On March 26, the NSW Legislative Council passed the motion by Greens NSW MP John Kaye that called on the government to drop its demands that TAFE teacher conditions be slashed to pay for salary increases.
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Young Tamil activists Sutha Thanbalasingam, Mathivannan Sinnathurai and Pratheepan Rajathurai were prepared to starve to death in the face of Australian government inaction over Sri Lanka’s genocidal war against the Tamil people. They began a hunger strike on April 11 in Parramatta, Sydney.
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On April 18, the revolutionary and progressive governments of Latin America were waging a battle against the US at the Summit of the Americas. On the same day, Luis Bilbao, an active participant in the Venezuelan revolution, addressed a public meeting in Sydney on the topic of Latin American integration at a crossroads.
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On March 31, Western Australian treasurer Troy Buswell announced a cap on wage rises for public sector workers.
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The Sydney Stop the War Coalition called a snap protest on April 15 against government plans to send more Australian troops to Afghanistan.
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On April 16, an explosion on board a small fishing boat, packed with 47 Afghan asylum seekers and two crew, killed five people and injured many more.
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On April 15, receivers for collapsed childcare company ABC Learning announced they had found new operators for 210 of its 241 childcare centres deemed unprofitable. As well as the 55 centres already shut down at the end of last year, 19 are set to close next month.
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Members of the Aboriginal community were joined by construction and manufacturing unionists at a 350-strong protest on April 3 to bring an end to deaths of Aboriginal people in custody.
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According to a 2008 report by UN agencies UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation, an estimated 1.9 million people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007, bringing the number of people living with HIV in the region to 22 million.
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Workers and the community will march on May Day this year under the banner “Put jobs before profits”.
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A group of community activists marked Earth Hour with an occupation of the Hazelwood Power station in Victorias Latrobe Valley on March 28.
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In the biggest shake-up of job centres since the Howard governments replacement of the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) with the privatised Job Network in 1998, the federal Labor government has created a new Job Services Australia (JSA) network. It halves the number of not-for-profit agencies involved and cuts thousands of jobs.