Sydney Retired Unionist Group is an incorporated body that aims to support the trade union movement and progressive issues relating to the environment, peace and social justice

We support nonviolent community action for human rights, worker rights, social justice, environmental protection, democratic decision-making and peace

Recent socioeconomic & environmental issues discussed
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State capture by vested interests

Politically powerful vested interests are strongly influencing, even determining, government policies, information disseminated by the mass media and social media, and community attitudes on key socio-economic and environmental issues. These issues include climate change, urban planning, gambling, government budgets, foreign affairs and defence. They are undermining democratic decision-making and, in several cases, driving existential threats to civilisation. State capture and its methods must be exposed and challenged. (State capture image by Rod Taylor)

Social implications of artificial intelligence

AI is altering society in all its varied and many aspects with the reinvention of science, employment, agriculture, medicine, and biometrics (to name a few) at a rapid pace presenting both risks and benefits and corresponding winners and losers. Most governments (including the Australian Government) and human rights bodies do not have frameworks or a vision for the safe and equitable introduction of AI. An exception is UNESCO with its vision for a future where AI and technologies work for the people.

To this end the Sydney Retired Unionist Group endorsed the 15 recommendations in “Making AI work for us’ (28-4-2024). Submission by the Australian Council of Trade Unions to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training Inquiry into the Digital Transformation of Workplaces at its October 2025 meeting. (Image of AI by AI)

Ecological economics and modern monetary theory

One of the barriers to government spending to protect the environment and social justice is the notion that governments of countries with monetary sovereignty (like Australia) must balance their budgets, like a household or company, and that taxation revenue funds government expenditure. To the contrary, according to modern monetary theory, government spending creates money into existence, independent of the quantity of taxation revenue. The only constraint on spending by the federal government is that, to avoid inflation, total spending, public plus private, must not exceed the nation’s real economic capacity, which is determined by raw materials, infrastructure, existing industries, workforce and its skills. (Ecological economics diagram by Mark Diesendorf)

Property developers and urban planning (TBA)