Australian Social Issues & Inequality
Australian university review proposes student vouchers
By Carolyn Robinson, January 2, 2009
For two decades, the higher education system has been systematically starved of funds. Now the dire state of over-stretched universities is being used to justify a radical pro-market restructuring.
WSWS interviews charity workers and recipients
Demand for emergency welfare relief “dramatically spikes” in Sydney
By Keith Morgan and Mike Head, December 30, 2008
The WSWS interviews charity workers and recipients about the social impact of the global economic breakdown in Sydney, Australia’s financial capital.
Australia: Hundreds of jobs to be axed as childcare centres close
By Alex Messenger, December 22, 2008
Hundreds of Australian childcare employees, some of the poorest paid workers in the country, will lose their jobs in the coming months with the $1.6 billion collapse of childcare provider ABC Learning...
Australian welfare agencies warn of growing social crisis
By Mike Head, December 12, 2008
Australian welfare agencies say they have reached breaking point, with demand for services like housing, counselling and emergency relief doubling. They have made an urgent appeal to the Rudd governme...
Doctors declare Australian hospital system on the brink of collapse
By Alex Messenger, December 11, 2008
Australia’s public hospitals are so understaffed and bed shortages so serious that hospitals routinely operate for long periods at “code red”, a level of overcrowding at which patients will die,...
Amid Allegations of Enron-style Fraud
Major Australian child care corporation at risk of bankruptcy
By Katrina Morrison, September 30, 2008
Australia’s largest child care provider ABC Learning, also the world’s largest publicly traded child care corporation, stands on the brink of collapse.
Australia: Methane gas landfill leak forces residents to evacuate suburb
“The land should never have been sold”
By Peter Byrne, September 25, 2008
On September 11, Country Fire Authority chief officer Russell Rees advised owners of about 250 houses in the working class outer-Melbourne suburb of Cranbourne to move out after methane levels of 60 t...
Australia: The 2008 Victorian teachers’ dispute, Teachers Alliance and the Socialist Equality Party
By Patrick O’Connor and Will Marshall, September 12, 2008
The World Socialist Web Site is publishing an interview with Mary Merkenich, a leading member of the Teachers Alliance organisation, on the recent struggle waged by Victorian public school teachers fo...
Australia: Labor to strip welfare from parents of truant children
Punishing the poor
By Laura Tiernan, September 4, 2008
In what amounts to a declaration of war on the right to welfare, Labor’s Minister for Education Julia Gillard presented a new bill to federal parliament last week that will strip benefits from p...
