Lock the Gate have launched a new campaign our Call to Country that calls for national reforms on coal and gas ahead of the 2013 federal election. As part of the launch on March 7, members will be visiting every electorate office in the country. Our Call to Country Together, we share this one continent that holds us safe. An island home as vast as it is diverse, as wild as it is beautiful, from its red heart to its golden beaches. Our place of endless summers and easy laughter, of hard work and happy chances.
Australia
Students supported teachers and staff in their one-day strike at the University of Sydney on March 7.
Read a statement by the National Tertiary Education Union explaining the reason for the strike.
Photos: Peter Boyle.
In the week that US citizen Bradley Manning admitted in court that he leaked military secrets to reveal to the public the “the true costs of war”, I attended the first screening in Sydney of the documentary On The Bridge.
The screening was part of the inaugural Big Picture Festival, a social justice film festival.
About 10,000 nurses and midwives across Western Australia were threatened with disciplinary action and deregistration by the state’s director general if they went ahead with a 24-hour strike on February 25.
The evening before the planned action, WA premier Colin Barnett intervened to offer the nurses a 14% pay rise over three years.
Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) members accepted the offer after voting at a mass meeting on February 25.
The National Tertiary Education Union released the statement below on March 1.
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National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) members at the University of Sydney will strike for 24 hours on March 7 over enterprise bargaining.
“This is the first strike in a decade and shows just how riled our members are at management's arrogance and its lack of commitment to the enterprise bargaining process,” said branch president Michael Thomson.
“We logged our enterprise bargaining claims on August 7 last year.
The statement below was released by the Socialist Alliance on March 2.
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Legal proceedings are under way against long-term trade union and community activist Bob Carnegie. The case has serious implications for trade union rights and broader civil liberties.
The campaign against the gas hub at Walmadan (James Price Point) in the Kimberley received a huge boost when about 20,000 people marched through the streets of Fremantle and attended a vibrant and political “Concert for the Kimberley” on February 24.
Vincent Emanuele is from the Iraq Veterans Against the War in the United States. He recently visited Australia to promote the documentary film On The Bridge which follows seven returning service men and women.
This is an edited version of a speech that he gave to a forum hosted by the Marrickville Peace Group, the Independent and Peaceful Australia network and Stop the War Coalition in Sydney on February 26.
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“The Stain” is the name of a photo exhibition by Turkish artist A. Suderin Murat, which looks at the issue of violence against women.
Coinciding with International Women’s Day, the exhibition will be open to the public from March 4-10 at the Auburn Town Hall Exhibition Gallery.
For many years, Murat has campaigned against all kinds of discrimination. She considers art to be “the most effective and peaceful tool” for helping society.
Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr, US Ambassador to Australia Jeffrey Bleich, and writer and activist Eva Cox took part in the ABC’s Q&A on February 25. More than 15 minutes of the program was spent discussing WikiLeaks journalist Julian Assange.
This is an extract from Towards a socialist Australia, produced by the Socialist Alliance and its affiliate, Resistance. Read the first installment in last week's issue of Green Left, and the full text online on the Socialist Alliance website. ***
The federal Coalition has used the alleged sexual assault of a young woman on Macquarie University to call for increased monitoring of asylum seekers.
Police have charged a Tamil asylum seeker with the attack, which allegedly took place when the man broke into the woman’s room and put a hand down her pyjama pants while she was asleep. He fled when she woke up and screamed.
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