Queensland ALP deputy premier Paul Lucas and other ALP leaders faced hostile chants and heckling from workers at the annual Labour Day march in Brisbane on May 3.
The main message from the union contingents, numbering 10,000, was opposition to the sale of state assets — including railways, ports, forests and motorways — by the Bligh Labor government. Premier Anna Bligh herself was overseas to promote the sell-off to North American investors.
Jim McIlroy
Senior Queensland police officers have been accused of using improper methods to cover up for fellow police officers when investigating the death of 36-year-old Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee in 2004.
A coroner has described Doomadgee’s November 2004 arrest for intoxication as “not an appropriate exercise of police discretion”. Within an hour of the arrest by Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, Doomadgee had died from blows to his body which almost split his liver in two.
The Queensland Teachers Union (QTU) remains defiant about its ban on conducting the NAPLAN national schools test, despite the state Labor government forcing it to go before the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission (QIRC), said the April 29 Courier-Mail.
The QIRC hearing took place on April 30, after the QTU refused to abide by a direction from the commission, a week earlier, to lift its boycott of administering the tests.
“Towards socialism and sustainability” was the theme of the Queensland Socialist Alliance (SA) state conference held at the Activist Centre on April 17. About 40 people gathered to discuss proposals for building the socialist project in 2010.
BRISBANE — Fifty people gathered in Brisbane Square on April 16 to speak up for refugee rights. The action was sponsored by the Refugee Action Collective, and demands include that the government immediately resume processing Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum claims and respect its international obligations.
BRISBANE — “We don’t need nuclear power”, Sam Watson, Aboriginal community leader and Socialist Alliance Senate candidate, told a picket against the proposed nuclear waste dump at Muckaty in the Northern Territory, held outside PM Kevin Rudd’s electorate office in Norman Park on April 12.
BRISBANE — The Climate Summit 2010, held in Canberra in March, “provided a launching pad for the building of a grassroots, activist climate action movement around the country”, Ewan Saunders, Community Climate Network Queensland activist and Socialist Alliance candidate for the federal seat of Brisbane, told about 100 people at an April 14 CCNQ forum.
The annual Palm Sunday peace rally took place in Brisbane on March 28, sponsored by the Rally for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament. The main themes of the rally were: Nuclear-free Australia; oppose climate change; no to uranium weapons; and safe havens for refugees.
“Save Straddie: National park, not mining”, was the main banner displayed outside the Queensland Supreme Court building on March 26, as Friends of Stradbroke Island, other conservation organisations and Indigenous residents of the island protested against moves to establish an industry to quarry and remove sand from the island.
About 40 were at the Edmund Rice Oceania Support Centre on March 24 for the launch of Donna Mulhearn’s new book, Ordinary Courage: My Journey to Baghdad as a Human Shield. Mulhearn travelled to Iraq before the March 2003 US-led invasion.
Hundreds of striking catholic school teachers marched on March 24 to demand an improved wages offer from their employer, the Queensland Catholic Education Commission. The Queensland Independent Education Union called the strike after rejecting a wages offer similar to that accepted by state school teachers.
BRISBANE — Despite the postponement of US President Barack Obama's visit to Australia until June, a rally protesting against his government's war policies took place on March 19, the seventh anniversary of the US-led allied invasion of Iraq.
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