‘Uniting the Breakout: from Gonski to Permanency’ – The Activist Teachers Network

One uncanny characteristic about an octopus is its innate ability to escape from a box. In 2012, the Activist Teachers Network (ATN) published a pamphlet titled ‘Resisting Austerity – From NY to Your School’. It featured a cartoon of an octopus delivered in a box, representing the New York neo-liberal model of education, that the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard was determined to impose in Australia. Gillard was then the doyen of schools funding, … Read more

Your Union and the Campaign for Green Jobs

There is no future in coal. Not only will it wreck the lives of people already suffering the effects of drought, storms and floods around the world, it will fail to give rural Queenslanders secure jobs. Over the last five years 60 per cent of global coal operations have been running at a loss. Michael Roche, chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council, said in 2016 that ‘these are some of the worst … Read more

‘Robots Are Coming For Your Job!’ – Liz Ross

What is the future of work? What will happen to the jobs we do today? Is the future going to be a technological Garden of Eden as Marx sketched out in the 1800s or a dystopian, violent hell-hole? Three different writers have given their opinions. In 1931 John Maynard Keynes predicted a future of increased leisure time because new technology would take over much of the work, solving our ‘economic problem’ or the … Read more

‘Work, Technology and the Future’ – Jeff Rickertt

Work, Technology and the Future: A Review of Why the Future is Workless by Tim Dunlop (NewSouth Publishing, 2016). The rapid development of artificial intelligence, 3D printing and robotics – the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution – has many people worried that humanity might be entering an age of permanent joblessness. Even Bill Gates is concerned. What will happen, he asks, when we ‘cross the threshold of job-replacement of certain activities all … at … Read more

Cloudland Collective Public Meeting: How do we generate a future without coal?

Our climate is already changing as the result of global warming. Without action right now, our future will be one of extreme weather events and rising sea levels at an unimaginable cost to humanity. Yet our governments remain wedded to the economic voodoo of coal. Why? What is the truth about coal, the economy and jobs? What is a just alternative that acknowledges the needs of workers and communities and how can we … Read more

‘The Adani Mine, Climate Catastrophe and the Promise of a Green Economy’ – Adrian Skerritt

The Adani mine will have a devastating effect on precarious equatorial environments. It will play a role in driving millions from their homes. It will further destabilise the economies of rural Queensland towns and consume state resources that could otherwise be spent on schools, hospitals, public housing and social services. It will ruin Aboriginal land. It will fatally pollute underground water sources and the Great Barrier Reef. If we discovered the Queensland and … Read more

‘The Social Failure of Mining’ – Howard Guille

Howard Guille is a respected political economist and former Secretary of the Queensland Division of the National Tertiary Education Union. He is a Research Associate of the TJ Ryan Foundation. In September 2016, at a TJ Ryan Foundation / QCU seminar on ‘Jobs of the future in an uncertain environment’, Howard presented a paper on the social failure of mining. His analysis exposed Adani and other proponents of mining in Queensland for ‘exaggerating the contribution … Read more