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Search Results: cleaners

  • AUSTRALIA

    HAFFing and puffing

    • Peter Mares
    • 21 September 2023
    2 Comments

    Will the Housing Australia Future Fund make a dent on Australia’s housing crisis? After a political tug-of-war, the government's ambitious $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) has passed parliament, promising tens of thousands of new homes. But with over 170,000 households on social housing waiting lists and a skyrocketing rental market, the question remains: is the HAFF enough?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A meditation on grief and consolation

    • Barry Gittins
    • 28 June 2022
    2 Comments

    Joined by our son, I dug four feet down, two feet across, into wet, clayish soil. Deep into the darkness. We can see Cinder’s resting place from our bedroom window, not far from a little apple tree we’d planted some weeks before. She would have loved the spot, we think.

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  • ECONOMICS

    The gift of work

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 August 2020
    6 Comments

    Amid the disruption of predictable life wrought by the coronavirus, governments have focused on jobs. Jobs lost in the response to the virus, and jobs created as we emerge from the crisis. The focus is worthy — behind each job lost is a person whose life has become anxious and uncertain. The language, however, is concerning. Defining the challenge as one of creating jobs expresses an understanding of work, the inadequacy of which the coronavirus has laid bare.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A new pay structure for frontliners

    • Jill Sutton
    • 20 May 2020
    10 Comments

    Our frontliners are usually our younger workers. They are the ones trying to pay rent or save a deposit on a house. They are the ones trying to cope with children, the costs of child care and space for their accommodation and play. And yet we depend on them in a crisis like COVID-19, and we pay them less.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Demanding more sustainable businesses

    • Alana Schetzer
    • 19 May 2020
    3 Comments

    Multiple media reports have focused on individuals and households moving away from sustainability — mostly because of understandable concerns about contamination — and yet, the conversation about the impacts of our biggest businesses and corporations hasn’t been as loud.

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  • RELIGION

    Behind the COVID curtain

    • Sally Cloke
    • 07 May 2020
    9 Comments

    Another biblical motif or metaphor may prove more fruitful in the long run: the apocalypse. No, not the end of the world, however appropriate this may feel. It’s the apocalypse but not as we know it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The politics of domestic labour

    • Nicola Heath
    • 08 August 2019
    2 Comments

    It isn't just mothers and wives who bear the burden. Many households outsource domestic labour to nannies, housekeepers and cleaners. These workers are part of a vast global industry that employs 100 million people around the world. They are usually women from poor backgrounds who are rarely paid well for their labour.

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  • MEDIA

    Dissecting Australian media's Trump moment

    • Eliza Berlage
    • 22 May 2019
    5 Comments

    Morrison heralded his win as a 'miracle' and the media ran with it, leading to headlines like 'Messiah from the shire'. But while it was unexpected to those reporting on it, a look at deeply divided and change-averse Australia makes the Coalition win seem less remarkable.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Why musicians are the canaries in the coal mine

    • Terry Noone
    • 21 August 2017
    9 Comments

    To get a good idea of where employment practices are headed, a good place to start is the music industry. Musicians have been the canary in the coalmine. The gradual removal of their work place rights, and even basic remuneration, points to what happens when there are no effective constraints on employers’ behaviour. Instead, they are being offered ‘exposure’—and, as one muso quips, ‘you can die of exposure.’

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A world of majesty and cruelty

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 11 August 2017
    14 Comments

    We have just taken off from Dubai for St Petersburg. My son is marvelling at the immensity of Dubai’s airport—now officially the busiest in the world. We have stood on a bus—stifling, cramped—and boarded our air-conditioned connecting flight with a deep sense of relief. We have watched the planes lining up behind ours on the shimmering tarmac, and have noted the outside temperature flashing on the screen: 44 degrees Celsius. Thank God we’re getting out of here. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Deja vu for Timor as Turnbull neglects boundary talks

    • Frank Brennan
    • 21 March 2016
    10 Comments

    Rui Maria de Araujo, the prime minister of Timor-Leste, wrote to Malcolm Turnbull inviting him to turn a new leaf in the Australia-Timor relationship. It was not to be. But the Timorese are well used to winning the hearts and minds of Australians even when our political leaders appear to be tone deaf to their pleas. This time they have convinced the Labor Party about the justice of their cause, and there is every chance that the Australian community will rally behind them after the federal election.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The ABC is not a business

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 21 November 2014
    25 Comments

    Governments are  tempted to use budgetary accountability as a neat cover for corporatisation of public utilities. As public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS do not inhabit the same philosophical territory as Sky News or Channel 7. The ABC's cuts are based on an efficiency report prepared by a financial officer from the commercial media. It does not seem relevant that balanced budgets do not deliver educated audiences.

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