NSW CFMEU strategy
I attended the June 22 "Stand Up and Speak Out" meeting at Parramatta Town Hall. Contrary to what your article [in GLW #631] reported, CFMEU NSW secretary Andrew Ferguson did not "urge caution, lest the right of entry of union officials to work sites is rescinded", nor "cautioned against the breaking of the industrial laws". There are already three CFMEU officials being prosecuted, with applications to take away their right of entry.
The CFMEU is facing an unprecedented fight for survival. Ferguson said "the union had to box smart". Yes, it was said if every official lost their right of entry it would make the job of organising workers much harder. This is obviously true.
Meetings on building sites are now unlawful but prior to July 1, meetings occurred on every major Sydney site. Also while 100,000 workers attended on July 1, no private sector industry was better represented than CFMEU members in the building trades. Going on the attack but boxing smart seems a sensible strategy.
Malcolm Tulloch
Merrylands, NSW
Public spending
Labor's new finance spokesperson Lindsay Tanner says his main job is to get public spending down. Given that government expenditure primarily benefits less-well-off people this is a strange ambition for someone who professes to be on the left of politics.
Tanner correctly notes that the current administration has engaged in some wasteful spending and that the tax base should be broadened. However, the money generated by tackling these issues should be devoted to public investment and helping those in need, rather than to tax rate cuts which would increase inequality.
Only 11 out of the 50 lowest-income electorates returned ALP candidates in 2004. Tax reductions for people on middle-to-high incomes won't fix Labor's core electoral problem.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere, NSW
No more Hiroshimas!
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also marks the 60th anniversary of the anti-nuclear peace movement.
Even then, many people recognised the monstrous inhumanity of the use of a single bomb which could kill hundreds of thousands of people and cause such massive destruction in one blow — and despite encountering hostility and accusations of being treacherous and unpatriotic, those people began to speak out and campaign against the development and use of atomic weapons.
Sixty years on, uranium weapons have also been used in wars in Kosova, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
And depleted uranium, a product of nuclear industry recycling, is being used extensively by invading forces in Kosova, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Recognition of and responsibility for any short-, meduium- or long-term harmful effects from the use of uranium weapons on people or the environment is resisted and contested in relation to "friendlies".
In relation to "the enemy, the other, civilian and military", it is either denied or dismissed as unproven. And is conspicuous by the lack of care and concern for our future by those who are responsible for bringing us to this dangerous situation.
Joan Shears
Brisbane [Abridged]
Bread not bombs
The myopia of the Howard government was demonstrated yet again when Tony Jones interviewed Peter Costello (ABC TV, Lateline, July 21). Costello was at the fundamentalist Hillsong Church in Sydney when Jones asked him about the deal made with the Family First Party and how this might lead to family impact statements having to be made for each piece of legislation.
Costello said: "Let's suppose we're discussing changes to the Family Law Act. Well, then you'd want to have a family impact statement — very obvious area. But let's suppose we're making a decision on whether to buy an air warfare destroyer. I can't imagine that a family impact statement would be very influential." How blind is that?
Last year, the world spent US$1 trillion on weapons. If this comprised a stack of $100 bills they would reach 1000 kilometres high. Can anyone guess how many schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, universities, etc., that fabulous bounty would buy?
Last year, James Wolfensohn of the World Bank told an audience: "We are spending 20 times the amount on military expenditure than what we are spending on trying to give hope to people." If only he were Australia's treasurer!
Gareth Smith
Byron Bay, NSW
ID card
Queensland Premier Beattie's Australia Card reprise, and those of Senator Vanstone, the PM, Mark Vaille and others, are not enough. Is it not time to get smart? Rather than a readily forged plastic internal passport, what about electronic internal body-tags, akin to those used for Aussie livestock and pets and easily read by sensors everywhere?
All data could be collated, read and analysed by our security forces via a system similar to omnipresent video security cameras. Every on-line petrol station, security desk and supermarket could help us to be alert but not alarmed.
Could Beattie, Howard, Vanstone and Ruddock head the stampede for swipable electronic biometric ID body tags?
Then with an OK from the electoral office, we could even i-pod our leaders from home as part of democracy on the internet. We would all know where we were.
Peter Woodforde
Melba, ACT
Bob Carr
I will not forget [soon-to-retire NSW Labor Premier] Bob Carr's answer when I asked him why he had not visited the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, and if he would. "I would not want to give them false hope."
So thank you, Bob Carr, for not giving false hope, or any kind of hope, to innocent people locked up for months, sometimes years, in your state.
Stephen Langford From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 3, 2005.
Paddington, NSW
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