Australia

  • Budget has no answers for young people

    Labor delivered its budget on May 12 in the context of Australia’s slide into recession. With the economic crisis hitting hard, young people are one of the most vulnerable groups in society.

  • West Gate Bridge dispute ends

    MELBOURNE— A 12-week industrial dispute involving workers on the West Gate Bridge strengthening project ended on May 16. Workers accepted an agreement between the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU), the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and construction company John Holland.

  • Pollies: Try living on welfare

    Government backbenchers have been challenged to live on $227 a week — the equivalent of the dole — by the National Welfare Rights Network.

  • The end of Reconciliation Victoria

    While federal and state governments focus on the need for state-based reconciliation groups to bring better understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, Reconciliation Victoria Incorporated (Rec Vic) will have to close in July due to a lack of funding.

  • Refusing to wave the flag of war

    We Will Not Fight: The Untold Story of World War One’s Conscientious Objectors
    By Will Ellsworth-Jones
    Aurum Press, 2008
    296 pp, $49.95 (hb)

  • Palestinian cause remembered

    Palestinian supporters in Melbourne and Sydney rallied on March 15 to commemorate 61 years since the Palestinian Nakba — the day of the catastrophe.

  • Union members fight sackings

    MELBOURNE—Thirteen workers have protested outside Tieman Industries in the northern suburb of Keon Park since they were sacked on April 30. They are members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU). Many had been working at the company for more than 10 years.

  • Alice town camps resist 'mainstreaming'

    In a new lease deal proposed by Aboriginal affairs minister Jenny Macklin in early May, Aboriginal people in Alice Springs town camps could lose control over their housing.

  • Campaign demands more rail, fewer trucks

    More than 50 people joined a public meeting in Lawson in the Blue Mountains on May 11 and discussed a new campaign to stop plans by the Roads and Traffic Authority to upgrade the Great Western Highway.

  • Afghanistan: not a just war

    A week after the Rudd government announced Australian troops would join the US and NATO-led troop surge in Afghanistan, a May 4 US air strike on two villages in the country’s south-west killed up to 150 civilians, including many women and children.

  • Posties deserve better

    MELBOURNE—Fifty Australia Post workers and supporters protested outside Australia Post’s head office on May 13. The rally was organised by the Communications Electrical Plumbing Union communications division, and protested against the appalling treatment that injured postal workers receive from their employer. Protesters called for Australia Post’s self-insurance licence to be revoked.