This week's stories: Private Trams Efficient At Collecting Corporate
Welfare...Wealth Gap Not Too Bad On Paper...WEF Blockade Violence Never
Happened...Support For War Decreases...Ruddock's Daughter Leaves
Australia Over Immigration Policy...Free Market Drives People To Suicide...
Yarra Trams, the private company that took over part of Melbourne's
public transport system, was recently given $2.4 million of public money
for improving reliablity and punctuality.
On the same day, passengers on a tram were told to get off and get on
the tram behind, allegedly to improve the company's statistics for
punctuality.
The Public Transport Users Group and the tram drivers' union both say
that trams routinely refuse to stop for passengers or force passengers
to get off so that they can get to depots on time, allowing the company
to collect their bonus from the government.
(Melbourne Times).
The richest 20 percent of Australians have over half the wealth.
This figure would be higher but for the fact that the figures count
superannuation, even though people often can't access it and may lose it
if, for example, the stock market crashes.
(MX).
Of the many protestors arrested at the Crown Casino blockade in 2000 and
charged, only one has ended up being convicted of anything.
Before, during and long after the protests, TV stations and newspapers
ran many stories accusing protestors of engaging in large-scale violence.
Protestors were accused of throwing metal bolts and bags of urine at
police, spitting, of training to attack police, and so on. No one in
the media has corrected any of these stories or apologised.
(Herald Sun).
A poll carried out for SBS has found that support for war with Iraq has
dropped dramatically over the last few weeks. Approximately three out
of ten people in Australia now favour war with Iraq.
'Hidden taxes' are becoming more common. They are often used as
'corporate welfare', to raise money to bail out companies. Examples are
a tax on every packet of sugar (to rescue the sugar industry), one on
milk (for the dairy industry), and a tax to raise money to insure doctors.
The taxes are usually called levies, tarrifs, duties, or surcharges,
rather than taxes.
(the Age).
The daughter of Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock says she is so
against her father's policy on immigration that she has left Australia
to do volunteer aid work.
Kirsty Ruddock says that the government's immigration policies go
against the values that Mr Ruddock taught her as a child. She said that
balancing budgets does not give you an excuse not to treat people as
human beings.
She also said that Mr Ruddock should stop wearing his Amnesty
International pin when he's talking about immigration.
Mr Ruddock's wife Heather supported her daughter. She said that while
Mr Ruddock was not a racist, some people support him "for what I see as
the wrong reasons".
Journalist Miranda Devine, who supports the government's policy on
asylum seekers, wrote in her column that Ms Ruddock did not really
oppose her father, but "appears to be suffering an ailment similar to
Stockholm Syndrome" - a condition where people captured by terrorists
come to identify with their captors.
(ABC news website, the Australian, Herald Sun).
The suicide rates in Britain and Australia surged whenever conservative
governments were in power, according to medical research.
University of Sydney researchers analysed suicide figures for New South
Wales between 1901 and 1998, and compared them with the prevailing
political regime.
When conservatives ruled both the local state and national federal
governments, men were 17 percent likelier to commit suicide, while women
were 40 percent likelier to kill themselves.
Middle-aged and older people were most at risk.
The study is published in the Journal of Epidemiolgy and Community
Health (JECH) -- a politically neutral research organ that is part of
the British Medical Association (BMA) publishing stable.
It took into account periods of drought, during which suicide rates were
high among suffering rural families, and World War II, in which the
rates fell.
In an accompanying editorial, a team led by Mary Shaw, a doctor of
social medicine at Bristol University in western England, said the
Australian trend was reflected by government figures for England and
Wales between 1901 and 2000.
British suicide rates soared under Margaret Thatcher, who was prime
minister from 1979-90, reaching 121 self-inflicted deaths per million, a
tally only surpassed in the worst years of the 1930s Great Depression,
when it was 135 deaths per million.
The Australian authors, led by Richard Taylor, professor at the
university's School of Public Health, say that conservatives
traditionally have a less interventionist and more pro-market policy
than Labor, which could cause alienation and a sense of exclusion.
Both sides of politics have moved more and more towards pro-market
policies, both in Australia and Britain.
(AAP).
anarchist news service
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All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review
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Some other Australian anarchist websites:
www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real
Audio, Real Video, band interviews etc.
www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people.
www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers.
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