Comment and Analysis

PM Kevin Rudd used potentially rising inflation and interest rates as the excuse for the federal government's economic plan, announced on January 21. Those hoping that the ALP's pre-election promise of an ``economically conservative’‘ government was just election hype will be disappointed. It could be straight from the former Coalition government's economics bible.

In October 2007, with the federal election looming, and global warming generating a lot of tepid air in parliaments around the country, a diverse group of people in Adelaide established the Eco-socialist Network to attempt to generate more serious discussion of environmental issues. Green Left Weekly’s Leslie Richmond spoke to John Rice, activist, socialist, Greens member and one of the initiators of the network.

A group of Australian writers, academics, NGO workers and activists have written an open letter to incoming Prime Minister Kevin Rudd calling for Australia to increase its development assistance to East Timor (see above).

Prime Minister of Australia Mr Kevin Rudd, MHR [also to other ministers] January 2008

Dear Prime Minister
Re: Australian and Cuban education assistance to Timor Leste

We the following academics, writers, organisations and NGO workers observe these developments, on education assistance to Timor Leste:

One of the 60 companies currently holding uranium exploration licences in South Australia, Marathon Resources, has admitted it’s investigating how 50-60 garbage bags containing what’s thought to be uranium tailings were dumped in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in the Flinders Ranges.

On January 22, 1973, abortion was made legal in the US when the Supreme Court overturned a Texas interpretation of abortion law. The decision in the case known as Roe v Wade overrode state laws limiting women’s access to abortion during the first trimester — finding that they infringed upon women’s constitutional rights. While laws still remain on the books banning abortion in some US states, Roe v Wade prevents the enforcement of these laws.

The following statement was issued on January 25 by Brisbane Indigenous community leader and Socialist Alliance member Sam Watson for the January 26 Invasion Day commemorations.

Although 80% of current revenue from BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine in South Australia comes from minerals other than uranium, recent drilling has shown that the site is home to the largest ore body of uranium in the world.

The Australian Education Union has called for a $2.9 billion investment into public education in order to support literacy and numeracy strategies. The AEU has called on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to make this the first step in his so called “Education Revolution”.

On January 9, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission released its report into mainland immigration detention facilities, based on HREOC visits to detention centres in August and November. The report noted a number of improvements in the system of immigration detention. However, there was yet another death in detention just days after the report was released.