Hi OP, when quoting the article in your post, it’s helpful to use the quote formatting to show us you’re giving quotes and not just supplying additional commentary.

Writing: > You need to only look at the modern crossbench

becomes:

You need to only look at the modern crossbench

Sounds like something out of a futuristic dystopian movie.

I haven’t seen a terrorism act invoked in my state but police have called a few designated areas this year and they bring the cavalry mounted troops to most protests.

I’m calling it now. Somebody’s gonna die or get seriously injured

Big ten-thousands protests generally try to be more big-tent than radical, so as eager as police are to make a show of force against anti-military protesters, my bet is that it will be limited to shoving. But honestly, I won’t be shocked if your call turns out right.

lol - what abuse? He said these things in an earnings presentation, probably to board and investors.

Attempting to (softly) control other peoples’ basic freedom, and their social life while at work, restricting them and alienating them from anything outside the office. The problem isn’t their choice of words, nor that they admitted it to investors.

Maybe the way I’m saying this sounds melodramatic, that I’m jumping to the extreme case and assuming the worst. But those worst cases happen regularly, and these are the warning signs - when the owners want increasing control over workers to extract more profit, to “get the best out of them”. Those employee pain points are social life: the company wants a childcare centre, a restaurant and a gym because “I don’t want them leaving the building.”, “I don’t want them walking down the road for a cup of coffee. We kind of figured out a few years ago how much that costs.” They could have lied and said they did it to improve worker wellbeing and get the best out of them, to reduce the travel-time needed, or any other seemingly innocent reason.

This attitude makes the universal truth clear, a board and investors see their workers as a resource for extracting maximum profit. It has to be that way, that’s how they compete and survive. And it alienates workers.

And I don’t see any evidence anywhere that his people are enduring shit jobs.

I didn’t say they were. I don’t know their conditions. I’m refuting the common attitude that workers are just free to leave when they’re being abused.

outrage reporting

You have a point. They said the quiet part aloud because their audience didn’t need the propaganda bullshit they would have told other people. And so, they admitted an outrageous truth which, well, is pretty normal among businesses. The journalist is taking a quote and shining the headlights on them. But, they are not inventing a fake problem. There’s no ethical justification for saying they don’t want people leaving the building to enjoy a walk and a coffee on their break. Employer exploitation of workers is a real issue in society at large, it deserves attention, and this outrage is an opportunity to give it the attention it deserves.

As the one calling the shots, he’s entitled to run the business that way.

Legally, sure. But I don’t care whether someone is legally allowed to be abusive, it’s still abuse, and their abusive attitude towards workers earns outrage.

And sure, employees can probably leave legally, but if we allow this abuse to be normalized then there won’t be another place to go in the industry. There is economic asymmetry at play, it’s not viable to just leave a job whenever it treats someone badly. There are only so many jobs available and the market is increasingly moving towards monopolization in many industries.

People don’t just work in shit jobs because they haven’t considered leaving. They have legal freedom, but they are not empowered to leave without ending up somewhere just as bad or risking unemployment. So even if no-one is forced, they’re inherently pressured, and that pressure is enough for them to accept abuse in order to keep themselves and their families off the dole. We need to create a society with an economy where people aren’t subject to the whims of their employers.

There’s a point made about how no courts were involved in the action. In wonder if the High Court has a pragmatic interest in stopping this kind of summary action. If the courts can be bypassed, what power will they have?

Seriously, watching that interview is a little painful with all the interrupting to try and railroad the conversation, and attaching weird attacks and assertions to make loaded questions, or rather, framing a claim as a question. I haven’t seen it so bad outside of Faux News in the US.

Glad to hear Max got a quick mention of the Green Bans of the BLF in.

So their argument is:

No, that’s not what they were saying. For starters, they’re clearly pointing out that the hypocrisy is that “The CFMEU [is being forced into administration] on the back of a handful of rumours and allegations”, contrasting that against the “damning findings” of the Royal commissions which were tolerated, not that the CFMEU “should be allowed to be corrupt” (where did that strawman come from?!). Also, the ETU are not the CFMEU.

That would miss the point of the protest. It was a mass action from the community, where a broad range of unions and non-union organisations participated, to rally together and voice our response to the extreme administration bills. I’ve gone into a little detail on my perspective here. Overall, we must recognise the way this bill was handled as a knowingly-inappropriate response to the situation and a threat to the whole labour movement.

In case I need to state it, I’m not defending corruption, I’m not saying that there aren’t people who should be charged and removed. There are real problems with the CFMEU and the members should be empowered to root it out of their union. Putting in a dictator with huge conflicts of interest with the workers is not how to do that. That’s how to union-bust.

and protest outside of federal liberal party headquarters demanding equal action on political corruption

The Liberal party didn’t do this. The protest is critiquing the Labor party and their attack on the labour movement.

The Liberal party also probably couldn’t care less about the protesters, might as well be vegans threatening to boycott a butcher. Union reps are a major component of the Labor party, and union rank-and-file are a large part of their voter support base.

For those going to the CFMEU protest tomorrow, be advised the location has been changed to the Trades Hall due to expected large crowd.

Seriously, shame on the opportunistic people who bothered giving her a platform.

This article is very clear and to-the-point. Thanks for sharing.

In order to ensure the administrator doesn’t run wild, the administrator has to be satisfied that the administrator is acting in the interests of members.

Great system.

It’s a sharp reminder of the industrialisation of art as entertainment, more than as expression.

That’s a great start! Congrats to the students and the communities who stood in solidarity to help them stay there.

When we’re talking about ads and media, I highly recommend reading the relevant chapter in Manufacturing Consent (PDF version can easily be found for free online).

But really, intuition will get you the raw basics: using the ad revenue model gives the advertiser control over a media outlet. If media truly ‘need gambling ads’, then this implies they cannot afford to lose them. So, they therefore cannot offend the gambling industry or especially the companies advertising with them. And therefore, they are pressured into media bias, into failing to be critical of an obviously harmful, corrupt industry dealing in addiction manufacture AND laundering at the same time!

Didn’t know there was such thing as too much. For me it’s a nice warm soup.

Crosslinking: https://aussie.zone/post/12573641

Haven’t checked the official .gov What’s On site in a while, but it’s always good for a quick look if nothing else is on.

Are the AFP employees (coppers) aware they are the wrong people to be handling this? They had an opportunity to help this kid, and instead just accelerated a terrorist operation until they could punish the victim.

This is very bad news for the worker movement.

The bottom line is that, despite their flaws, the CFMEU management enables construction workers to fight for better working conditions, including those working in roles where people regularly die in workplace incidents, where safety standards are a life and death matter. If they are replaced by a state-supplied dictator against the will of the workers which a union is created to represent, this introduces a conflict of interest somehow even worse than that in any of the accusations. We’ve seen in history how state-enforced class collaboration screws over workers. When employees are working for huge multinational companies like Lendlease, they need ways to defend themselves from all the corruption that comes with that. The CFMEU in its current state is not ideal, but it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing, or one assigned by the government.

This has already had a chilling effect on the other more-militant trade unions, word-of-mouth is that some are asking members not to draw attention to themselves e.g. by flying banners at the recent NSW Labor conference. Giving the government this power to weaken unions at will is a horrible precedence which I sincerely believe will cost lives when it comes to safety regulations, let alone cost of living, preventing financial abuse of immigrant workers, and the inability to support social movement, such as the Green Bans of the BLF (who were deregistered in various states in 1986 and essentially brought into the coverage of what would become the CFMEU).

Randwick Mayor Philipa Veitch has addressed protests at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and outside the offices of US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin in Matraville.

A few councils and senators have been standing up on this issue and it’s great to see elected officials getting involved and not afraid to take stances. Veitch is a Greens member, so they have party support there, but it’s still nice and encouraging to see some support within certain governments (despite my reservations with current electoral politics).

Greens and Labor councillors combined to vote against the motion, which was defeated by 10 votes to five.

The motion was amended to remove the vote of no confidence and became a motion condemning anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and acknowledging the council’s role in promoting community cohesion.

I wonder what that means in practice, will supporting human rights protests like this violate “the council’s role in promoting community cohesion”?

[Liberal councillor who launched the motion] Cr Rosenfeld told ABC Radio Sydney local politicians should leave international affairs to the federal member. “We’re in the local sector of government, not the federal sphere,” he said.

hahaha this is just silly. Of course a local politician should be allowed to care and engage with international politics. Particularly in Randwick, one of the areas with a major university involved in the war effort (e.g. weapons manufacturers connections to campus), their local area is relevant to international affairs so they shouldn’t just block their ears and offload responsibility because it’s over 10 kilometres away.