Kerry Smith

Fifty-three members out of SYRIZA's 201-strong central committee, have resigned on August 26 in protest at the new bail-out deal SYRIZA signed that agrees to the type of brutal austerity measures SYRIZA was elected in January to oppose, Enikos.gr said that day. Most have joined the Popular Unity movement, supported by former members of SYRIZA's Left Platform that will run on an anti-austerity platform in new elections called when SYRIZA Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resigned recently.

A plan to swamp Melbourne’s CBD with Australian Border Force officials, police and transport officers to check the visa status of “any individual we cross paths with” was cancelled before it began following sustained criticism of the operation from politicians, unions, Melbourne city council, human rights lawyers and the people of Victoria.

Australian condom and rubber glove maker Ansell is engaged in some aggressive union busting in Sri Lanka. It has sacked about 300 poor mainly women workers who are fighting for the right to strike in one of Sri Lanka's so called Free Trade Zones. Workers gathered outside Ansell’s Melbourne headquarters on August 25 to demand Ansell reinstate the sacked workers and recognise workers' right to organise. Sri Lankan unionist Anton Marcus, who addressed the rally in defence of the sacked workers, said the workers had wanted nothing more than the right to negotiate through their union.

Fears are growing for the health of a 23-year-old Iranian asylum seeker on Nauru who has been flown to Australia for medical treatment. Nazinan was allegedly raped in May while on day release in the community from the detention centre.

More than 100 unionists rallied in freezing conditions outside the ACT Magistrates Court on August 5 in support of Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) official John Lomax. Lomax was charged with blackmail last month in relation to evidence given to the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. He pleaded not guilty. The charges follow the arrest of former CFMEU organiser Fihi Kivalu on blackmail charges following allegations that he demanded bribes from ACT builders to secure them work.

The Wilderness Society has obtained documents under freedom of information that show that the Tasmanian government is driving the endangered Swift Parrot to extinction. Last year the Tasmanian government quietly changed its rules to allow the parrot’s breeding habitat to be destroyed by logging. They also withdrew from the Swift Parrot Recovery Team, the national multi-agency expert group tasked with saving the species. The documents also show that federal environment minister Greg Hunt has repeatedly refused to act to protect one of Australia’s most endangered animals.

Clearfelling old growth forest in Tasmania. Previously destroyed for woodchips, native forests are now in danger of being burned to create electricity. Reports that the owner of Victoria’s Hazelwood coal power station, GDF Suez, has been considering plans to convert it into a co-firing facility, allowing it to burn native forest waste as well as brown coal, have been slammed by environmentalists.

Tropical storms are increasing in frequency and strength. City of Tacloban, Leyte, Philippines, after Super Typhoon Yolanda, the strongest tropical storm to make landfall in history, struck in November 2013. Photo: Partido Lakas ng Masa.

Doctors, nurses and their supporters protested on July 11 and 12 around Australia against the Border Force Act. The protests, organised by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War and Doctors Against the Border Force Act, were held in Darwin, Broome, Coffs Harbour, Adelaide, Bendigo, Melbourne and Sydney. Earlier in the week an open letter from 40 current detention centre workers said they would defy the Border Force Act was published.

As part of Peace Convergence 2015, three “Quaker Grannies for Peace” set up a tea table on July 13, blocking the access road to Queensland's Samuel Hill military base, which is being used for the Talisman Sabre military exercises.

On July 4, federal environment minister Greg Hunt approved the Shenhua Watermark coalmine in the Liverpool Plains in north-west NSW. It will turn 35 square km of prime agricultural land into a giant hole, contaminate aquifers and, as the July 8 Sydney Morning Herald said, “is expected to destroy 789 hectares of an endangered ecological community, much of it box-gum woodland, and 148 hectares of other woods”. The mine will also destroy 800 hectares of koala habitat, condemning the local koala population to extinction.

Protesters in Sydney marked the eighth anniversary of the Northern Territory Intervention — renamed Stronger Futures — with a rally at Town Hall and march to the Block in Redfern on June 21. Speakers at the protest included Ken Canning, Albert Hartnett, Eva Cox, Gerry Georgatos and Kyol Blakeney.