Australia

The Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA) and the Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition released the statement below on September 9. * * *

Activists from the Refugee Rights Action Network WA and the WA Network for Human Rights in Tamil Eelam and Sri Lanka protested outside the Perth office of deputy opposition leader Julie Bishop on September 7.

In a remote part of Western Australia, on the Burrup peninsula near Karratha, is one of the world’s oldest and most important cultural sites. It is the world’s largest collection of rock art, dotted over an area covering 42 adjacent islands, and it is under threat from unchecked industrial development.
Much of my understanding of the issues facing Aboriginal Australians comes from my experience of living and working with Aboriginal people who still speak their own languages at home and live largely on their own land or on communities close to their traditional lands. It’s important to remember that these populations are a minority among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today. So at one level, my focus may seem largely irrelevant to the situations and struggles of the vast majority of Aboriginal people.
Activists from the Refugee Rights Action Network WA and the WA Network for Human Rights in Tamil Eelam and Sri Lanka protested outside the Perth office of deputy opposition leader Julie Bishop on September 7. Activists protested Julie Bishop in response to her comments that Tamils who have fled Sri Lanka should be sent back there without having their refugee claims assessed.
In richest-woman-in-the-world Gina Rinehart's twisted moral universe, workers in Australia need to work harder for less to compete with African mine workers (including an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 child miners in West Africa) who slave for $2 a day. She says that's what competition in the “global market” dictates.
Fewer than 50 Hazara refugees from Afghanistan survived when a refugee boat sank en route to Australia on August 29. Amid the tragedy and horror, Australian politicians have stormed and blustered over so-called people smugglers selling refugees “a ticket to the bottom of the sea”.
Shorten 'shamed' over Centrelink job cuts Workplace relations minister Bill Shorten faced cries of “shame” from union delegates on August 29, when he tried to score political points by praising workers his government had just sacked. At the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) annual leaders conference in Sydney, Shorten commended Centrelink social workers for supporting grieving families following the 2009 Victorian bushfires and last year's Queensland floods.
The Liberal-National Party government announced a swathe of new job cuts on September 7 before its first budget on September 11. Queensland Health has been the latest victim, with 2700 jobs set to be dusted. This has again outed Premier Campbell Newman as a fraud and cheat. His previous claims that regional centres would not bear the brunt of his public sector pruning and that front line services would be off limits have been rendered meaningless. The September 3 Townsville Bulletin said the city had suffered 550 job losses since Newman came to power.
The Grocon dispute with the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) at the Myer Emporium site in Melbourne’s CBD ended on September 6 so that talks could resume in the coming week. Grocon owner Daniel Grollo approached the CFMEU about lifting the protests outside Myer and five other Grocon sites so there could be a return to talks under the conditions of a settlement reached with Fair Work Australia. Since police first attacked the protest on August 28, there have been daily mobilisations of 600 to 3000 building workers at the site each morning.
The Sydney Socialist Alliance released the statement below on September 7. * * * “Brad Hazzard, minister for planning and infrastructure, is stepping up the state government’s support for coal seam gas approvals”, said Pip Hinman, a Socialist Alliance candidate for Wali (north) ward in Marrickville council.