Organic farmer Steve Marsh has lost his case in the Western Australian Supreme Court after seeking compensation for his crops being affected by genetically modified (GM) seeds.
Organic farmers fear the case will have dire consequences for non-GM farmers everywhere.
In a case which was the first of its kind, Marsh brought legal action against his neighbour Michael Baxter, who took advantage of changes in state legislation and began growing GM canola on his adjacent farm in 2010. Some seeds blew over the road onto Marsh’s property.
Chris Jenkins
A decision by the Fremantle City Council at its March 26 meeting to reject a Main Roads WA request to voluntarily hand over land began a dramatic new phase in the campaign against the state government's freeway building agenda.
The state government wants to replace a section of High Street on the eastern approach to Fremantle with a freeway at a cost of more than $100 million. This is intended to be the first link in their plan to build a six lane "freeway standard" route connecting the Kwinana Freeway to the Fremantle container port.
Prison officers across Western Australia took strike action in an effort to force the state Liberal government to make similar promises to advance wages and working conditions as it did on February 25 to WA nurses.
The WA Prison Officer Union (WAPOU) is demanding a 14% wage rise over three years and measures to alleviate the chronic overcrowding and understaffing in WA prisons.
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 10,000 nurses and midwives involved in industrial action across Western Australia have been threatened with disciplinary action and deregistration by the state’s director general if they go ahead with a planned 24-hour strike on February 25.
The industrial dispute, which for the first time in 12 years has seen the closure of beds across the state’s public hospitals, is set to intensify in the coming week as the state government continues to ignore nurses’ demands on wages and conditions.
Elders and activists from the Nyoongar Tent Embassy in Perth took to the streets on October 18 in a march to state parliament in defiance of Premier Colin Barnett's attempts to do away with native title.
Traffic was stopped as the crowd of 50 people took over St George's Terrace in Perth's CBD and made its way to parliament.
The protest delivered a petition putting the Barnett government and the South West Land and Sea Council (SWLSC) “on notice” because they are illegitimate bodies to make policy decisions affecting local Aboriginal people.
A Nyoongar Tent Embassy was established on Perth’s Heirisson Island on February 12 after the state government proposed to extinguish Nyoongar native title. The protesters made an urgent call for support after Perth City Council made its second threat to close the embassy down on February 17.
Many of those taking a leading role in the Embassy are local Aboriginal activists recently returned from the 40-year commemoration of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra.
Recent national figures published by the Sydney Morning Herald show the rate of youth unemployment in Australia is well above the national average, hitting 17.3%.
The figure is more than triple national unemployment, which stood at 5.2% in December. Almost one in five people aged 15 to 19 and not studying are out of work.
Marking the 10th anniversary of the Tampa scandal, when the former John Howard government refused to allow the MV Tampa to dock in Australia after it had rescued asylum seekers at sea, close to 100 refugee rights activists converged on the Perth detention centre outside the domestic airport on August 27.
The rally, which was organised by the Refugee Rights Action Network, called for the end of mandatory detention and for the rejection of the federal government's plans to export asylum seekers as part of the so-called Malaysian Solution.
The family of Rex Bellotti Junior have called a rally for July 23 in Albany where Aboriginal youth Bellotti, then 15 years old, was run over by police driving on the wrong side of the road in March 2009.
The family organised the protest to call for a public inquiry into alleged police misconduct and the failure of the state government and the Western Australian police to provide adequate compensation and support for Bellotti and his family. State politicians and legal bodies have left the family to fend for themselves.
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