With a clearly nervous David Hicks in front of a packed audience of 1000 people at the Sydney Writers' Festival on May 22, his interviewer Donna Mulhearn did a great job in breaking the ice. “Is it true that Channel 7,” she said, as we were all waiting for the hard political question, “asked you to go on ‘Dancing with the Stars’?”
Apparently it is true.
Australia
Climate scientist Will Steffen told reporters at the May 23 launch of The Critical Decade — the first report from the federal government-appointed Climate Commission — that “we don’t have the luxury anymore of climate denialism” and “need to get beyond this fruitless, phoney debate in the media”.
And straight away, the Coalition began a fruitless, phoney debate about the report in the media.
Bob Gould was a veteran of the labour left in Australia. He died on May 22, at the age of 74, of injuries suffered after a fall in his well-known bookshop, Gould's Book Arcade, in Newtown, Sydney.
He had been unwell for some time, but his accidental death was untimely.
Gould was a member of the early Australian Trotskyist group active in the 1950s and 1960s, along with Nick Origlass and others, who fought for socialist politics within the Australian Labor Party and against the Stalinism of the Communist Party of Australia.
The crowd at Harry Black’s funeral, on May 23, filled the South Chapel in Rookwood Garden Cemetery, the overflow room and the upstairs gallery. Family, comrades, wharfies, seafarers and even a few old fellow soldiers from World War II were there to say goodbye.
It was a fitting reflection on the life of a treasured comrade.
Harry was born in Rylstone, NSW, the son of a butcher in a small rural town, said Jim Donovan, the president of the Retired Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) Members, in his eulogy at the funeral.
Thirty people marched from the Stirling Gardens to parliament house on May 17 to protest the state governments plans to remove homeless people from the city centre for three days during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
Protesters were angry about the fact that $9 million dollars had been earmarked for the refurbishment of Frasers Restaurant in Kings Park for a CHOGM leaders social function. In addition, tens of millions of dollars have been allocated to refurbish ministerial offices.
Meanwhile, 55,000 people are on the Homeswest waiting list for public housing.
Many people have heard of the mess the government & Lend Lease are up to at Barangaroo, but little has yet to be made public on a similar development for the Gosford Waterfront Landing.
The General Manager of the Central Coast Regional Development Corporation Brett Phillips says the “CCRDC is indicating high end uses for the site along the lines of commercial office space, high end tourism and business related facilities and performing arts”.
Three Australian activists will take part in the Freedom Flotilla 2, the successor to the first Freedom Flotilla to Gaza in May 2010 that was brutally attacked in international waters by Israeli commandos.
Green Left Weekly’s Pip Hinman asked former NSW Greens parliamentarian Sylvia Hale why she has joined the Australian contingent on the flotilla.
* * *
“No trade with apartheid Israel” was the main theme of a protest outside the “Water Solutions for the Coal Seam Gas Industry Breakfast”, held at Brisbane's Sofitel Hotel on May 18.
A trade delegation from Israel was hosted at the breakfast, sponsored by the Australian Israel Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland.
The protest, organised by Justice for Palestine Brisbane, attracted about 20 people who held placards supporting Palestinian rights and calling for Australia to impose economic sanctions against Israel.
Despite some targeted increases in funding in the area of health and disability, the Labor government’s 2011 budget leaves Australians worse off.
The increased funding for mental health has been widely welcomed and is a result of a long, concerted public campaign. Over five years, $2.2 billion in mental health spending was identified with a focus on early intervention programs, as well as social and employment participation strategies.
Multicultural organisations, however, have criticised the absence of funding for the multicultural community.
In its point-scoring endeavour to restore the budget to a surplus by 2012-13, Julia Gillard’s Labor government has decided to target the most vulnerable and needy in society.
Instead of targeting the high end of town and the corporate elite a punitive approach was chosen.
The budget deficit for 2011-12 is estimated to be $22.6 billion or 1.5% of gross domestic product. This compares with an estimated $49.4 billion deficit in this financial year, 2010-11. The budget is expected to return to surplus by $3.5 bilion in 2012-13.
Our society is heading in the wrong direction. According to a new “Australia’s Electricity Generation Mix 1960-2009” report commissioned by Environment Victoria, the proportion of Australia’s electricity generated by renewable energy has fallen from 19% in 1960 to 7% in 2008.
Because Australia today generates 10 times the amount of electricity as it did in 1960, coal-fired electricity generation has increased by more than 1200%.
The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) and the Socialist Alliance issued the joint statement below on May 19.
* *
The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) and the Socialist Alliance in Australia denounce the recent agreement made between the governments of Malaysia and Australia, whereby Australia will send 800 asylum seekers who have been detained by Australian authorities to Malaysia in exchange for 4000 refugees currently in Malaysia.
- Previous page
- Page 826
- Next page