Can the planet survive tourism?

[Green Left Weekly, #209, October 31, 1995]

"The world", enthused a recent Time magazine feature, "is at the dawn of a new Golden Age of travel — an age of voyaging on a truly global mass scale. As the 21st century unfurls, people of every age and class, and from every country will be wandering to every part of this planet."

Defend the public sector!

[Green Left Weekly, #205, October 3, 1995]

Privatisation is at the cutting edge of the current capitalist attack against the working class. Throughout the western world, state assets and functions are being sold off, with drastic consequences for both the workers employed in the given sector and those who depend on the services provided. A previous article ("Privatisation is theft") sketched in the general background to the privatisation phenomenon in Australia and put forward some broad guidelines for resisting it. However, any fight against the sell-off of the state sector inescapably raises two central related issues: reforming the public sector in a progressive direction and the nationalisation or renationalisation of privately owned companies.

Privatisation is theft

[Green Left Weekly, #201, September 6, 1995]

Throughout the western world, governments are engaged in a veritable orgy of privatisation of state assets and functions. In the poor and dependent countries of the Third World, this process is being brutally imposed by the IMF and World Bank as a condition of desperately needed loans. The only real winners from this process are the corporate rich; working people are everywhere worse off as a result. In Australia, privatisation is in high gear. There are a number of key questions socialist and progressive forces must ponder in considering how to respond. Just what is happening? What is behind the relentless development of this process? Is it really possible to resist this trend? Is the demand for nationalisation still a valid and realistic element in the socialist program today?

Urban nightmare: The restructuring of Melbourne

[Green Left Weekly, #189, May 31, 1995; based on a paper presented to the Marxist educational conference Campaigning for Democratic Socialism, held in Melbourne at Easter 1995.]

The view of a modern city from the window of a plane as it descends is often breathtakingly impressive. The panorama is truly a miracle of social and technical organisation. Taking in the endless pattern of roads, houses, buildings and the night-time latticework of street lights can be a moving experience. The spectacle seems to say: this amazingly complex artificial environment we have created, all this is what human beings are capable of.

How Kennett gets away with it

[Green Left Weekly, #161, September 28, 1994]

Jeff Kennett's resounding election win in October 1992 marks a watershed in postwar politics in Victoria. The cutbacks and changes that his Coalition government has rammed through over the last two years have had a deep effect on the lives of the mass of ordinary Victorians.

May Day: Time for a change

[Green Left Weekly, #143, May 18, 1994]

In Melbourne on May 1, about 1500 people took part in the annual Sunday afternoon May Day march and rally. As usual, the bulk of the participants came from the various left-wing, migrant and solidarity organisations.

Italian crisis and proportional representation

[Green Left Weekly, #97, April 28, 1993]

Perhaps other GLW readers have, like me, been fascinated by the recent stream of revelations about massive corruption in Italian public life. It seems that just about the entire ruling "political class" of Christian Democrat and Socialist leaders and MPs have been compromised — or soon will be — by the ever-spreading stain of corruption scandals.

Jim Percy (1948-92)

[This unsigned obituary article first appeared in Green Left Weekly, #76, October 21, 1992. While it was a collective effort, I was assigned to produce the first draft. I especially want to include it here in tribute to the enormous role Jim played in the development of our movement and in the political education of several generations of comrades, myself included.]

Jim Percy, national president of the Democratic Socialist Party, died quietly as a result of cancer, at his home in Sydney on October 12. He was 43 years old and had devoted 27 years of his life to revolutionary socialist politics.

The unity we need

[Green Left Weekly, #73, September 30, 1992. This is the text of a talk presented to a meeting sponsored by the electoral coalition Independent Action in Melbourne on September 16.]

These elections are marked by the record field of 182 candidates running independently of the major parties. And while the precise figures vary, all the polls indicate that collectively they enjoy substantial support.

Bosnia: Can there ever be peace?

[Green Left Weekly, #71, September 16, 1992]

For some months now, the nightly television news has been dominated by coverage of Somalia and Bosnia. The famine in the impoverished east African country and the fighting in the former Yugoslav republic have provided viewers with any number of haunting and deeply disturbing images.

Croatians rally for refugees

[Green Left Weekly, #50, April 1, 1992]

MELBOURNE — Some 5000 supporters of Croatian independence gathered here on March 22. Footscray Park on a wonderfully sunny Sunday afternoon was the scene for the very relaxed and successful picnic-rally.

Melbourne forum hears Croatian case

[Green Left Weekly, #37, November 27, 1991]

MELBOURNE — A well-attended meeting on November 21 heard a panel of speakers forcefully argue the case for supporting Croatia's struggle for independence. The forum at the Celtic Club registered a growing support in the progressive movement and the wider Australian community for the cause of Croatia.

Croatian nationalism & the fight for socialism

[Report adopted by the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party, June 12, 1983. For more information see the booklet Croatian Nationalism & the Fight for Socialism.]

The general background to this report is the growing involvement of the party with a whole number of migrant communities. This involvement takes the form of general political relations — solidarity work, political discussions, etc. — and also of contact in the workplace, where comrades work alongside people from just about every migrant community.