Australia

  • Stop violence against women: Raise women's status

    Globally, millions of women experience violence — whether in the form of intimate partner violence, rape and sexual coercion, stalking, trafficking, forced prostitution, exploitation of labour, or other violations of women's bodies and psyches. The high prevalence of violence against women both reflects and reinforces women's lower status in society. To end the violence against women, we need to confront both the violence directly and the structural causes of women's lower standing that makes women vulnerable to the violence.

  • Despairing refugees protest, self-harm on Nauru

    An Iranian man became the fourth asylum seeker to attempt suicide in Australia’s detention camp on Nauru on October 24. He was cut down from hanging himself by guards and other refugees. Other acts of self-harm have also broken out on the island. On October 25, one detainee told Green Left Weekly that another man who injured himself with a razor did not get any medical care. The wave of self-harm and hunger strikes has hit the detention camp after only a month of the Labor government’s return to a “Pacific solution” for refugees.

  • Kimberley: Gas hub threatens dinosaur tracks

    The threat facing Western Australia’s Kimberley region received national attention on October 5 when 10,000 people attended a concert for the Kimberley in Melbourne’s Federation Square.

  • Julia Gillard eager for a more dangerous world

    The Australian parliament building reeks of floor polish. The wooden floors shine so virtuously they reflect the cartoon-like portraits of prime ministers, bewigged judges and viceroys. Along the gleaming white, hushed corridors, the walls are hung with Aboriginal art: one painting after another as in a monolithic gallery, divorced from their origins, the irony brutal. The poorest, sickest, most incarcerated people on earth provide a facade for those who oversee the theft of their land and its plunder.

  • Report says Pilliga forest a ‘Noah’s ark’ for declining species, but coal seam gas is a threat

    Stop Pilliga Coal Seam Gas released the statement below on October 24 about a new report prepared for the Northern Inland Council for the Environment and the Coonabarabran and Upper Castlereagh Catchment and Landcare Group. * * * A new ecological study of the Pilliga Forest in north-west NSW has found it is a “Noah's Ark” or refuge for many bird and mammal species that are declining across Australia.

  • Sydney march planned to Reclaim the Night, remember Jill Meagher

    Reclaim the Night Sydney released the statement below on October 24. * * * Reclaim The Night, an annual worldwide campaign against all forms of violence against women, will hold its annual march this Sunday October 28 at Hyde Park at 7pm. “In the wake of the Jill Meagher case, it is more important than ever that we highlight the effect violence against women has on our community,” Reclaim the Night spokeswoman Annabel Osborn said. Speakers at the rally this year include: