Call for solidarity
The situation in Gaza and the West Bank is deteriorating day after day due to Israel's practices against our people. Our children cannot sleep well, hearing the shooting and shelling at night and during the day. They cannot go safely to school, scared of unexpected and indiscriminate shelling. They cannot concentrate in their classrooms.
The Israeli's destroyed vast areas of fruitful trees and greenhouses, which is an economic blow to the already deteriorated Palestinian economy.
The borders are still closed even for medical supplies and humanitarian aid. This is reflected at the UHWC's hospital and four medical centres, which offer emergency services for hundreds of casualties (500 to date) besides its routine health services.
Some medical supplies that were donated to us are still standing by the borders not allowed to get through for the third week.
Your solidarity with us on the political level is greatly effective. Please tell everybody that the Israelis should withdraw their army and settlers from our land. Before questioning the attacks against Israeli settlers or soldiers, people should always remember that Palestinian people are still suffering from occupation. Oslo neither achieved stability nor real peace to the area.
Hassan Ghannam
Union of Health Work Committees
Gaza, Palestine
Private schools
I disagree wholeheartedly with the report on school funding that graced the pages of your publication (GLW #430). The arguments put forward against government funding for private and religious schools were simplistic and ill informed.
The need for government funding in all schools is evident. The parents of children who attend private schools pay not only for the education of their own children, but they also subsidise the education of many other students as well. Some of their taxes should be returned, because the government should not abandon funding to the wealthy. To do so would be discrimination in exactly the same way that cutting funds to poor students would be.
I also take exception to the argument that religious schools "exist only to promote religious ideas". The truth is that religious schools existed long before their secular counterparts. They have consistently provided a good education to those students who attend. The curriculum is the same for both secular and religious schools, so the claim that they provide only religious instruction is clearly false.
I have been educated in private Catholic institutions all my life. I am not from a wealthy elite — I was fortunate to be given scholarships. I am not a brainwashed religious zealot— in fact any belief I had in God has diminished with time.
The article you published was clearly biased against private institutions and the Church. Perhaps some negative experience in the author's past influenced her article, but the vast majority of students who attend private, religious schools have an immensely positive experience.
Funding for these private schools should certainly be reformed. It should be equitable, but it should not be abolished.
Robert Corr
Greenwood WA
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MUA's successful strategy
John Coombs has announced his retirement from the Maritime Union. Under his leadership, the MUA through consultation and support from members, assessed the awesome premeditated attack by Howard, Reith Government, understood what was possible under the prevailing conditions and applied successful strategy and tactics.
We all wanted an absolute rout, but objective conditions made that impossible. The Howard, Reith Government expected a quick victory.
I congratulate John and the MUA on service given and received, nationally and internationally to the union and working class struggle.
I wish him a long and productive retirement.
David Lofthouse
Pottsville NSW
Welfare 'reform'
It's official. Welfare reform is about getting people off benefits. According to Liberal Helen Coonan, "the federal government is trying to reduce reliance on the welfare system".
What welfare reform should primarily be about is helping disadvantaged people. This entails increased welfare payments, and reduced penalties for breaking a Centrelink rule.
Suppose the government made life on social security less harsh and this increased the number of working-age recipients by 200,000. Assuming rational behaviour, this policy would help all the original 2 million working-age Centrelink clients. Many of the 200,000 new claimants would also be better off because many would have chosen social security over their previous unattractive employment.
But the government's ideological obsession with work, rather than wellbeing, makes it quite prepared to make life worse for many social security recipients in order to push a few into jobs <197. jobs which for some will be worse than a proper social security payment given that some newly filled jobs would have been available, but unfilled, were social security more generous.
What a narrow-minded and callous agenda.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere NSW
'Neo-Nazi' treatment of refugees
The Federal Government's plan to fine or jail growers who employ "illegal" workers or refugees is unfair not only to growers but is inhumane to the workers.
The Australian government is facing international condemnation for its abuses not only to the Aboriginal population, but also its increased neo-Nazi style of treatment of asylum seekers in detention centres.
We are the only Western government to imprison asylum seekers before their case is heard in court and one of the only countries that refuses a work permit to refugees.
Despite Australia's wealth, we only take 0.2% of the 23 million refugees and the Howard/Hanson right-wing racism is on the increase.
Shame on Federal Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock — stop passing the buck and threatening growers (many of whom came here to escape persecution from their homelands). Help everyone out by giving work visas to those who want to work on the fruit blocks.
If someone wishes to fight leaky boats, sharks and Australia's racism to settle here then that's just the sort of courage, strength and idealism that our country needs. The Riverland was built by the sweat, blood and toil of immigrant workers. Let's welcome the new wave with more humane compassion rather than detention centres and the big stick policies of pseudo-politicians.
Karrie June Lannstrom
Renmark SA
Politicians in touch with their policies
I heard the most bizarre report on the radio news last week. It spoke of how some figure in the Australian government had been so impressed with a British government initiative to give politicians a three-week assignment in the armed forces to help MPs develop an understanding of how the armed forces' budget is spent (i.e. with a view to convincing them why it needs to be increased).
Politicians should have a day to day understanding of the consequences of their policies, but how about spending three weeks in situations where ordinary people are suffering as a result of their policies? How about three weeks in the Woomera refugee detention centre/prison, or three weeks in a private prison, or three weeks in an Aboriginal community in the NT, three weeks living alongside a homeless young person, or three weeks with a single mother and her three children, or three weeks living in a working-class block of flats next to one bedroom flats with whole families in them!
It's so refreshing to be part of a party — the Democratic Socialists — which approaches parliament as it should be run in the future: those who make policy should also be responsible for implementing it; elected representatives should receive no more than the wage of a skilled worker — no phone cards, no unlimited airline tickets, no fat pension funds; the right to recall politicians in between elections if they're not fulfilling their role.
It's time to organise to bring down this parliamentary system which is such a joke.
Sarah Stephen
Bayswater WA
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