This issue introduces a few changes that have been made to the look of Green Left Weekly. The front cover logo has been updated and the layout inside has been refreshed. This is a change we’ve been working on since last year based on feedback about how to improve the paper.
For 22 years, GLW has remained independent from corporate interests and this has allowed us to expose the lies and distortions of those in power.
Australia
Aid organisation Oxfam International said this year that the annual income of the world’s richest 100 people would be enough to end extreme poverty four times over.
It said the richest 100’s net income — rather than wealth, which is much higher — was about $240 billion last year.
Oxfam went on to make some modest demands:
The new changes to NSW planning laws proposed by the Barry O'Farrell Liberal government involve "the most significant backward step in public participation and environment protection in more than a generation. They are significantly worse than Part 3A," James Ryan from the Nature Conservation Council told a public forum of about 60 people at Redfern Town Hall on May 27.
Part 3A was the infamous law under which the previous Labor state government could override community and environmental concerns in making planning decisions in the interests of big developers.
Current political campaigns by Queensland trade unions in defence of public sector jobs, to maintain public assets or for education reform would be ruled out under a new industrial relations bill proposed by the Liberal-National government.
Should the bill pass, unions would be required to conduct a ballot of members before spending more than $10,000 on any activity that is for a political purpose. The union also has to pay for the costs of conducting the ballot.
This statement was released by the West Papua Freedom Flotilla on June 1.
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A historical ceremony was held outside the Victorian Trades Hall on June 1 for the issuing of “Original Nations” passports and West Papuan visas in conjunction with the Freedom Flotilla from Lake Eyre to West Papua.
In solidarity with the passport ceremony in Melbourne, a peaceful rally was also held in Manokwari, West Papua.
Hundreds of members of the Turkish community rallied in central Sydney on June 1 to protest the Turkish government's crackdown on peaceful protesters in Istanbul over recent days.
Australian Workers Union (AWU) leader Paul Howes has taken the offensive to bolster what he sees as a faltering unconventional gas industry. He wants the industry to step up its campaign to stop the federal Coalition and the NSW Labor opposition from “buying the arguments” of an “extremist fringe” on coal seam gas (CSG).
Liah Lazarou, 28, is standing as a youth candidate for the Socialist Alliance in the South Australian seat of Adelaide, currently held by Labor MP Kate Ellis.
She was interviewed by Resistance member Liam Conlon about why she is standing in the election and what she is trying to achieve.
How did you get involved in political activism?
I grew up in a very working class background and was raised by a single father. He took me to my first rally, which was against Pauline Hanson in 1996. I was eleven years old.
As asylum seekers face years of detention in the Nauru and Manus Island detention camps, where not a single claim has been assessed, the Australian government refuses to answer to scrutiny or calls for human rights oversight.
The ABC’s Four Corners and SBS’s Dateline have now tried to investigate the conditions inside each “regional processing centre”. The camps are believed to be abysmal, inadequate and places of widespread physical and psychological breakdown among detainees.
Coalmining company Coalpac Pty Ltd lodged a development proposal with the NSW government in July 2011 to expand its open-cut and high-wall coalmines in central western NSW.
The sites are in a proposed extension to the Gardens of Stone National Park and surround the small town of Cullen Bullen. Coalpac’s “consolidation project” involves expanding its Invincible and Cullen Valley coalmines, and building a new quarry in the Ben Bullen State Forest near Lithgow.
The federal Labor government released its “National Food Plan” on May 25. Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig said the plan is “about putting our Aussie mark on food and making sure that we all get a benefit out of it”.
Research group Beyond Zero Emissions released the statement below on May 28 in response to the plan.
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This week’s National Food Plan ignores the serious threat to agriculture posed by climate change. Yet research shows that an expanded Carbon Farming Initiative could have major benefits in combating climate change.
The NSW Liberal government passed a bill on May 30 that severely cuts compensation to victims of crime, domestic violence and abuse.
Under the old law, the 1996 Victims Support Rehabilitation Act, the maximum compensation to victims had been up to $50,000. The new Victims Rights and Support Bill has cut the maximum amount of compensation to $15,000 and only for victims who are financial dependents of murder victims.
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