australian labour movement

Political strategist Bruce Hawker has told Sky News that he predicts Labor has secured a majority in the South Australia election. 'I think Labor's won,' told Sky News political editor David Speers. 'I don't know that they'll be going to a hung parliament to get it.  

The federal government's request for the return of more than $80 million it contributed to the doomed Sydney CBD metro project is yet another sign of Kevin Rudd's unhappiness with the Keneally/Labor government, state opposition leader Barry O'Farrell says. Speaking to reporters in Sydney on Saturday, Mr O'Farrell slammed the Labor government's "incompetence" as it faced an estimated bill of $500 million for the dumped project. "Taxpayers are getting to learn the full extent of what they'll be liable f

Taxpayers are getting to learn the full extent of what they'll be liable for because of Labor's failed metro project - a project that was born out of politics, a project that was canned because of politics, a project that is so far costing NSW taxpayers $500 million   -Barry O'Farrell

 

Your friend has suggested you might be interested in this blog post: Saturday, March 20, 2010 Sky News' exit poll is foul news for Mike Rann. Liberals 53 per cent, Labor 47. LABOR in South Australia could lose at least six seats and a hung parliament is the most likely outcome in the state election, an exit poll is showing. "Our prediction is Labor has lost its majority and it's a hung parliament," Tim Gartrell from Auspoll said half an hour before the close of Saturday's state election.  

THE federal government took out insurance yesterday against expected opposition claims of a damaged Labor brand should there be big swings against the ALP in the state elections being held today. South Australia and Tasmania go to the polls in the only two state elections to be held this year before the federal election. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said the governments in both states went into today's contest as underdogs because they had been in power a long time.

It could be a long night   -Mike Rann

 

 

MORE than half of all Notts County Council employees are set to take industrial action. A ballot held by union Unison shows 76% of its 9,000 members voted in favour of taking action, short of strike action. From the end of March, employees will:  

"When it's necessary to extract their carotid artery and snap it between your teeth, then you do," he said. That colourful language is as un-Ruddlike as the attack-dog style he has adopted in recent days. Also un-Ruddlike is the sudden willingness to take risks.

I bleed, frankly, when I see the state of many of our public hospitals   -Tony Abbott

 

THE veteran NSW federal Labor MP Roger Price will resign from politics at this year's election. Mr Price's decision enables his Right faction to install the union official Ed Husic into his safe western Sydney seat of Chifley. Mr Price has been in Parliament for 25 years, the past five as Labor's chief whip.  

Combet and Bornstein stood shoulder to shoulder in the most brutal of Australian industrial relations conflicts, the 1998 waterfront dispute. Combet rose to national prominence as the architect of the wharfies' gritty fightback against the Howard government and its crusading industrial relations minister, Peter Reith. Bornstein these days runs the employment and industrial law section of Maurice Blackburn in Melbourne, but back then he did the legal legwork for the unionists.

Minister Combet has been dubbed the Mr Fixit of the government, but information provided to me suggests that fixing things is a speciality. In recent days I have been contacted by a couple of the minister's Labor colleagues who are not what you would describe as supporters of the minister. They point to several examples of where the minister has been able to deftly move 'political roadblocks', as they describe them, without too much difficulty   -Jamie Briggs

 

THE state government is embroiled in an election year "jobs for the boys" row after appointing former federal Labor minister and ALP factional chief Robert Ray to a sensitive public sector job. Mr Ray, a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments who was regarded as the "godfather" of Premier John Brumby's Right faction, has been appointed chairman of the state's risk-management agency, the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority. He will be paid about $60,000 a year for the part-time job.

a classic example of John Brumby's jobs-for-Labor-mates culture   -Robert Clark