Ray Jackson, president of the Indigenous Social Justice Association, spoke to Green Left TV’s Peter Boyle at a protest against deaths in custody in Sydney on July 27. He spoke about Tasers, shackling and the death of Aboriginal man Mr Clarke in Alice Springs. Watch the GLTV video of the interview, a transcribed extract of which is below, here.
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Australia
Queensland’s Liberal National Party government axed 2000 state transport jobs and more than 300 QBuild jobs on July 31, in another day of mass sackings in the state.
Premier Campbell Newman boasted that 4400 full-time positions have been cut out of the 6000 jobs lost so far. Up to 20,000 public servants are in the firing line.
The latest cuts amount to 1 in 5 transport workers, with Labor transport spokesperson Jackie Trad warning such cuts would “bring the public transport network in Brisbane and in every region to its knees”.
The University of Sydney Student Representative Council (SRC) has condemned university management’s plans to “dismantle” the Koori Centre, which has supported Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students at the university since 1989.
The Koori Centre also coordinates the teaching of Indigenous Studies.
The university says the Koori Centre’s functions will be incorporated into a broader “Centre for Cultural Competencies”. Management has assured staff no jobs will be lost in the process, but many students and staff feel that have been inadequately consulted about the changes.
In the space of a decade, Australia’s mining sector has come to dominate the country’s economic life. In June, Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens said mining investment is tipped to “be about as large as business investment in the rest of the private economy combined” by mid 2014.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) could have been a flagship policy that restored dignity to people with disabilities. Instead, ALP timidity and Coalition intransigence have left Australia with a woefully inadequate policy.
Deported Tamil Dayan Anthony's recanted claims of torture at a Sri Lankan press conference, the day after his July 25 deportation, did not assuage the fears of Australian refugee advocates that Tamils face severe danger if returned.
A whopping 22 million passengers went through Sydney Domestic Airport last year – close to the total population of Australia.
Almost 8 million of those were heading to Victoria, and close to 4.5 million to Brisbane. Just over 2 million were off to the Gold Coast, and just under that figure to WA.
In the debate over the environmental and human impact of a second airport in NSW and the push to expand Mascot, it is important to weigh these facts.
Students, teachers and union activists protested against the Victorian governments' cuts to TAFE at Melbourne's RMIT campus on August 2. The rally was jointly organised by the National Tertiary Education Union Victorian Division and the Australian Education Union (AEU).
More than 500 people attended a public meeting at the Bulli Masonic Hall in the northern suburbs of Wollongong on July 29 to save the Bulli Hospital Emergency Department (ED). A PA had to be set up outside the packed hall so hundreds of people gathered outside could listen in.
Residents are opposed to the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District's (ISLHD) proposal to downgrade the ED to an “urgent care centre”.
More than 100 students, teachers and union activists heard speakers slam private-sector training at a August 2 protest against TAFE cuts at RMIT’s city campus.
Steve Roach from the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union’s Health and Safety Unit said he was concerned that the decline of TAFE — and the subsequent privatisation of building industry training — would lead to unsafe working conditions.
He said: “We find dodgy tickets of competency floating around our industry ... where all [the students] did was give somebody $140 and they come back in with a card the next day.”
This month, the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA) will mark 100 weeks of protest against the sale of cosmetics containing minerals extracted from the Dead Sea — in Palestinian territory under Israeli military occupation — by Seacret.
Seacret says on its website: “We believe everything we do must embody honesty and reflect purity.”
Its products are made with “the ancient, and some say mystical, salts and minerals found only in one place on earth, the Dead Sea”.
The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network released the statement below on July 31.
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The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) has called for an overhaul of the Department of Immigration’s character test procedures for refugees following the appearance today of a refugee at the Darwin Magistrates Court on minor property damage charges.
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