Comment and analysis

Australian agriculture both contributes to climate change and is adversely affected by it. Any campaign in to force urgent government action on climate change has to include a demand for the radical transformation of rural land use and farming systems to be ecologically sustainable.

The ingredients of big-business operations in NSW were all there: a multinational tourism operator; environmental groups with varying interests; a donation to the NSW Labor Party; the apparent channelling of another donation; a local council decision overturned by the Land and Environment Court; and development approved by the then-Labor Party planning minister, Frank Sartor.

On March 16, federal immigration minister Chris Evans announced that the Rudd government would cut the skilled migration intake for the current financial year by 18,500. This, claimed Evans in a ministerial statement, would “protect local jobs”.

Soubhi Iskander is a leading member of the Sudanese Australia Human Rights Association, a committee based in Sydney’s west, that campaigns for the rights of Sudanese refugees. SAHRA is also an affiliate of the Socialist Alliance.

Write On: Letters to the editor

What paper are you reading?

Allen Myers's letter (GLW #786) said: "It would be nice to see a socialist analysis of the economic crisis in GLW."

I'm not sure what newspaper he thinks he has been reading, but it

Except for a two-year blip from 1996 to 1998, the Australian Labor Party has ruled Queensland for the past 20 years. Following 32 years of successive conservative coalition governments, Labor was elected in a landslide in 1989.

The Australian Financial Review doesn’t mince words, nor does it try to conceal reality from its readership.

With the looming downturn, the federal government expects that a further 300,000 people will be on the unemployment line by the middle of 2010. It expects that the unemployment rate will reach around 7%, around 800,000 people. Others have predicted unemployment could reach as high as 9%.

The free market has got us into this mess, and the free market will get us out of it.

On February 27, the federal government received a report on the review of the pensions system conducted by Jeff Harmer, the head of the families and community services department.

In the face of the Rudd government’s refusal to confirm whether federally-funded maternity leave will be included in the upcoming May budget, the Australian Council of Trade Unions has retreated from its previous stance calling for immediate implementation.

Government has a responsibility to restore full employment by making an “unconditional job offer” at a liveable minimum wage to all who want to work.

On February 14, Letty Marie Scott (nee Gibson) Nupanunga, of the Anmatyerre nation in Central Australia, passed away, aged 56. Letty was a lifelong campaigner for justice — especially on the issue of black deaths in custody, which touched her life indelibly.

On behalf of the Maribyrnong detainee community, we would like to gain your support as we have seen your efforts to fight for refugees’ rights and the organisation of support for asylum seekers and refugees.

One of the most prominent Murri campaigners in Brisbane, longtime social justice activist, Sam Watson, will contest Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s seat of South Brisbane at the March 21 state election. Watson is running as the candidate for the Socialist Alliance.

On February 13, Australian troops killed five children and injured at least two other adult civilians in a night-time “operation” in Afghanistan’s southern Oruzgan province.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released on February 18 showed that retail sales increased by 0.8% (seasonally adjusted) in the December quarter.

The following letter was endorsed by 300 participants at a public meeting in Sydney on February 6 and sent to federal ministers and Labor backbenchers.

The following statement is by Yingiya Guyula, a Yolngu man from North East Arnhem Land. His family is based in Millinginbi and Gapuwiyak.

Warrick Jordan is a member of the Huon Valley Environment Centre in Tasmania and is one of the Triabunna 13 (13 forest activists being sued by logging giant Gunns' Ltd). Jordan spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Susan Austin about his activities and the relationship between forests and climate change.

Green Left Weekly’s Simon Butler asked a number of activists present at Australia’s Climate Action Summit why they attended and why they thought it was so important.

The news, on February 3, that South African dock workers in Durban had decided not to unload an Israeli ship due in on February 8 was welcomed by the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), a section of which wants the union to join the international campaign of sanctions against apartheid Israel.

On February 3, the federal government launched its second economic stimulus package of $42 billion, to be spent on special grants to individuals, businesses and schools.

A multinational mining company that has been exposed for leaking uranium into Lake Ontario in North America is now exploring uranium deposits only a few kilometres from a significant Alice Springs water supply.

“People will die because of the BBC decision. Let me be clear about that. … It is capitulating to Israeli pressure”, Stop the War Coalition (StWC) president and retired Labour politician Tony Benn told BBC on January 24.

In December 2008, Green Left Weekly’s Emma Murphy and Peter Robson spoke to William Tilmouth about mandatory welfare quarantining — a feature of the federal government’s Northern Territory intervention — and its impacts on the Aboriginal town camps in Alice Springs. Tilmouth is the executive director of Tangentyere Council, the umbrella service delivery agency for the town camp Aboriginal housing associations.

Along with the sheer brutality and horror inflicted on Palestinians, the massacre in Gaza has resulted in a serious political setback for Israel. Internationally, support for the Israeli apartheid state has been weakened and Hamas’ legitimacy has skyrocketed.

If the world’s foremost scientific authority made a point of condemning what we were doing, most of us would at least pause to wonder if we were getting things right.

The December release of the federal government’s climate policy left little room for doubt. Kevin Rudd — Mr 5% — is no friend of the climate movement.

January 26 is the first Invasion Day (Australia Day) since the federal Labor government made the official apology recognising the wrongs suffered by the Stolen Generations - the Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families and lands.

Watershed Victoria is an environmental organisation dedicated to the campaign against the proposed desalination plant at Wonthaggi in Victoria, and for a sustainable water policy. Watershed’s Chris Heislers spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Katherine Bradstreet.

The Indigenous community at Mona Mona, a former mission near Kuranda, 30 kilometres west of Cairns, are continuing their remarkable four-decade-long occupation.

Green Left Weekly’s Zane Alcorn spoke to Sally Corbett, chairperson of the No Tillegra Dam group, which is seeking to have Hunter Water reverse their 2006 decision to build a dam comparable in size to Sydney Harbour near Dungog, about 90km out of Newcastle.

Isaac Shuisha, an Israeli citizen and student involved in the Palestine solidarity movement in Sydney, spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Simon Butler about the reasons behind Israel’s assault on Gaza and the campaign for a free Palestine. Shuisha is a member of the socialist youth organisation, Resistance.

Statement by the on December 31.

The media release below was released by the Socialist Alliance; on December 15. For comment, phone David 0403 871 082, or email queensland@socialist-alliance.org

Alice Springs, the heart and pulse of Australia. While that is true in terms of location, few Australians know very much about their heart.

Having ridden to power largely on the back of Australian people’s concern and anger over attacks on their rights and conditions at work, Labor have – a mere twelve months later – at last unveiled their shiny new proposed industrial relations legislation. So, what are we to make of it?

Green Left Weekly’s Zane Alcorn spoke to Sally Corbett, chairperson of the No Tillegra Dam group, which is seeking to have Hunter Water reverse their 2006 decision to build a dam comparable in size to Sydney Harbour near Dungog, about 90km out of Newcastle.

The following is abridged from George Newhouse’s speech at the November 26 opening of “ARTicles — The Human Rights Declaration”, Amnesty International Australia’s 2008 art exhibition, which celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“If these people can spend millions and millions on sending troops to fight other countries, why can’t they spend maybe a couple of billions just to save people, like ourselves; the marginalised, poorest of the poor. Why? Because we are taking the brunt, we are the victims of these green[house] gas emissions, the pollution made by industrialised countries.”

While governments worldwide push neoliberal policies including “free” markets, “free” trade (and lately “free” trillion dollar pay-outs to prop up businesses), new legislation from the Australian federal government indicates it does not want such freedoms for the population when it comes to what they may view on the internet.

For all the misery it represents for ordinary people, there is at least one positive result of the current capitalist financial crisis. The idea of nationalisation is getting an airing again in the West, however squeamish capitalist leaders and pundits may be about using the actual word.