Dr Gary MacLennan, a long-time socialist activist and lecturer in creative industries at the Queensland University of Technology, was suspended for six months without pay on June 6. He, along with a colleague, Dr John Hookham, was charged with misconduct following the publication of an article in the Australian that criticised a PhD film project that mocked the disabled. Students and staff launched a support campaign for the two suspended lecturers which has linked up with a struggle against QUT’s decision to close down the school of humanities and human services.
Jim McIlroy
Chants of, Hey Brisbane, listen up; the cleaners are standing up! and Caruso workers´ rights, worth fighting for! rang through the Brisbane CBD on June 15, as 60 cleaners, members of the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union, marched from the LHMU office to the offices of Caruso Cleaning.
On June 13, 100 students and staff rallied in front of the administration building at Queensland University of Technology’s Gardens Point campus to protest the suspension of two QUT academics, Dr Gary MacLennan and Dr John Hookham, on charges of misconduct.
On May 28, 30 people picketed an administration building at the Queensland University of Technology s Gardens Point campus to support Dr Gary MacLennan, a long-time radical activist and academic at QUT, who was facing disciplinary charges over his criticism of a PhD film project mocking disabled people.
On May 31, a picket of 50 people organised by Solidarity Unity protested outside the offices of Mighty River Power, which supplies electricity to Mercury Energy, the company responsible for the death of an Auckland woman on May 29.
A group of Rohingya people, a Muslim ethnic minority from western Burma’s Arakan state, is being held indefinitely at the Australian government detention centre on Nauru.
There are two big issues in this dispute: the right of academics to free speech and the question of QUT [Queensland University of Technology] conducting unethical research, left-wing academic Dr Gary MacLennan told Green Left Weekly on May 24.
BRISBANE Australia is the only Western democracy without human rights legislation, James Whelan from Amnesty International told a public forum attended by 50 people on May 23.
Well-known left-wing academic Dr Gary MacLennan and his Queensland University of Technology colleague John Hookham are facing possible suspension or dismissal without pay on charges of straight misconduct over their public criticism of a PhD project approved of by the QUT ethics committee.
Anyone who says this camp is being built for refugees is talking nonsense, union activist and former leader of the 1985 SEQEB dispute Bernie Neville told a Socialist Alliance meeting of around 25 people on May 9. Neville recently returned from working on the construction of the secret new detention centre on Christmas Island, dubbed Australias Guantanamo Bay.
— Australia will face a moral duty to accept thousands of “environmental refugees” when rising sea levels caused by global warming displace the peoples of small Pacific island states in future decades, Clive Hamilton, director of the Australia Institute, told an audience of around 300 at the Irish Club on May 1.
new front in the battle against the Howard governments anti-union laws has opened with a push by federal workplace relations minister Joe Hockey for local councils to sign their employees up to the new Work Choices legislation.
- Previous page
- Page 102
- Next page