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immigration May 20, 2017

Migrants targeted as refugee panic founders

Mike Seccombe On November 29, 2004, when Malcolm Turnbull rose to give his first speech to parliament, he spoke as a proud internationalist and passionate advocate of a big Australia. He called for an expanded immigration program, which he described as “...

ir March 25, 2017

New ACTU secretary Sally McManus on the new IR battlegrounds

Karen Middleton As the federal election campaign swung into gear in May last year, ALP strategists braced themselves for a Coalition advertising blitz, targeting Labor leader Bill Shorten and his union background. The royal commission into...

ir November 19, 2016

CSIRO's workplace stalemate

Karen Middleton On Tuesday this week, members of the CSIRO staff association flew to Townsville to appear before a senate inquiry into enterprise bargaining in the public service. Two years and three months since CSIRO’s workplace agreement...

resources November 26, 2016

The Hazelwood closure and the future of the Latrobe Valley

Martin McKenzie-Murray The coal fire had been burning for 33 days when I arrived in the town of Morwell, 150 kilometres east of Melbourne. Government officials were conducting house visits in face-masks, helicopters buzzed the power plant in the...

ir September 24, 2016

Unions poisoned by ALP affiliation

Mike Seccombe At first blush, former union leaders Kathy Jackson and Joe de Bruyn would seem to have little in common. At a personal level, she and he embody antonyms: respectively mercurial and stolid, charismatic and nondescript, material...

ir January 31, 2015

What’s happening in Tony Abbott’s office?

Sophie Morris Leadership speculation is like a disease. Left unchecked it eats away at a party and damages its ability to govern. It can also be contagious. Amid the extraordinary clamour this week at Tony Abbott’s follies and monarchist...

ir January 24, 2015

US arms suppliers overrule courts in Australia with ITAR

Debra Jopson Late last year a United States law framed in the name of world peace quietly reached its long arm into a small Melbourne tribunal, persuading it to let a large armaments manufacturer override Australian human rights...