Comment and analysis

In his 2006 bestseller about climate change, Heat, British writer George Monbiot said his biggest worry was not that people would stop talking about climate change. His fear was that they’d talk us to kingdom come.

The following article is based on a speech by John Rice to the 1500-strong June 13 Adelaide Climate Emergency Rally. Rice is a member of the Climate Emergency Action Network (CLEAN) in South Australia.

The NSW budget was handed down on June 16. NSW state treasurer Eric Roozendaal tried to spin it as a “beacon of hope” for the state.

Saharawi refugee and preschool teacher Fetim Sellami is a central character in the Australian documentary Stolen, a film set in the refugee camps in south-west Algeria that have been home to 165,000 Saharawi refugees since their country, Western Sahara, was invaded by Morocco in 1975.

However, when she and her husband, Baba Hocine Mahfoud, attended its June 11 premiere at the Sydney Film Festival, they did not receive red carpet treatment, despite the long distance they had travelled.

“I would have been concerned if it was a dog or some other animal who died in those conditions, but since it was only a black-fella …”

We would have loved for them to be bigger, but the June 13 national climate rallies were an unmistakable step forward for the climate action movement. More than 11,000 rallied nationally, making them the largest climate actions yet in the era of PM Kevin Rudd.

Aboriginal residents living in remote communities in the Northern Territory have condemned the government’s “consultation” about the NT intervention as farcical.

On June 15, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) raised the rate of its standard variable mortgage by 0.1%. For home buyers with the typical $300,000 mortgage, this means repayments go up by $18 a month.

Joe de Bruyn, national secretary of the Shop Distributors Alliance and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA) and fervent Catholic militant had some novel advice on how to resolve the debate about the Australian Building Construction Commission (ABCC) within his Labor Party.

More than 200 people packed into the Brisbane city hall on June 1 for a public forum on why individual rights in Australia needed to be enshrined in a Human Rights Act.

“Delivering for all Working Australians” was the slogan for the 2009 Australian Council of Trade Unions congress held June on 2-4. This raises the question — what if you are not working or an Australian citizen? But the congress will not be remembered for such philosophical questions — there were many more immediate issues at stake.

Three months after wining a state election, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has been given the green light by the June 6-7 ALP state conference to push ahead with her $15 billion sell-off of state-owned assets.

Marion Scrymgour — the highest ranking Aboriginal member of any government in Australia — quit the Northern Territory Labor Party over its Aboriginal policy on June 4. As an independent, she now holds the balance of power.

At first glance, the climate change policy decided at the June 2-4 Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) national congress looks serious. Global warming is “the policy challenge of our time”, it declares.

On May 29, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told radio 3AW that his government has “absolutely no plans to make any change” to the superannuation preservation age — the age at which workers may access the superannuation paid into a super fund by their employer.

Below are details of just some of the 250 climate action groups nationwide organising to demand urgent action on climate change. For information on how to get involved contact your local group or visit your closest Resistance Centre (details on page 2).

About 350,000 Queensland workers plan to fight Labor Premier Anna Bligh’s plans for massive privatisations. Unions have warned of widespread industrial action, including strikes.

Ark Tribe worked as a rigger on a construction site at South Australia’s Flinders University in May 2008 when an industrial dispute arose due to safety issues. He has been charged by the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) with refusing to answer questions from the Australian Building Construction Commission (ABCC) in relation to the dispute.

The following article is based on a speech given to a May 23 rally in Melbourne.

In 2000, the small Pacific island nation Tuvalu made a formal request to Australia to accept its people if they were forced to evacuate because of global warming-induced sea level rises.

If you have thought of taking action on climate change, now is the time. Drought, bush fires, floods and rising seas are already hitting hard. It's an emergency and we need emergency action.

Over a year ago I wrote to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain.

Climate scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a disturbing new study on May 19. Without drastic action, the Earth’s surface temperature could rise by 5°C or more by 2100, they said.

Schools and clinics in many Aboriginal homelands and outstations are likely to close under proposed changes announced by the Northern Territory government on May 20.

Despite some new health spending on infrastructure and research, the recent budget failed to address the growing public health care crisis.

A three month long industrial dispute at the West Gate Bridge strengthening project in Melbourne has ended. Unions and construction giant John Holland reached a settlement on May 15.

“One hundred percent renewable energy in Australia by 2020!” That was the bold call endorsed by members of more than 150 climate action groups at the Climate Action Summit held in Canberra in January.

On May 10, federal treasurer Wayne Swan announced that Australia will finally join the overwhelming majority of developed countries in implementing a national paid parental leave scheme. But the plan falls way short of what women need.

Two hundred people protested at Parliament House on May 6 against the Victorian government’s proposed solar feed-in tariff legislation.

More than 100 members of the Australian-Afghan community and supporters protested in front of Parliament House and the Afghan embassy in Canberra on May 12.

In a new lease deal proposed by Aboriginal affairs minister Jenny Macklin in early May, Aboriginal people in Alice Springs town camps could lose control over their housing.

On May 11, ABC’s Four Corners screened an interview with a young woman from New Zealand. She recounted an alleged 2002 sexual assault in a Christchurch hotel room by at least 12 players and staff from the Cronulla Sharks.

Since the global economic crisis began, there has been a sharp fall in global demand for steel, resulting in more competition between steel makers.

The federal Labor government’s pre-election promise to abolish anti-worker Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) has once again been exposed as a lie.

“Integral fast reactors” and other “fourth generation” nuclear power concepts have been gaining attention, in part because of comments by US climate scientist James Hansen.

Melbourne-based climate activist Pablo Brait sent the letter below to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) on May 5.

This is an abridged version of the speech given to the Wollongong May Day march on May 2 by Fred Moore.

Green Left Weekly spoke to Fremantle by-election candidates Adele Carles (WA Greens) and Sam Wainwright (Socialist Alliance) to ask what they hoped to achieve through their election campaigns

The Kimberley Land Council has made a controversial in-principle agreement with Woodside Petroleum and the federal and WA state governments to develop a liquefied natural gas project at James Price Point near Broome.

On March 21, Anna Bligh’s election victory night, she answered a question from a journalist about how it felt to be the first female premier to be elected in Australia. She suggested the snide remarks made when she was a young woman, about Queensland being a “backward” state, could now be laid to rest.

In an act of peaceful civil disobedience, more than 500 Tamils occupied George Street in Sydney’s CBD for more than an hour. The May 1 action protested the genocide being carried out by the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil people in the north and east of the country.

The successful April 18 “Stop the Sell-Offs!” public meeting of the Sydney Power to the People coalition (pictured) gave the campaign against the privatisation of NSW public services a strong boost.

Blacktown ALP NSW MP Paul Gibson has openly urged Premier Nathan Rees to make public transport free.