Australia

  • Indigenous doctors: intervention a health hazard

    In the lead-up to the release of a report from the federal government’s review into the Northern Territory intervention, the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association has blasted the policy. AIDA describes it as discriminatory, damaging to people’s health and completely unable to alter conditions of child abuse or neglect in remote Aboriginal communities.

  • Write On: Letters to the editor

    Beauty myth I am writing in response to Pam Rankin's questions (Write On #767) regarding the way women dress and treat their bodies. To find the answer to who "forces" Western women to wax, pluck, chemical peal and worse, we don't have to look

  • The Rudd government must help Cuba and Haiti

    Everyone remembers the tropical storm that swept through Northern Queensland in 2006, destroying that year’s banana production, flattening houses and creating widespread misery. Now imagine if that hurricane had:

  • Is the abortion law reform in Victoria enough?

    The Victorian Abortion Law Reform bill was passed by the parliament’s lower house on September 12 after more than 70 hours of debate. This may finally mean that abortion is removed from the state’s Crimes Act dating back to 1958. Until the bill is passed, abortion remains a crime.

  • Stopping the pulp mill

    This article is based on a speech to a rally against Gunns’ proposed pulp mill, in Launceston on August 23. It was delivered by Stef Gebbi and Gabby Forward on behalf of Students Against the Pulp Mill.

  • Nurses take on multinational company

    McKesson Asia-Pacific, a subsidiary of US multinational medical services operator McKesson Corporation, landed a $176 million government contract to provide an all-hours national health telephone triage system called Healthdirect Australia. It began taking calls in New South Wales in August.

  • Farmers protest against coal

    People power came to Gunnedah in north-west NSW on September 15 as more than 300 farmers and their supporters rallied outside the Gunnedah Basin Coal Conference. They were protesting against a coalmining project in the agriculturally rich Liverpool Plains that was given state government approval in 2006.

  • Climate emergency: birth of a new protest movement

    In the room are a chemical engineer from a large mining/energy corporation, a solar energy engineer, a psychiatrist, a veterinarian, an artist and a construction worker. Also present are an ex-Labor Party activist, a Greens candidate in the 2007 election and a socialist student. Where do you find all these people, and more besides, in one room working for the one cause? At a meeting of Melbourne’s Climate Emergency Network (CEN).

  • Campaign to save Yungaba

    On September 14, the Yungaba Action Group (YAG) protested at the Bligh Labor government’s community cabinet in Carindale as part of the campaign to save the historic migrant cultural centre from being sold off for private development.

  • Greens gain from 'imploding' ALP

    Max Phillips, a newly elected Greens councillor in Marrickville and the Greens’ campaign coordinator for the September 13 NSW local government elections, puts the swing to the Greens down to the state Labor government’s implosion.

  • ALP's work contracts: wolf in sheep's clothing

    The Australian Services Union (ASU) Victorian secretary, Ingrid Stitt, told Green Left Weekly that Labor’s new Interim Transitional Employment Agreements are a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. The ITEAs were introduced by the Rudd government to replace the notorious Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs <17> individual contracts).

  • Ambos bail up minister

    Fifty ambulance officers and paramedics campaigning for more staff and better conditions bailed up Victorian health minister Daniel Andrews as he visited Geelong on September 19.