The National Welfare Rights Network released the statement below on May 9.
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“The nation’s budget is now in the black but unfortunately more single parent families are in the red,” said Maree O’Halloran, President of the National Welfare Rights Network today in a preliminary response to the May 8 federal budget.
“There are some small but significant gains in the budget for people made redundant and for those currently looking for work, studying or/and caring for children.
Australia
Activists in the biggest staff-student campaign to defend education seen in Australia for decades have won a partial victory against an attempt by the University of Sydney administration to cut hundreds of teaching and non-teaching jobs.
The immediate job cuts have been reduced to 23 under pressure from the campaign. But staff and students are keeping up the fight. The photos below are of a rally and march of 500 people held on May 7, during which the administration called in the police and riot squad.
The Bring Back the Buses Action Group released the statement below on May 7.
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A quiet street in Melbourne northern suburb Mill Park is to be the scene of an angry protest against the Baillieu government’s recent cuts to bus services.
Rail link bus route 571 and Northlands-Greensborough bus route 563 were axed in a large scale northern suburbs bus restructure, which coincided with the opening of South Morang Station last month. A further six buses were re-routed, many of which now terminate at the new South Morang rail-bus interchange.
It used to be that when you got a job, it was a job you could count on. Over the past 30 years, that's been changing. More and more workers feel insecure in their job. The National Union of Workers' campaign aims to reverse this trend.
May Day was celebrated in Adelaide on Saturday May 5 with a march through the city streets.
A sizable Left Unity block marched down together from the Adelaide Activist Centre. They marched under a Left Unity banner, but also carried individual banners representing the participating groups.
The Left Unity contingent included Socialist Alliance, Resistance, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) Adelaide branch, along with other independent members of the left.
Western Saharan human rights campaigner Malak Amidane is touring Australia in May to raise awareness of the brutal occupation of her homeland.
As part of savage budget cuts, the Victorian Coalition government has slashed $300 million over four years of funding for the provider of public technical and further education, the state’s 18 TAFE institutes that teach about 400,000 students a year.
Funding per student in 80% of courses has been cut from about $8 per training hour to as low as $1.50 - to a range meant to reflect labour market priorities.
Trades apprenticeships, aged care and child care received some small increases.
It would not come as a surprise to many activists, but a little of the close relationship between police and commercial interests has been revealed in the trial of 16 activists charged for taking part in a Palestine solidarity protest outside the Max Brenner chocolate shop in QV shopping centre in Melbourne’s CBD. The trial began on May 1 and is scheduled to last for two weeks.
The Ballroom at Melbourne Trades Hall was packed with about 130 people on May 4 for a public forum titled “Protest on Trial”. The event sought to build support for the “Max Brenner 19” — Palestine solidarity activists on trial for taking part in a protest outside a Melbourne Max Brenner chocolate shop last year.
Speakers at the forum drew links between the violent attacks on Occupy Melbourne last year and the police repression of peaceful Palestine protesters outside Max Brenner.
Jackie Kriz, an Australian Nurses Federation delegate from Geelong, will be the special guest speaker at Sydney’s annual Green Left Weekly May Day dinner, where she will share her experiences of the Victorian nurses’ remarkable victorious campaign and some of the lessons we can learn from it.
In his excellent discussion piece in the lead up to the recent Climate Action Summit in Sydney, climate activist David Spratt concluded: “The problem is now so big, and the scale and urgency of the solutions required so great, that it is impossible to talk about them within the current public policy frame.
“The business and political spheres have horizons too narrow and too limited in time to be able to deal with the challenges and complexities of global warming.”
It can seem like there is nothing but bad news in this country sometimes. Corporations are shedding jobs, governments are slashing spending and Essendon went down to Collingwood by one fucking point on ANZAC Day.
So, it gives me great pleasure to be able to welcome a positive step to finally bring some honesty into the bastard world of Australian politics.
Yes, billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer has announced he will seek Liberal National Party pre-selection to challenge Treasurer Wayne Swan for the Queensland seat of Lilley.
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