“Businesses like making profits”, said Labor leader Julia Gillard on ABC’s Q&A on August 9. She was explaining why Labor opposed the Coalition’s proposal to raise the company tax rate by 1.5%. “If they’ve got to pay more tax and that’s going to cut into their profits, then they’ll think of a way of adding a bit more profit.
“What’s the best way of adding a bit more profit in? They put up prices.
“It, you know, just stands to common sense reason, doesn’t it?”
The Greens lead NSW senate candidate Lee Rhiannon agrees.
Fred Fuentes
The University of New South Wales' management could face more student protests if it refuses to budge on key issues, the president of the Student Representative Council has told Green Left Weekly.
Osman Faruqi told GLW that management’s decision to stand down about 80 staff had been the catalyst for the largest student demonstration in years at UNSW.
The stand downs move came as the local National Tertiary Education Union branch imposed bans on the release of student results after management delayed bargaining over union demands for 16 months.
A prolonged industrial dispute is continuing at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) as a result of the ongoing refusal of vice-chancellor Fred Hilmer to bargain in good faith with the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) over staff concerns about pay and conditions — especially job security.
Hilmer’s intransigence should come as no surprise.
When Hilmer announced his decision to take up a tidy $750,000 annual salary package as vice-chancellor of University of New South Wales back in 2005, he said partial deregulation of education was like being “half pregnant”.
On July 18, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) administration was forced to reinstate 80 staff members and start two weeks of intensive bargaining. As a result, UNSW union members voted to lift a ban on releasing student results on July 23.
The UNSW branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) imposed the ban from June 30 in response to management delaying bargaining for 16 months over union demands for improved job security, pay and other conditions.
The May 2 internal pre-selection of United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) candidates for the September 26 national elections was an example of the mobilising force of this mass party in construction.
More than 2.5 million party members participated. This demonstrated the PSUV is the largest national political force, and highlighted its democratic and participatory nature.
The participation rate was greater than the 2.3 million people who voted to pre-select PSUV candidates for governors and mayors in 2008.
The results of Bolivia’s December 6 national elections confirmed the support won by President Evo Morales and his Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party for the profound changes underway.
Pledging to move the country towards “communitarian socialism”, Bolivian president Evo Morales proclaimed the death of the “colonial state” during the January 21 inauguration of his second term as president. He said “a new plurinational, autonomy and solidarity-based state is being born”.
In the article below, Federico Fuentes, from the Green Left Weekly Caracas bureau, provides an overview of the brutal repression of the coup regime and heroic resistance against it occurring right now in the Central American nation of Honduras.
The recent freeing of two Israeli spies shows that, if the US government really wanted to, it could also free the Cuban Five, noted Annalucia Vermunt, a participant in the recent international youth gathering in Cuba in support of the five Cuban men held in US prisons on trumped-up charges.
SYDNEY More than 160 people, mostly from Sydneys Latin American and Arabic communities, celebrated 61 years of Palestinian resistance on June 6.
More than 40 Australian academics have signed a statement calling for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions.
Most of the world’s governments are quickly moving to shift the burden of the economic meltdown onto workers. However, on May 1, the revolutionary government of Venezuela will officially raise the minimum wage by 10%.
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