About 500 Toll warehouse workers at Somerton in Melbourne’s northern suburbs have voted for an indefinite strike in their campaign for a new enterprise bargaining agreement.
The warehouse is a Coles distribution centre, but Coles outsources the workers to Toll Logistics. This has resulted in workers getting up to 20% less pay than other Coles warehouse workers.
Australia
Labor and Coalition MPs have shed thousands of crocodile tears claiming that Australia needed to “stop the boats” to “save lives” by making offshore processing of asylum seekers government policy.
Labor backed a private members bill put by independent MP Rob Oakeshott that would allow Australia to expel refugees to any country that was part of the Bali Process, including Malaysia.
In 2006, Alternet's Joshua Holland coined the “zombie lie”: an untruth that returns from the dead to haunt us, despite already being demolished by arguments and evidence.
Politics is dominated by zombie lies. “Asylum seekers are 'queue jumpers' arriving here illegally” is a classic example. Over the past few decades, zombie lies have helped legitimise paternalistic, punitive welfare reforms. They still shape debates about how to treat poor and unemployed Australians.
Socialist Alliance National co-convener Peter Boyle spoke alongside NSW Greens MLC John Kaye at the opening session of Green Left Weekly’s Climate Change Social Change conference in Parramatta on June 30. His speech is below.
* * *
I want to dedicate this little presentation to our Pakistani comrade Baba Jan — who has been imprisoned and tortured since August last year for standing up for the rights of his people from the Hunza Valley after their villages and farmlands were flooded in 2010.
A Senate committee recommended on June 25 that Australian parliament make marriage equality law after almost 60% of 46,000 submissions were in favour. A report tabled for the lower house on June 18 also had overwhelming support, but did not support or reject the two marriage equality bills before parliament.
The lower house committee received a record 276,000 responses during its inquiry, with more than two-thirds in support of gay marriage.
The Lock the Gate Alliance released the statement below on July 6.
* * *
Coal seam gas companies are 'getting away with blue murder' despite mounting evidence from around the country of the environmental damage they are causing, according to Lock the Gate Alliance.
Lock The Gate has responded with dismay to news today that Santos and Eastern Star Gas have been fined only $3,000 for breaking environment laws in the Pilliga forest by polluting a local creek system with coal seam gas waste water.
Latest NSW gov't sackings could pass 10,000
A leaked document on the 10,000 public sector jobs flagged for cuts in last month's NSW budget may have been understating the sackings to come.
The June 12 email from a NSW Treasury official said “there is no floor or cap on redundancies”. The government on July 3 conceded the numbers were not capped, and there were no guarantees that more jobs would not be lost.
The 10,000-plus job cuts add to 5000 jobs axed in September.
Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) members, friends and supporters joined a commemoration at Granville Town Hall on June 30 for five leaders and activists who passed away in recent months.
Those remembered were Mohamed Ibrahim Nugud, the SCP general secretary from 1971 until his death; Al Tijani Al Tayeb, founding SCP member and editor of the party’s newspaper for five decades; trade union leader Min Alla Abdel Wahab; popular revolutionary singer and songwriter Mohammed Wardi; and Mohamed Al Hassan Salim Homid, a revolutionary poet.
The pending approval for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) hub at James Price Point in Broome has come under fire after four of the five Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) board members responsible for assessing the project stood aside due to conflicts of interest. Two of the EPA board members hold shares in Woodside Petroleum, the operator of the $35 billion project.
In the first construction worker rally in years, up to 10,000 workers marched through Melbourne on July 4, telling the state government to dump its new building code.
Premier Ted Baillieu’s Coalition government began to implement its Code of Practice for the Building and Construction Industry on July 1.
Unions say the new code is all about attacking unions. Building companies that fail to comply with the code on any site will be thrown off the government tender list.
National Aboriginal & Islander Day March (Melbourne, July 6, 2012). More than 600 people from all over Victoria marched to celebrate NAIDOC week.
WikiLeaks co-founder Daniel Mathews gave the speech below to a July 1 protest in Melbourne, organised by the WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance.
* * *
Thank you all for coming here today. Being a founding member of WikiLeaks, though not involved for many years now, I want to say something about the background and history of WikiLeaks and where we are today.
Some of you here today may be coming to a rally for the first time. Some of you, maybe for longer; some involved for a long time.
- Previous page
- Page 725
- Next page