An Aboriginal protest march is being planned for March 28 to take up issues such as the government’s miserly stolen wages offer and the proposed deal that would extinguish Nyoongar native title in south west Western Australia.
Australia
The recently released independent Gonski review into school funding reaffirms what many teachers and parents already knew. Current school funding arrangements are dysfunctional and inequitable and the failure to reform the way we resource our public schools has come at an immense social and economic cost.
Gonski’s recommendations are far from perfect and recommend continued public funding of elite private schools. But they do highlight the need for an immediate injection of funds into public schools.
The problem
Newly appointed foreign minister Bob Carr said in a January blog post: “As [NSW] Premier, I never saw a demonstration that didn’t hurt the side that mounted it. And I was never persuaded by a noisy crowd with a few placards.”
But on March 2, the same week he was appointed, the federal government gave a powerful confirmation of the power of protests.
Stop CSG Illawarra released the statement below on March 16.
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Thursday March 15 2012 was a big day for the coal seam gas (CSG) issue in our state parliament.
In the morning a motion was put to the NSW Upper House by Jeremy Buckingham of the Greens — to place a moratorium on all CSG projects in the state, other than the Camden production field.
Bob Katter’s homophobia is abhorrent, says socialist candidate
The Socialist Alliance Queensland released the statement below on March 15.
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Liam Flenady, Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of South Brisbane in the March 24 Queensland elections, has slammed the TV ad by Bob Katter's Australian Party (KAP) that attacked Liberal National Party (LNP) leader Campbell Newman over the equal marriage issue. "The advert is homophobic and abhorrent to all decent human values," Flenady said.
Beattheblockade.org released the statement below on March 16. * * * Today marks the launch of “Beat the Blockade” — a day of action on April 5 to protest the extrajudicial financial blockade of WikiLeaks and raise vital funds for its work to continue.
Over 200 people attended a coal seam gas community forum in Oakdale on March 11, packing out the Workers’ Club. Local residents organised the meeting to tell the community about CSG development in their suburb.
The Refugee Action Collective Victoria released the statement below on March 15.
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Independent MP Rob Oakeshott is attempting to get legislation through parliament that will allow asylum seekers to be sent to third countries for processing. Oakeshott has called on both major parties to support his bill.
The Refugee Action Collective (RAC) has condemned Oakeshott’s bill as being anti-humanitarian and an attempt to circumvent the High Court ruling last year that said the Malaysian refugee swap deal was illegal.
Forest Rescue released the statement below on March 14.
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Forest Rescue has been waging a non violent direct action battle with the Western Australia state government’s Forest Products Commission (FPC) in order to secure the last remaining numbat habitat in the southwest — the Warrup Forest near Bridgetown in WA.
The forest is one of the last remaining intact colonies of the numbat, of which less than a thousand remain in the wild. The numbat was originally found across the whole of southern Australia.
Kurdish protesters in Melbourne went on a 48-hour hunger strike on March 12 in support of Kurdish political prisoner and leader, Abdullah Ocalan. They said they also sought to increase awareness about the need to find a peaceful solution to the Turkish government’s oppression of Kurds.
The Melbourne Kurdish Association said: “On February 15, 2012, 400 Kurdish political prisoners went on an indefinite and non-alternate hunger strike in prisons across Turkey and Kurdistan. In recent times another 400 prisoners joined these indefinite hunger strikes, making a total number of 800.
Green Left Weekly’s Keith Westbrook visited Matagarup (Heirrison Island) in Perth on March 13 to talk to the Aboriginal protesters at the Nyoongar Tent Embassy about their fight for sovereignty and their campaign against the state Coalition government’s plan to extinguish native title rights in the southwest of Western Australia.
Tent Embassy spokesperson Greg Martin’s comments are below.
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