxby Downs uranium mine in South Australia to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, will commence in December. It aims to raise awareness of the nuclear connection between Australia and Japan.
LEAF members decided to donate the $300 raised from their second "Live and Leafy" concert to the IPP. The concert was held on July 29.
LEAF plans more Live and Leafy gatherings to benefit
environmental causes.
Hiroshima Day exhibition
MELBOURNE — Hobsons Bay Mayor Bill Baarini was among the 200 people who attended a Hiroshima Day exhibition of local children's art held at Williamstown Community Centre on August 6. The exhibition featured more than 200 drawings on the theme of "creating peace and harmony". Six drawings by children in the Woomera immigration detention centre were also exhibited.
Campaign to reopen pool
MELBOURNE — More than 70 people attended a public meeting in Sunshine on August 14 to demand the reopening of the local swimming pool. The pool was closed in 1994. Since then, successive state governments and local councils have ignored community calls for its reopening. Local councillors and state ALP MPs attended the meeting and announced the establishment of an advisory group headed by Footscray MP Bruce Mildenhall.
Humphrey McQueen discusses revolution
ADELAIDE — A Socialist Alliance public meeting at Trades Hall on August 8 heard Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen argue that the last century could be looked at as a single "Hundred Years War", in which the US corporate state wrested control of global capitalism from the European states.
The intensification of the exploitation of workers (through speeding up the production process, which he referred to as "the battle over the lavatory") is an integral part of this process, not an "accidental feature".
McQueen discussed the necessity of winning the working class to an alternative world, which they feel they can fight for. McQueen noted that even when workers fight for better pay and working conditions, they rarely win unless they have a broader goal in mind.
Marxist scholars often quote Marx's dictum that history is a history of class struggle, McQueen noted, but they usually forget the next part: it is a fight that ends "either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes". "That the outcome was up to us", he argued.
From Green Left Weekly, August 20, 2003.
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