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Mr Rudd: Protect Assange!

This is an open letter to Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and Attorney-General Nicola Roxon. It calls on the Australian government to take steps to ensure Julian Assange's human rights are protected. It will be delivered on 19 December 2011, but we encourage members of the public to sign the letter below by adding their full name in the comments section, together with any comment they may wish to make. Please feel free to spread the word about the letter to others who may be interested.

Bernard Keane and Elizabeth O'Shea

The Hon Kevin Rudd
Minister for Foreign Affairs
Parliament House ACT 2600

Dear Minister

We write to express our concern about the plight of Julian Assange.

To date, no charges have been laid against Mr Ass

Written by Editorial team on 18-12-2011, 885 user comments

Embrace the renewables revolution

An interview with Xavier Rizos

Xavier Rizos researches relationships between economics, governance, regulation, politics and culture. We spoke to him about his article ‘Will the market save us?’ which is featured in the new Overland, and why it will take more than a ‘carbon tax’ for Australia to have an effective climate policy.

What motivated you to write this article now? Do you find that there is still much confusion around what the government’s carbon package actually involves? ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 8-12-2011, 2 user comments

On the abysmal state of NSW

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
– Emma Goldman

NSW voters can be forgiven for taking an axe to the ALP government that held state power for sixteen years. Last Saturday’s election gave voters the opportunity they had been waiting for and the ALP was dumped with enough conviction to keep them out of office for two terms and perhaps longer. Not only was the party reduced to around twenty seats but it was structurally decimated root and branch with only the frailest of buds remaining on the old tree. For a good laugh read Eddie Obeid’s post-mortem of the election result and for a hint of things to come read Keating’s love letter to the leader of the parliamentary party, John Robertson, whose most admirable quality could be Keating’s loathing of him. No doubt Labor will regenerate, probably under Carmel Tebbutt once Roberston is spent, but that could be more of a problem than a solution to the state’s political atrophy. A Labor resurgence would inevitably be built on the back of a neoliberal agenda virtually identical to that about to be rolled out by the freshly minted Coalition government – but with new faces and better image management deployed to airbrush the sins of the past. ... read more

Written by Boris Kelly on 1-04-2011, 9 user comments

In praise of Climate Camp

On Saturday morning, two activists at Camp for Climate Action chained themselves to Xstrata Ravensworth Coalmine.

They were arrested for their action. On Sunday, over 150 activists pushed over a fence to block the train lines running to Bayswater coal-fired power station. The most recent count is 73 activists arrested, including an 88-year-old man. ... read more

Written by Michael Brull on 7-12-2010, 1 user comment

Malalai Joya, Tanya Plibersek, Labor, etc

Tuesday evening, Malalai Joya gave a talk at UTS. She’s a small woman, and her English is a bit unsteady. Her manner was generally not as fiery as her language. What she said, however, radiated the defiance that makes her such an inspiring person. Whether denouncing the ‘mafia puppet government’ of Karzai, or the fundamentalist warlords, Joya was uncompromising in her rejection of Islamist fundamentalists, and of Western imperialism.

During question time, a passionate Iranian woman took the chance to give a long speech-question, before speaking even longer in Persian. When Joya responded to her question, Joya took the opportunity to denounce in her characteristically passionate way the ‘fascist’ government of Iran, which she said was ‘worse than Hitler’. This was surprising to me, as by my judgment the Taliban and warlords in Afghanistan are significantly worse than the reign of Ayatollahs in Iran. Interestingly, what I liked was Joya specifically warning against illusions about the reformists in Iran, insisting the whole system needed to be overthrown. ... read more

Written by Michael Brull on 18-11-2010, 5 user comments

NSW Labor – Degeneration versus resilience

Union manThe erosion of the ALP’s long grip on the working-class vote in NSW has been spectacular, reflecting the long-term processes that Left Flank has repeatedly drawn attention to. Yet it can still rely on a significant party organisation, and even more so the active endorsement (or at least passive acceptance) of trade union leaders, organisers and delegates to carry its base.

By focusing almost exclusively on the inner-party struggle in Power Crisis, Rodney Cavalier ends up acknowledging but downplaying the importance of how workers in unions helped deliver large ALP votes in NSW in the 2007 state and federal elections, but also how their alienation underpinned Iemma’s destruction and Labor’s electoral collapse in the years since. Iemma won in 2007 in large part because his campaign dovetailed with the powerful Your Rights At Work movement in its portrayal of the Liberal opposition as privileged, nasty, pro-Workchoices Tories. Power privatisation, on the other hand, like Rudd’s later abandonment of climate action, represented a deep betrayal of the hope vested in a party that had already been struggling to prove its relevance to traditional supporters. In both cases Labor ‘blew its last chance’. ... read more

Written by Tad Tietze on 27-10-2010, 2 user comments

Last drinks for the NSW Labor Party?

Kristina KeneallyIt is now received wisdom that the NSW branch of the ALP is responsible for everything that is wrong with Labor politics in Australia. Even smug Victorian state ministers have felt comfortable parroting this line publicly. In particular, the argument goes, the NSW Right are a bunch of unaccountable thugs who singlehandedly destroyed what should have been a cakewalk federal election win and who are the last vestige of that familiar dinosaur, ‘union power’. They will also be responsible for the state party’s near-certain electoral routing next March because they humiliated Morris Iemma when he attempted to deliver power privatisation. ... read more

Written by Tad Tietze on 26-10-2010, 2 user comments

Left behind: the faded labour narrative

Melbourne eight hour day march 1900

In August 1855, members of the Sydney Stonemakers’ Society working on the building site of the Holy Trinity church laid down their tools and called for the introduction of an eight-hour working day. The workers celebrated their victory at a dinner on 1 October, now known as Labour Day and recognised by a public holiday. The Stonemason’s victory pre-empted the call for an eight-hour day at the International Labour Congress in Paris in 1888, the outcome of which was May Day. The establishment of the eight hour day in 1855 was followed in other Australian states which now celebrate Labour Day at various times of the year. This weekend, the Labour Day public holiday is upon (some of) us and the people of NSW are out and about trying to make the best of their time off, if they have it, as the rain sweeps through Sydney, dampening barbecues and confining us to the great indoors. I doubt many are reflecting on the history of the labour movement. ... read more

Written by Boris Kelly on 4-10-2010, 16 user comments

RIP Josefa Rauluni

Two days ago, Josefa Rauluni, a Fijian asylum seeker, was killed.

Darwin detention centre – AAPThe newspapers reported he ‘fell’ from a roof, before quoting those who knew it was a suicide. Josefa pleaded with the government not to deport him. They didn’t listen. He jumped from the roof a few hours before they were going to expel him to Fiji.

We shouldn’t just blame the bureaucrats who callously made and stuck to their decision. We should blame the mainstream political spectrum. Labor and Liberals agreed that refugees are a problem, and this problem should be solved by preventing them coming here. They did not stand for the basic proposition that refugees are human beings, the persecution they suffer is awful and we should be proud and eager to help out those who think Australia should treat them better. Obviously, Labor and the Coalition don’t think Australia should be a refuge for those suffering persecution in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq and so on. ... read more

Written by Michael Brull on 22-09-2010, 6 user comments

The education devolution

Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, education was the means to which anyone could transform their lives. In the near future if you want your child to attend university they will need to attend a private school or one of the few selective high schools in the country. If your child is likely to go into a trade, they will go to a public high school.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and Teaching to Transgress by Bell Hooks, texts written twenty years apart, came to similar conclusions. Education is the key to social, economic and personal change, which can transform into political change. Hollywood, too, has mined this notion to great and dramatic effect. Think of The Freedom Writers, The Step It Up franchise and To Sir With Love (though not Hollywood) – all of which present education as a transformative tool. ... read more

Written by Rohan Wightman on 21-09-2010, 3 user comments

Into the underbelly of the beast

'Betrayal'Non-fiction review
Betrayal: The Underbelly of Australian Labor
Simon Benson
PanteraPress

Paul Keating famously said, ‘where goes NSW, so goes federal Labor’. I read Betrayal: The Underbelly of Australian Labor before the federal election, and watching the drama unfold I have to say it was a prescient read.

Simon Benson, Chief political reporter for the Daily Telegraph focuses on the fall of Morris Iemma as NSW Premier and his ill-fated attempt to privatise the NSW electricity supply. His forensic examination of the Iemma government, including the machinations of the faceless apparatchiks that really run Labor, as well as the factions and unions, throws a revealing light on federal Labor. ... read more

Written by Rohan Wightman on 16-09-2010, 3 user comments

The yarts debate thingy

Australia's creative revolutionThe Greens are the only major party to publish an arts policy for the 2010 election. Neither the ALP nor the Coalition websites provide even a bullet point on arts policy. It doesn't rate as an issue. This is both and good and a bad thing. It's good because there is no suggestion that the arts budget will be cut by either party. Then again, we know that anything is possible once government has been won, especially by the razor-ready Mr Rabbit. It's also a good thing because the arts, as an issue, is firmly embedded in the national political consciousness as a given, an essential component of our society and culture. ... read more

Written by Boris Kelly on 13-08-2010, 2 user comments

Labor running scared?

So I received this in my PO Box this morning. No envelope. Apparently members can use their union membership to campaign for the ALP – but not for the actual issues mentioned (it’s good that the unions would use their workplaces to campaign for issues but why just for the ALP?).

ALP 'letter'

The text can also be found on Cath Bowtell’s site as a personal endorsement from ‘campaign volunteer Edwina’. It was authorised by State Secretary and Campaign Director, Nicholas Reece. ... read more

Written by Benjamin Laird on 13-08-2010, 20 user comments

Attack of the knuckle draggers

In an article in the latest edition of The Monthly, former Iemma staffer Mark Aarons says this of Labor Right backroom artists Mark Arbib and Karl Bitar:

Enter Arbib and Bitar and their focus groups. Their technique involves targeting the least politically committed voters in key marginal seats. Swing voters of this kind care most of all about themselves and are not loyal to any particular party or leader. The Arbib-Bitar theory is that these people determine who wins government, and that their views should therefore predominate in policy-setting. In a bizarre reversal of conventional political wisdom, leadership is redefined as following such people by pandering to them.

Arbib and Bitar are the inheritors of Graham Richardson’s ‘whatever it takes’ approach to the maintenance of power and were, of course, part of the shadow-team that rolled Rudd and installed Gillard. If Aarons is correct, the move against Rudd was in large part a response to the fidgety vacillations of 250000 self-interested, knuckle dragging (generic, non-racial sense), swinging voters as measured by Labor’s ‘internal polling’. The other macro factors at play in their decision to move on Rudd were the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and the Mining Super Profits Tax, both of which were vehemently and vociferously opposed by the mining industry in expensive, well-organised public relations campaigns. Clearly, Gillard has been promoted on condition that she delay action on climate change to some indeterminate time in the future and soften the mining tax. But we know all that. ... read more

Written by Boris Kelly on 10-08-2010, 12 user comments

Colour me beige, it’s an election

Voting Australia 40sIt’s time to decide Australia. It’s time to stand up and grasp the rope of democracy – woven from the fabric of thousands of Anzac souls – and swing between apathy and outrage, determination and despair, boldness and boredom. It’s possible to swing between Julia and Tony as well, although the association of ‘Tony Abbott’ and ‘swinging’ is enough to put one off one’s Iced Vovos – and let’s face it, if you are reading anything associated with Overland, it’s unlikely you would consider voting for the Tonester. Then again, this is a strange and often disturbing age we live in and there are only so many times you can say you are voting for Jed Bartlett and still get a laugh. Eventually we are all going to find ourselves in a cardboard booth at the local primary school, with the only person to turn to for advice being the woman who is handing out the pencils, the one in the turquoise muumuu who makes sticky buns for the tuckshop. And even then, I’m pretty sure she’s not allowed to share her opinion. We will all be left on our own to decide between beige and beige, between two candidates with little to distinguish them from one another besides their genders. (Or just vote for the Socialist Party for the heck of it.) We will have to put numbers in boxes. Or will we? ... read more

Written by Claire Zorn on 9-08-2010, 15 user comments