After recent threats to thousands of jobs in the aluminium, car and banking industries, Green Left Weekly spoke to Geelong Trades Hall secretary Tim Gooden about strategies to fight the job cuts.
“Alcoa says 600 jobs are in danger, but there are 3500 more hanging off that,” Gooden told GLW.
“If they close Point Henry [aluminium] smelter, it will hit the rolled products, and then the companies that use the rolled products.
Australia
Liberal backbenchers will have a “conscience vote” when a proposal for marriage equality is put to parliament. This puts the equality campaign closer to victory in Australia than it has ever been before.
Members of the shadow cabinet, including junior frontbenchers, will still be required to maintain the party position, which will be decided unilaterally by Liberal leader Tony Abbott, and therefore bound to vote against marriage equality.
A string of banks, airlines, car manufacturers and aluminium smelters — all big corporations that have profited for years while extorting billions of dollars in public subsidies — have spat in the face of our society.
They have begun huge sackings of workers, even though Australia supposedly escaped the worst of capitalism’s global economic crisis. The big banks have posted record profits, but they refuse to pass on interest rate cuts to families struggling to keep up with huge home mortgages.
In September last year, the coal seam gas (CSG) industry launched a multimillion dollar advertising campaign called “We want CSG”. It is sponsored by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) — the peak national body for oil and gas exploration — which represents companies such as Shell, Santos, Origin Energy, British Gas, AGL, PetroChina and ConocoPhillips.
Just three chance encounters have led to a Sierra Leonean family’s reunion in Australia.
With a bit more luck the whole family will be reunited this year.
On January 6, 1999, Mary Fonah was a nurse working at a government hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Her husband, a doctor, phoned to say the rebels had reached Freetown. He would shortly collect Mary from the hospital after picking up their children.
“Plans for a new naval base in Brisbane should be rejected out of hand,” Liam Flenady, Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of South Brisbane in the upcoming Queensland state elections, said on February 17.
Flenady was responding to a statement in the February 14 South-East Advertiser by a local business leader advocating that a new naval base should be established at the Bulimba Military Barracks, on the banks of the Brisbane River.
Twenty-four hours of global action to protest against the ongoing logging of Tasmanian forests took place on February 15. The article below first appeared on the Observer Tree blog on February 16.
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An incredible show of worldwide support led to more than 70 actions across 14 countries in 24 hours calling for an end to the destruction of Tasmania's forests.
A Nyoongar Tent Embassy was established on Perth’s Heirisson Island on February 12 after the state government proposed to extinguish Nyoongar native title. The protesters made an urgent call for support after Perth City Council made its second threat to close the embassy down on February 17. Many of those taking a leading role in the Embassy are local Aboriginal activists recently returned from the 40-year commemoration of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra.
Adelaide has a new social movement in town, yet with a familiar name: Occupy.
The Occupy movement has been criticised for its lack of focus and demands, yet in Adelaide there is a clear focus for direct action: Rupert Murdoch.
Hence the name: Occupy Murdoch.
Occupy Murdoch specifically focuses on corporate controlled media, especially News Corporation. Adelaide's daily tabloid The Advertiser is a Murdoch paper that publishes rubbish dressed up as “news” to distract people and supports specific political interests.
At the beginning of the year, Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH), the Sydney-based grassroots lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) campaign organisation, elected three new office-bearers.
CAAH initiated national days of action for marriage rights rallies in 2006, has played a key role in equal marriage and queer refugee rights campaigning, and has supported trans and intersex rights struggles and mobilisations.
Socialist Alliance candidates for the upcoming Queensland state elections, Liam Flenady (South Brisbane), and Mike Crook (Sandgate), organised a rally in Brisbane on February 17 to “protest the rampant greed of the big banks”.
Protesters outside the ANZ Bank state head office in Queen Street held placards, handed out leaflets to passersby and chanted, "No to the big bank rip-off!" and "shame, shame, ANZ!"
About 150 people attended a February 13 forum “Smuggled to Freedom” to hear SBS sports commentator Les Murray tell his family’s story of trying to escape political persecution in Hungary in 1956.
He recently returned to find “Julius”, the so-called people smuggler who helped them cross the border to Austria. He said Julius was an unrecognised hero who helped countless families, despite the risk of the death penalty.
“We demonise people who don’t deserve it,” Murray said. “My smuggler was no demon.”
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