Melbourne M1
"Hundreds of ordinary workers were unable to access the building for several hours", stated the Melbourne Herald Sun's May 2 editorial (headed "A misguided mob"), referring to the May 1 blockade of the immigration department offices at Casselden Place.
The Herald Sun editorialist, while appearing to be the champion of the "ordinary" worker, forgot to mention that these workers were given prior notice of the blockade, and therefore didn't show up for work that day (with the support of their union).
If the editorialist were an "ordinary" worker, he or she would know from personal experience and from interacting with other "ordinary" workers, how the "ordinary" worker would feel about having the morning off. Avoiding crowded peak hour trains, having time to spend with their family, or just being able to sleep in, wouldn't appear to be an inconvenience at all.
As an "ordinary" worker I would enjoy having the morning off — and being paid for it!
At least in our goal to have May 1 as a public holiday, we have partly succeeded on behalf of the workers at Casselden Place.
Angela Vecchio
Melbourne
Nine parrots police lies
Channel Nine News parroted police lies in relation to the May Day protest in Sydney on May 1. Channel Nine quoted police commander Dick Adams saying, "We saw one of our officers pulled to the ground as her horse fell underneath and we had to go in and rescue her".
Yet the television footage clearly showed the policewoman was not pulled to the ground, nor was there any "rescue". If Channel Nine can't get its facts straight, perhaps it could at least get its lies straight.
Presenter Brian Henderson said protesters rolled marbles onto the road, bringing down one of the horses. There's no evidence protesters were responsible for releasing the marbles — agents provocateurs from the police may have been responsible. Moreover, the horse slipped on a hard, graded pavement — marbles were not responsible.
Channel Nine reporter Adam Walters said, "Police had been frustrated by with attempts to negotiate an end to the blockade". Police made no attempt to negotiate the end of the blockade of the building housing Australasian Correctional Management.
Jim Green
Chippendale NSW
Health priorities
Voters need to reassess Australia's health priorities. The Howard government will spend over $3 billion propping up privatised health funds this year. This amounts to a major subsidy to the private medical and hospital mafia.
The government provides millions more to assist private medical practitioners, their professional associations and their insurers. It is about to provide an insurance guarantee to private medical practitioners so that they can continue to make a comfortable living.
If the $3 to 3.5 billion which the government will spend this year propping-up private medical practice was put into public hospitals and public illness prevention programs then Australians, particularly poorer Australians, would experience better health outcomes.
John Tomlinson
Brisbane
@letterhead =
I have spent nine years in prison, four and a half of years under the "care" of Australasian Correctional Management. I know what it is to be locked up, and I can relate to the refugees in Woomera. However, even as a prison inmate, I believed that Howard has got ir right.
Let's assume that Howard did close all of he refugee camps in Australia. Word would travel right around the globe that Australia has no refugee camps. Instead of getting several hundred boat loads of refugees, we would get thousands of refugees. How many are actually refugees? Do you just let everyone into Australia who claims to be a refugee?
How many millions of refugees do we take, before we say enough is enough? Then when we do say enough is enough, how do we control the boat people issue? Do we deport them or will we need the refugee camps again? Try looking at the big picture for change!
I agree with some of the activist groups in Green Left Weekly, but I like to debate many of the issues so I can form a clear picture in my mind.
Jim Faggotter
Rockhampton
Unemployment
Contrary to what we are lead to believe. The answer to the "unemployment problem" is not to create more jobs. The fact is that there is only so much work out there, and if we were really serious about ending unemployment then the solution is a simple one — just share it around. This is not something the big corporations that control our governments and media are very keen on doing though, as it would have a profound effect on heir profitability.
Having a zero or negative unemployment rate would mean that employers would have to compete with each other for employees, rather than employees competing with each other for jobs, which would empower the workers and increase their basic wage.
The fact is that countries with a strong economy like Australia and the USA have shown that they can maintain unemployment rates between 5-10% so well that there is no doubt that they could maintain an over-employment rate of the same amount. To do this, you reduce the average working week by twice the unemployment factor, so if you have a 10% unemployment rate you reduce he average working week by 20%, and introduce policies that make it financially prohibitive to employ people for longer periods.
Ending unemployment would have a profound effect on world poverty, especially in Third World countries where it is as high as 40%, unemployment benefits are virtually non-existent and workers are lucky to receive 5% of the sales price of he goods that they manufacture. If this was coupled with a cancellation of Third World debt, UN policies that were aimed at fair trade not free trade and prohibiting the World Bank from enforcing laws in Third World countries that lead to large increases in the prices of basic food items such as rice, then we might actually achieve something approaching social justice.
Peter Everett From Green Left Weekly, May 8, 2002.
Goonellabah NSW [Abridged]
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