Australian Social Issues & Inequality
Report details widespread poverty in Australia
By Patrick O’Connor, October 16, 2012
The findings are a devastating indictment of the Labor government and its pro-business restructuring agenda.
Australian police Taser attack kills Brazilian student
By Zac Hambides, March 21, 2012
All the evidence indicates that police used potentially lethal force against an innocent young man, Roberto Laudisio Curti.
Official report confirms growing inequality in Australia
By Alex Messenger, October 26, 2011
The statistics indicate that the wealthy have been able to exploit the global financial crisis to profit at the expense of ordinary people.
Mortgage stress rising in Australia
By Eduardo Ballesteros, October 21, 2011
The Moody’s report provides a glimpse of the mounting financial distress being experienced by working class households, even before the current barrage of manufacturing job losses.
Workers struggle in “boom” state of Western Australia
By Joe Lopez, James Cogan, July 29, 2011
Official figures disguise the immense contradictions and regressive social impact of the mining boom.
Australia: Labor’s “welfare quarantining” trials target unemployed
By Will Morrow, July 1, 2011
The WSWS spoke to unemployed people in the Sydney suburb of Bankstown, one of the working class areas selected by the Gillard government for welfare-cutting trials.
Australian government to stop welfare payments to teenage mothers
By Tania Baptist, June 29, 2011
The scheme is part of various measures aimed at forcing the disabled, the long-term unemployed, and single mothers off welfare and into the workforce, where they will become a new source of cheap labour.
“Putting mothers and babies under grossly unfair pressure”
By Tania Baptist, June 29, 2011
The WSWS interviewed advocates for single mothers and welfare recipients about the implications of the Gillard government’s trials, which will suspend welfare payments for teenage parents.
Australian tribunal allows greater exploitation of student labour
By Mike Head, June 27, 2011
The ruling is part of a concerted government-backed drive to slash wages and conditions of low-paid retail workers amid falling sales, a wave of store closures and signs of deepening slump.
Mining boom boosts Australia’s ultra-wealthy
By Peter Byrne, June 15, 2011
Four out of the top five on the Rich 200 List made their fortunes in the mining sector, pointing to the growing weight of the major miners within the ruling elite.
Corporate executive pay hits “stratospheric new heights” in Australia
By Terry Cook, December 1, 2010
Two reports on executive remuneration reveal that Australia’s corporate and financial elite are taking home millions of dollars while workers and their families suffer increasing levels of financial and social stress.
Australia: Labor government accelerates rundown and privatisation of public housing
By Will Marshall, November 24, 2010
Successive Labor and Liberal governments in Victoria have starved public housing of funds. The most disadvantaged people in the state currently languish on waiting lists for almost three times as long as they did when the Labor government was first elected in 1999.
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