The San Francisco branch of Socialist Alternative, the US section of the CWI (the Socialist Party's International) got between 60,000 and 70,000 votes - or 40% of the total citywide votes casted - in a referendum for the creation of a democratically-elected neighborhood Council to administer a US$150m fund to create jobs for residents of the District. The measure was pushed by a small coalition led by our organisation. The media and ourselves openly campaigned explaining that we were socialists. Bayview Hunters Point is a working class neighbourhood in San Francisco. It has the highest percentage of home ownership in the City. About 40% of the districts' residents are African American, with high percentages of Asians and Latinos as well.

CWI member Roger Bannister scored a marvellous result in the election for General Secretary of Britain's biggest union, UNISON. Roger Bannister, standing for a broad left ticket, won 71,021 votes (31.65%). Dave Prentis, the right wing deputy General Secretary won with 125,584 (55.9%) and another leftwing candidate, Malkiat Bilku, got 27,785 (12.3%). Roger has nearly doubled his share of the vote cast when he last stood for this post. The combined left vote for Roger and Malkiat was nearly 100,000 or 44% of votes cast and it shook the leadership of not only the union but also the Labour government of Tony Blair.

The Federal government is planning make sole parents and the disabled "more employable" or face losing their benefits. This is code for further harassment by Centerlink. They also plan to roll unemployment, parenting, and the disability pension into one. This could mean a $20 a week reduction as unemployment benefits are this amount less than the other two benefits.

WA Premier Richard Court is backing a redneck campaign to reintroduce the death penalty in his state. The death penalty has done nothing to lower crime in the US and is extremely biased against people of colour and the working class. It would be no different here.

No wonder Victoria's Labor government has gone quiet on attacking the gambling industry. Last year pokies alone took $1.9 billion from Victorians - a 767% increase since 1992! Gambling contributes up to 15% of government revenue. We say nationalise the gambling industry, and regulate and restrict pokie venues so that people are encouraged not to let gambling take over their lives.

Heavy rains in southern Africa since February led to widespread flooding in the eastern provinces of South Africa and Zimbabwe, in Madagascar, and most tragically in southern Mozambique. The floods in Mozambique affected the best agricultural, and most populated areas. They were exacerbated by release of water by dams up-river in neighbouring countries. This is the worst climatic disaster in Mozambique in the last 50 years. A thousand died in the flooding of the Limpopo and Save Rivers, and millions have lost their crops and homes. Without potable water, shelter, sanitation and food, they are now very vulnerable to diarrhoea and malaria. Mozambique endured a bitter civil war after the fall of Portuguese colonialism in 1975. The ravages of decades of war left Mozambique one of the world's poorest countries, with millions of unexploded landmines. The United States and the Apartheid regime in South Africa supplied a military force, Renamo, which since the peace agreements of the mid-1990s, has contested elections unsuccessfully against Frelimo, the anti-colonialist liberation front which has remained in government. Earlier this year, Renamo, frustrated it did not win a majority of votes in the last elections, moved its headquarters from the capital, Maputo, to the northern city of Beira, and threatened secession of seven northern provinces. This threat of renewed conflict has been pushed into the background by the scale of destruction wrought by the recent floods.

The international response has been slow and inadequate, and hampered by continuing rains. On 20 March Mozambique requested assistance in the immediate emergency phase of $150 million. The Australian government reluctantly announced a total aid package of only $1.5 million. Despite growing Australian mining and commercial interests – P&O Australia now runs the port of Maputo -- this small allocation shows the government's overall disinterest in Africa, and inflexibility in their humanitarian emergencies budget. In contrast to the government, Australians are maintaining their tradition of donating generously to African relief and development projects through voluntary agencies. The ACTU has joined the international trade union movement in calling for the cancellation of the debts of Mozambique and Madagascar. Though there was a debt reduction of $1.7 billion USD in June last year, Mozambique still pays $1.4 million USD each week -- more than the total Australian relief allocation! Madagascar has a debt of over $4 billion USD, 120% of its GDP, and 75% of its people live in abject poverty.

On Friday April 7th young workers and students launched a new campaign against low pay. They campaigned outside McDonalds in Melbourne's city centre with an ape suit and the slogan "we're sick of working for peanuts", stall and speakers.

Melbourne Socialist Party youth work co-ordinator Matt Wilson explains the issues: It is no secret that the storm of economic rationalism has destroyed job security, wages and conditions of workers in previously considered safe, strong union industries.

However, if you want to see the full extent of storm damage you look towards those who live at the bottom of the hill, or on the lowest end of the pay scale. Casualised, predominantly young workers have, over recent decades, suffered a landslide of changes relating to their work. The number of casualised jobs has increased dramatically over the last ten years. They now make up a clear majority of the whole workforce. Over the same period unemployment has risen to around 9% officially, however youth unemployment is three times that figure. Both of these changes are symptoms of economic rationalism, together they go hand in hand in the process of crippling the lives of young working people.

Federal Government cuts to youth benefits have left many young people desperate for any employment they can find. Even if young people do receive the dole, a crushing 50% tax paid on any weekly income over $100 forces many young people into the black economy, where they receive cash in hand with absolutely no job protection. As young people scrape out a living between periods of short term employment, bosses reap the benefits. Large corporations operating within the food, hospitality and service industries take full advantage of casualised labour.

For instance, KFC pays $4.80 training wages for young people; this so-called 'training' period can last for months. In many workplaces if young workers complain about conditions or pay, bosses reply, "If you don't like it here, there's plenty of others who'd take your job." In many cases workers simply keep their mouths shut for fear of having their shifts dropped. Bosses may think that they will continue to make great profits out of their exploited youth workforce. However young people are becoming increasingly aware of their exploiters and the system that is failing them. The tide is turning, as youthful demonstrations in Seattle have shown. Organised groups of young workers in Canada and the UK are successfully unionising McDonalds, a company which is known world wide for its exploitation of youth along with a hatred of unionism.

In order to combat the problems young workers face in Australia, the Socialist Party will be continuing the low pay campaign. We will be assisting young workers in any attempts to raise the conditions and pay rates in their workplace whist publicly shaming companies with unacceptable work practices. We believe that if wages and conditions can be fought for and protected inside McDonalds, it can be done anywhere.

George Petersen, veteran Trotskyist and working class fighter, died on Tuesday 28 March at the age of 78. More than 400 comrades and friends attended the powerful celebration of his life held the following Saturday in Wollongong, the area where he had lived and worked politically for over 40 years. Tributes from a wide range of labor, gay and environmental activists, and from his son Eric, were interspersed with folk songs and poetry in a moving two and a half hour rally.

Born in Queensland in 1921, George devoted his life to the fight to build a socialist society and to struggle against all forms of oppression, whether it was trade union issues, womens' rights, gay rights, prisoners rights', Aboriginal rights or environmental issues. His childhood was dominated by the 1930s Depression and in 1943 he joined the Communist Party. He broke with Stalinism over the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and at this time moved to Wollongong and joined the Australian Labor Party.

In 1968 he was elected to state parliament for the seat of Kembla, with 61.7% of the vote, and continued to campaign around a wide variety of issues. He supported the struggle against Apartheid, campaigned for the release of the unjustly imprisoned Ananda Marga Three, defended Medibank, exposed the beatings of prisoners at Bathurst Gaol, campaigned against the Vietnam War, defended Palestinian independence, fought for womens' rights to abortion, campaigned against carcinogenic emissions from the Port Kembla coke ovens, supported the struggle for Aboriginal land rights, opposed the extension of police powers, opposed the cuts in health services, campaigned against the deregistration of the Builders Labourers Federation, opposed the Hawke government's Accord, and introduced homosexual law reform legislation.

In his autobiography "George Petersen Remembers" (1998) he showed in detail through his experiences in parliament the treacherous role played by reformism and how it operates to prop up capitalism. In 1987 George was expelled from the ALP after taking a principled stand and voting against the Labor government's attack on workers' compensation. He formed the Illawarra Workers Party and then became an active member of the International Workers League. With his wife Mairi he continued to campaign around local, national and international issues such as the Shellharbour Marina, independence for East Timor and against the US invasion of Iraq.

While he was already ready to work side-by-side with anyone who supported a particular issue, he also came into conflict with those on the left who wanted to compromise struggles and come to terms with capitalism. George will be remembered as a Marxist and internationalist and a tenacious fighter for the working class. Whether inside or outside parliament he never gave up the struggle to build a party which, in his words, "the working class will recognise as their instrument in their national and international struggles to transform their own lives from being members of a class in itself into being members of a class for itself".

The laws of the Northern Territory and Western Australia, requiring mandatory sentencing of offenders to jail on minor offences have come under rigorous criticism from humanitarian and aboriginal rights organisations recently, following the death by hanging of an Aboriginal teenager Johnno Warrambala, in Darwin's Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre.

Johnno's alleged crime had been a minor one, involving the theft of pens and paints. But it brought to a head the years of bitterness aroused by mandatory sentencing, under which aborigines and other juveniles are jailed for trivial offences, such as stealing as little as 40c from a public telephone. UN Secretary-general Koffi Annan continued his policy of "refusing to interfere in the domestic policies of nations" while on a visit to Australia in February. This apology towards nationalism demonstrates the continued incapacity of the UN to represent even basic human rights world-wide.

It was an ideological surrender worthy of the failed League of Nations in the earlier part of this century, especially weak considering the parliamentary opposition to mandatory sentencing, and the racist election campaign of the Northern Territory Chief Minister, Dennis Burke, who ran on "state's rights", reminiscent of Governor Wallace's response to humanitarian criticism of Alabama's racially discriminatory laws in the 1960's.

The UN Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination however, a body with largely symbolic powers, made it clear it found the laws racially discriminatory, and in violation of several international agreements between Australia and the United Nations. Given Koffi Annan's apologetics, it's unlikely we will see any action taken beyond the usual ritual condemnations of the laws which make Australian Aborigines the most incarcerated race in the world, even more so than blacks in the former Apartheid South Africa.

The Prime Minister John Howard refused to allow a conscience vote on the issue, and then opposed the unsuccessful attempt by liberal backbenchers to introduce a law to override mandatory sentencing. The Opposition have been trying to suggest that the Howard Government have been attempting to "divert" attention away from the GST and the damning UN report. The North Australia Legal Aid Service will launch legal action against the laws before the United Nations Human Rights Committee before the Sydney Olympics. The Australian government softened the original report from the UN, successfully lobbying to have some of the conclusions from the report toned down, especially those that would most embarrass the government.

This is only one more sorry chapter in laws which have been criticised for years by organisations such as Amnesty International and the Deaths in Custody Watch Committees. The truth about these laws only needed reporting. The UN's nerve has been tested by John Howard, a provincialist whose main achievement has been in poverty-creation and a "One Australia" approach to multiculturalism. The UN's opposition to the Howard Government's policies carry no punch. It is the responsibility of trade unionists, students and all layers of the community to link up with the Aboriginal community to build mass opposition to Howard and force a policy change. We can only depend on ourselves.

No worker today can share the same confidence of job security of workers the generation before them. As we read and see every day in the capitalist press and media companies are making record profits. Chief executives are receiving enormous salaries and payouts. Mergers, deals and takeovers worth billions of dollars are now common practice. But whether it is a payout, a takeover or a record interim profit for us, it all means one thing: Job losses.

Despite an Australian corporate record interim profit of $2.09 billion, Telstra Corporation announced it would need to shed over 16,000 full-time jobs as part of what it calls cost cutting measures to reduce costs by $650 million per annum. Up to 8,000 Telstra workers will be forced into immediate redundancy. Whilst a further 6,300 jobs will no longer be on Telstra's books when it sells the companies network design and construction business.

Meanwhile chief executives at the Commonwealth Bank were at lengths to explain why it is necessary to unleash a $7.5 billion merger with the Colonial Bank which would cause 2,500 job losses in order to increase it's profitability in a global market. The same chief executives wielding the axe to the workforce are being paid salaries, with stock options, of well over $3 million per year. In fact the bosses at NAB, Commonwealth, ANZ and Westpac have in the last ten years been responsible for the axing of up to 25,000 jobs in the banking industry.

And whilst they are pocketing millions of dollars and enjoying other luxuries of the elite, unemployed people under the age of 21 have to struggle on a dole payment which leaves them 33% below the official poverty line.

As little as $23 per day for food, housing, clothing, transport and the additional costs of job searching. Not to mention the teachers, nurses, aged and disabled carers and child care workers, whose jobs are essential to building and maintaining our community who don't earn anywhere near the inflated salaries of top executives.

Those of us lucky to have a job probably work longer hours than we would have 10 years ago. Not only are we working longer but the workplace has become more stressful. Yet most younger workers who have entered the workforce in the last decade are often unaware of the stress they deal with until they suffer one or another stress related illness.

Australia now records the second highest rate (26%) of casualised workers in OECD countries. More than 200,000 Australians have been unemployed for over a year. Over half a million children live in families where no one has a job. The government keeps telling us that unemployment is at a record low level (6.7%) but reality is something quite different.

It is time for workers to take up the old slogan "Jobs Not Profits". We need to put pressure on the Union leadership to follow the lead of the Victorian building workers and fight for a shorter working week without any loss in wages. By reducing the working week by 5 hours and limiting overtime we could overcome unemployment. An effective change to the capitalist system of exploitation and greed can only come through the struggle of the masses. It is time for us all to once again take up the slogan "Jobs Not Profit".