Millions have been spent by the government in its ongoing attempts to generate mass bicentennial enthusiasm but the January splash had petered out to a mere whimper before the year of “celebration” was even one third over. There is nothing for ordinary people to celebrate in 1988.
International
Women’s Health on the Cheap — Again: Inadequate Screening for Cervical Cancer
This is a summary of a talk presented at a meeting of Melbourne Radical Women held on 9 March 1988. Evelyn is a socialist feminist and lesbian activist. Women’s health… Read more »
‘Equal Opportunity’ in 1988 – A Balance Sheet
The limitations of seeking employment equality within the existing structures are clear. Equal opportunity programs only provide the option for some to get nearer to the top of an unequal system. We need to defend and extend such reforms by using them as tools to protect existing rights and gains. But reforms cannot finally redress the inequitable position of women and other oppressed groups in the labour market, let alone society as a whole.
Labor’s “Graduate Tax”: Will It Make The Rich Pay?
The proposed graduate tax will see students paying between $4,500 – $18,000 for courses. But the graduate tax will hit ex-students on lower incomes much more heavily because it is a regressive tax. All students, rich or poor, will have to pay back the same. The total debt is not linked in any way to income but is based on a standard fee for the type of course undertaken.
International Women’s Day: Ghetto Festival or Front Line of the Struggle for Women’s Liberation?
One is that we are all lesbians or a least celibate women who prefer to socialise mainly with other women. This has become a stumbling block to the movement. Instead of clear political demands about fighting the oppression of lesbians that we expect all who support women’s liberation to take up and fight for, we’ve got a bizarre combination of lesbian political invisibility but an underlying assumption that in our lifestyles we are all dykes. We’ve got to make IWD political; we have to address the issues of the day — those that people who aren’t at IWD are concerned about or fighting around.
My Place: The Fight for An Aboriginal Identity
The blatantly genocidal policies practiced against Aboriginal people in the first century of Australia’s colonial history are now more often acknowledged but still frequently fobbed off as some unfortunate incidents from the dim past. Despite two hundred year of colonialism, Sally Morgan and her family have survived. They have resisted assimilationist cultural genocide by taking up the battle to find their own identity.
Obituary – Manda Biles
On March 30 1988 the struggle for a better world lost a fighter with the death of Manda Biles. Right from the early seventies Manda was in the thick of… Read more »
Obituary – Ted Hill
Ted Hill, who retired from his post of chair of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) late in 1984, died in Melbourne on February 1 1988 after a long battle with cancer…. Read more »
Bosses’ court cuts pay again, but demands “work harder!”
For more than 80 years the working class in this country has been shackled to the capitalists through the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. This has held workers back, kept them impoverished, derailed their attempts to break the chains. The Accord, which is the parent of the new wage system is the latest attempt to clothe the emperor.
Footplate Classics
I am a lesbian feminist. Between 1979 and 1984 I worked as a locomotive assistant training to be a train driver for the Victorian Railways in Australia. At one time six women were training at South Dynon Loco and four women in country areas. Dianne Brown became qualified as a train driver in 1985. Unfortunately the other women left. The attitudes of many of the men working in the railways added to on the job pressure. I have put some of these attitudes into poetic form.
Featured
Kansas: a beacon for abortion rights
Even in a post-Dobbs world, crucial liberties like reproductive freedom can be defended through vigilance and militant organizing!
FS Newspaper
Topical and Timely
Cuba: A Socialist Dream Deferred
Traces the ups and downs of the Cuban Revolution and the critical issue of rising capitalist influence. Analyzes the main actors in Cuban society today and discusses the path forward.