The Australian Labor Party (ALP) in Queensland is in its deepest crisis in its 120-year history following the disastrous defeat in the state elections on March 24. A swing of more than 15% to the Liberal-National Party (LNP) has resulted in the Queensland ALP's record lowest primary vote of 26.5%.
Labor is likely to win seven, or at most eight, seats in Queensland’s parliament of 89. The LNP will take 77 or 78. This is a worse position for the ALP than the Joh Bjelke-Petersen regime's high point in 1974, when Queensland Labor was reduced to 11 seats.
Australia
After gaining a huge majority in the Queensland parliament, the new Liberal National Party (LNP) government is preparing its assault on unions, the public service and the environment.
Newly elected Premier Campbell Newman wasted no time in showing his intentions to escalate the neoliberal offensive, already started by the defeated Anna Bligh Labor government. He began by appointing leading Liberal Party honchos to key bureaucratic jobs in the administration.
The day after the Queensland election was a very dark day for the state. The unprecedented swing to the Liberal National Party (LNP) will mean huge cuts to the public sector and brutal attacks on unions.
It will mean increased environmental degradation and unnecessary, destructive development. It will mean dangerous coal seam gas will spread further across the state and coal production will rise even though Australia is already the biggest exporter in the world.
It will mean the ruin of Gladstone harbour due to dredging carried out to benefit the fossil fuel industry.
Like many single parents, Helen Said and Ewen Kloas have spent years fighting their way out of the casual labour poverty trap to rebuild their lives and provide for their families.
Anti-war activists gathered outside a VIP breakfast briefing of visiting Israeli military advisor, Yaakov Katz, on March 28 to condemn his support for an Israeli strike on Iran. The breakfast, which included a lot of Israeli security people with cameras, was organised by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies.
Katz, a former commando in the Israeli Defence force, has written extensively on Iran and is in Sydney to promote the Israeli government’s view that a military strike on Iran would be a “viable military option”.
Beyond Zero Emissions released the statement below on March 28.
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A new WorleyParsons report states that gas plants can have higher emissions than even the worst coal plants, but underestimates the problem by relying on misleading assumptions.
This article was originally posted at Left Flank on March 26.
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When watching the last few episodes of US cable TV series The Walking Dead, it struck me that the title has a double meaning, that Sheriff Rick and the other survivors of the zombie apocalypse are also among the dead who roam the planet’s surface.
LIVE BLOG Sunday March 25
Green Left Weekly is reporting live from the Coal Seam Gas Community Conference at Wollongong Town Hall on March 25.
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For more than 100 days, Miranda Gibson kept a 24-hour vigil 60 metres up a gum tree. Dubbed the ObserverTree, it is in Tasmania's logging coupe TN044B, whose steeply forested slopes have been earmarked for cable logging.
The tree is in an area that is being assessed for reserve status under the Tasmania forestry peace deal. From the platform, Gibson can see areas of clearfelled forest around her.
After three weeks of action, warehouse workers at the Sigma pharmaceutical Melbourne plant returned to work on March 21. Workers fended off attempts by the company to abolish afternoon and night shift loadings. They also won a 4% pay rise.
The workers, members of the National Union of Workers at the Rowville plant in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs, had rarely been on strike.
The Tasmanian and federal governments signed an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) last August that promised immediate protection for 430,000 hectares of high conservation value forest.
But it also agreed to continue supplying the industry hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of sawlogs and veneer peeler logs. The agreement included more than $250 million in finance to restructure the timber industry.
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