Red Star Australia articles

Inequality in Australia
(Date added: 7/10/07)
The first research into Australia's distribution of wealth for 90 years showed just how unequal it is. The rich are very rich, the poor have nothing but debt. [more]

Government claims full employment!
(Date added: 25/7/07)
The Federal Treasurer Peter Costello recently claimed that the Australian economy is pretty close to full employment as in some areas of Australia we are in full employment ". If we take the Government at its word, this would indeed be a "wonderful" achievement, as the Prime Minister recently said. For 30 years Australian society has been crippled by the cancer of unemployment, transforming it much for the worse. Unemployment has long been the single most important cause of poverty. Is that long nightmare now behind us? [more]

I - Welfare to Work - Summary
(Date added: 25/6/07)
The major changes that came in on July 1, 2006 are summarised [more]

II - Welfare to Work - Analysis
(Date added: 25/6/07)
Coupled with the IR reforms, Welfare to Work decisively tilts the balance of power in favour of employers, as it was designed to do. The trade unions must unite to defeat this onslaught on the poorest and weakest section of Australian society. As part of this campaign they must attack the Job Networks which, apart from employers, are the major winners from this legislation. This should not be avoided even if the Job Network is owned by the wife of the leader of the ALP (although it unfortunately was) [more]

Federal Government's Industrial Relations reforms – summary
(Date added: 25/6/07)
The Federal Government claims that its industrial relations reforms ("Work Choices") will improve the position of workers. This CANNOT be true! Why not? Because if workers are expected to negotiate contracts with their employers as individuals, all the power must be on the employer's side. The terrible threat of unemployment always hangs over workers, which the government wishes to help employers exploit. The parties can never be in an equal position, as the Prime Minister so absurdly claims. The only power that workers have is a collective power, depending upon their unity. Workers instinctively realise this. [more]

The antagonism between Capital and the Family
(Date added: 6/6/07)
Every politician loudly claims to believe in marriage, children, and the family. Yet despite these assertions, marriage is now legally irrelevant, the family has been fatally undermined, and Australian children are more neglected than ever before. What is behind these massive changes?
Nothing in our society produces as much contemporary strife as the family. People's ideas and aspirations are totally at variance with the reality, producing untold bitterness. Everywhere expectations of the family are cruelly disappointed. We often hear of 'dysfunctional' families, but what if the family itself turns out no longer to have a function?   [more]

Imperialism,  foreign aid, and the Non-Government Organisations
(Date added: 22/5/07)
The international non-government organisations claim that they will be able to "make poverty history ", but this they can only achieve by bypassing national governments which, they say, cannot be trusted to handle foreign aid. In this hard-hitting article Red Star criticises such claims as deceptive and self-serving, generating aid which is more about meeting the needs of the giver than the receiver. [more]

Is a worker really free to leave his job?
(Date added: 12/5/07)
When Welfare to Work was first announced in 2005, the Prime Minister said that anyone who was unhappy with their employment should leave and get another job. But was this statement true, or just another glib attempt by a politician to conceal the reality faced by all workers? [more]

Introduction to Red Star Sri Lanka
(Date added: 12/5/07)
Operating on the principle of "all for one and one for all" Red Star Sri Lanka proves that it is not human nature to be selfish, as is sometimes claimed. This article contains some information about their famous tsunami relief work, as well as pictures of more recent flood damage reconstruction labour. [more]

What is Class?
(Date added: 22/4/07)
What does 'class' mean? What has it got to do with poverty? Why do we need to learn those strange words like 'proletariat'? This penetrating article explains why it is misleading to talk about poverty except in terms of class. [more]

Ted Mack set the standard!
(Date added: 22/3/07)
Professional politicians in Australia have a very bad reputation among the people for hypocrisy. Behind all their speeches about the public interest, they are commonly regarded as only interested in their own careers and selfish advancement. Politics is certainly a very lucrative profession in this country, which attracts the worst kind of careerist. Any glib opportunist has only to attain pre-selection for some safe seat (most parliamentary seats are so safe that they can never change hands), serve two terms, then can retire on a lavish pension for the rest of his life….
            But there was one unique Australian politician who by his scrupulous honesty and incorruptibility showed up all the others [more]