Independent filmmaker and anti-fracking activist Zeb Parkes has been fined $500 by the City of Perth for taking part in a rally against gas fracking on April 21. Parkes intends to defend the matter in court rather than pay the fines.
Australia
After the riveting TV that was Nick Minchin assembling his crew of climate deni... ah, sceptics to take on the stifling orthodoxy that is the mere theory of human-caused global warming, the ABC is going to continue its dedication to balance with a new show called “I can change your mind on the Holocaust”.
A Holocaust believer will travel the world with a Holocaust sceptic, assembling arguments for and against, in a bid to change the other one's mind on the theory that millions of people perished in a Nazi-organised genocide.
Students and staff at the University of Sydney ramped up the campaign against management's proposed staff cuts last week, after management ignored a deadline set by the rally and occupation on April 4 to withdraw the cuts by the end of the Easter break.
Four hundred students rallied on the university's front lawns on April 24. Students from more than eight classes walked out to join the rally. In one case, a lecturer emailed her students in advance to tell them to walk out of their class and join the protest.
Nineteen Palestine solidarity protesters face court on May 1 for their involvement in a protest on July 1 last year in support of Palestine.
At the July 1 protest outside a Max Brenner chocolate store, the police ran wild, viciously attacking peaceful protesters.
Max Brenner is owned by Israeli conglomerate the Strauss Group, a company that provides “care rations” for the Israeli military forces in occupied Palestine, including the Golani and Givati brigades.
Queensland public service union Together has called a stopwork rally on May 1 over the new Liberal National Party (LNP) government's threat of forced retrenchments.
ABC Online said on April 25, Together had launched a new campaign to give workers a voice in the government's “restructure of departments”.
The ABC reported that Together secretary Alex Scott said the LNP had said before the election there would be no forced retrenchments.
More than 1000 building unionists rallied in Emma Miller Place on April 27 to mark International Workers' Memorial Day. Protests and commemorations also took place on the same day in Canberra, Melbourne and Perth, and on April 28 in Sydney and Adelaide.
Organised by the building unions and the Queensland Council of Unions, the Brisbane action was billed as a time to “remember those who have been injured or killed at or through their work and to renew our commitment to fight for the living”.
Australia’s shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, has declared to the world his crusade against entitlements. He argues the “age of entitlement” in the West must be brought to an end by governments winding back the role of the state. Absent this measure, the West will not stay economically competitive in the Asian century.
By entitlements, Hockey means welfare spending — the system of income transfers designed to distribute income to achieve such things as social security.
The Wilderness Society released the statement below on April 27.
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Koalas must be included on the national threatened species list as part of Environment Minister Tony Burke’s 30 April announcement, especially in NSW’s Gunnedah region and the Pilliga Forest where they face the additional threat of expanding coal mining and coal seam gas operations, according to the Wilderness Society.
This article is republished from Overland magazine.
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Anzac Day celebrates forgetting.
Its revival, the transformation of a ceremony nearly extinct in the 1980s into today’s turbocharged festival, coincides with the excision from national consciousness of the most important aspects of the Great War.
The immigration department ordered 22 asylum seekers be taken to Sydney’s Silverwater jail after protests in Villawood detention centre last Easter. But the department did not keep a complete record and failed to follow its own procedures or visit the detainees within the 24 hours required.
On the advice of federal police, the Iranian and Kurdish asylum seekers were forced out of Villawood in the early hours of April 22 last year, accused of being the “ring leaders” of the spate of protests that took place over the Easter weekend.
The Injured Workers Support Network released the statement below on April 22.
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The Injured Workers Support Group met in Bathurst with a key agenda item being the announcement of an inquiry into the NSW workers compensation scheme by the Barry O’Farrell NSW government.
Injured and ill workers voiced their concerns about Premier O’Farrell’s recent announcement to “reform” the workers compensation system in NSW.
Under the theme "Racism has got to go!", Aboriginal protesters and supporters held a rally against police violence outside the Queensland parliament on April 24.
About 70 people attended the rally, which coincided with the Sydney march against police assaults on Black youth in that city.
Speakers at the Brisbane rally expressed solidarity with the Aboriginal community in Sydney and said similar police racism was rife in Queensland.
One activist said police had provoked him many times in the past and taunted him to fight them.
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